Date: 2022-06-07 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fiction; Space Opera; Aliens; Military Science Fiction; Military Fiction; Fantasy; Space
Description: For years, the ancient alien AI known as Skippy (the Magnificent, don’t forget that part) has been able to do one impossible thing after another. What is his secret? It’s simple: 100 percent Grade-A Extreme Awesomeness. And, also because he had never been faced with an opponent of equal power. Until now. This time, he might need a little help from a band of filthy monkeys.

EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

BOOK 14

MATCH GAME

By

Craig Alanson

Text copyright 2022 Craig Alanson

All Rights Reserved

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

CONVERGENCE PREVIEW

CHAPTER ONE

The Bosphuraq cruiser approached the edge of its assigned sector and pinged the sensor frigates assigned to the squadron’s patrol route, logging the updates as they straggled in from the five escort ships that were scattered from sixteen to twenty nine lightseconds away. All of the frigates, and the cruiser’s own sensor suite, reported detecting the same thing in the sector: absolutely nothing. More than twenty lightdays distant from the star system where the squadron was based, the sector was, in fact, filled with drifting chunks of dirty ice that would become comets if something disturbed their orbits and they fell inward toward the star. To say interstellar space was ‘filled’ with anything was a great exaggeration, the vast sphere of dust, gas and ice chunks was so dispersed that it could usually only be detected with active sensor pulses. However, other than useless junk matter left over from the long-ago formation of the Bildegung star system, the squadron’s sweep had found no indication of any threats. No stealthed starships, no remnants of jump wormholes, no echoes of hostile sensor pulses, unless the Bosphuraq counted faint echoes of Thuranin sensor sweeps as hostile.

The Bosphuraq certainly did.

No one in the galaxy trusted the miserable little green Thuranin cyborgs, especially not those who knew them best: their peers within the Maxohlx coalition. The joint operation to capture the strategically important world of Bildegung from the Jeraptha was supposed to have been a Bosphuraq initiative, with temporary assistance from the Thuranin. The Jeraptha Home Fleet base and heavy shipyard at Bildegung had been a thorn in the side of the Maxohlx coalition for millennia. In the last thousand years, seven major Thuranin offensives to capture that star system had ended in defeat for the cyborgs, the most recent two battles were crushing defeats that weakened the cyborgs across their territory, leading to substantial losses. Tired of seeing their idiot cyborg clients losing, the Maxohlx had cajoled their Bosphuraq clients into an uneasy, and supposedly temporary, joint operation with their hated rivals. The unexpected arrival of six hundred Bosphuraq warships, accompanied by nearly the same number of Thuranin ships, had forced the Jeraptha commander of the Bildegung base to make a difficult decision. She could fight a delaying action to prevent the overwhelming enemy force from quickly taking control of the star system’s important military spacedocks, fuel stations and repair facilities, but the civilian population of the single habitable planet would suffer greatly in what would undoubtedly be a vicious battle. Or, she could retreat, send for reinforcements and conduct hit and run raids to harass the enemy until the Home Fleet could come back in force.

She had chosen the second option, partly based on assurances from the invading Bosphuraq that they had no interest in the planet or its population; they only cared about denying the star system to the Jeraptha as a base for offensive operations. At the time, it was assumed by both sides that a strong counteroffensive by the Jeraptha would come within months at the most.

Both sides were wrong. The Bosphuraq did keep their word to largely leave the planet untouched, even allowing Jeraptha cargo ships to carry supplies to and from Bildegung, though the fee charged for transit, security, and armed escort by the Bosphuraq soon made shipping impractical. With the population of that world relatively secure, and the Jeraptha Home Fleet busy elsewhere, a massive and costly operation to retake Bildegung had not risen to the top of the priority list.

Until recently.

The Bosphuraq had not kept their word to leave the planet’s population untouched because they had a strong sense of honor, or because they wanted to avoid bad publicity. They had intended to break their promise almost immediately, but they just weren’t given the opportunity. Their actions in that star system were restricted, simply because their treacherous cyborg allies had not gone away as they had promised. Instead of being satisfied that the Bosphuraq had solved a problem for them, and moved on to address their many other serious security problems, the Thuranin had maintained a fleet of almost a hundred warships at Bildegung. Skirmishes between the two supposed allies broke out frequently enough that their Maxohlx patrons recently had thrown up their hands and announced that their idiot clients could fight all they wanted, as long as the conflict was confined to that star system.

When that ‘All Clear’ signal reached the Thuranin at Bildegung first, their commander reacted instantly, activating a plan they had been wargaming for years. The Bosphuraq held the advantages of having twice as many warships in-system, and a greater percentage of those ships were heavy combatants. The Thuranin, knowing they were significantly outnumbered and outgunned, knew they couldn’t win a stand-up fight. They had one major advantage: the Bosphuraq were at the end of a very long supply line, and that route passed through Thuranin territory.

The Thuranin didn’t need to win a battle at Bildegung, they only needed to make the Bosphuraq see that the costs of keeping that world was not worth the benefits.

After launching a brutal surprise attack, the Thuranin then jumped away to harass the enemy supply lines. Since that battle two months before, the two sides had settled into a war of attrition, both combatants growing weaker with each ship lost, and with every vital component that wore out and could not easily be replaced. After just the first week of vicious fighting, the Thuranin were no longer trying to expel their hated rivals from the star system. They were waiting for the Jeraptha to see a juicy opportunity for vengeance, and all signs pointed to the beetles massing for a strike, led by the famous Mighty 98th Fleet. Instead of the Thuranin needing to take risks to administer a serious beat-down to the Bosphuraq, the cyborgs could just wait for the Jeraptha to do that for them. Knowing what their asshole supposed allies had planned, and anticipating an imminent Jeraptha attack, the Bosphuraq pulled the bulk of their in-system fleet together to orbit the vulnerable planet. If the Jeraptha wanted their planet back, they would have to pay a terrible price in blood.

The Bosphuraq cruiser, having detected no sign of Jeraptha activity in the sector, and feeling exposed operating so far from the planet, signaled its attending frigates to jump away in sequence. As the jump clock counted down-

The frigates began exploding.

Frantically, the cruiser scanned for the source of the attack and found nothing. No enemy ships, no missiles racing in for an attack. One, two, then three frigates exploded without warning and the cruiser’s captain decided to jump away, ordering-

Nothing.

The ship’s crew were frozen in horror, as twin rifts opened in spacetime a lightsecond away. Swirling light accompanied the chaotic radiation, blinding the cruiser’s sensors. Seconds later, there was no need for sophisticated sensors. Anyone looking at a viewscreen or out an airlock porthole could see with their own eyes: the writhing tentacles of a Sentinel emerging.

Acting without orders, a junior navigation technician slapped a button to activate the programmed jump, and the cruiser vibrated terribly as its drive struggled to create a coherent jump field, but create a field it did. The cruiser slipped away in its own deadly burst of radiation, jumping once, twice, three times to get away from the horrific thing.

When the cruiser jumped in near the planet Bildegung, but inside the zone restricted by local traffic control, the ship came close to being obliterated by friendly fire, the assembled Bosphuraq war fleet having many gunnery crews ready and eager to shoot at anything and everything. Accompanied by shocking images, the news flashed throughout the fleet and across the surface of the planet below.

A Sentinel was coming.

Humans had reportedly been able to put Sentinels back into hibernation, but apparently not all of them!

The planet had only hours, perhaps mere minutes, before it was torn apart.

Wisely, the Bosphuraq war fleet jumped away, and kept jumping.

Shortly after, Thuranin sensor frigates having picked up the Bosphuraq emergency transmission, their commander sent word out to their own scattered squadrons: retreat; jump away immediately upon receipt of the signal, and assemble at the nearest friendly military base. There was no hope of fighting a Sentinel. Reports that Sentinels across the galaxy were going back into hibernation were clearly mistaken. Whatever the humans had done, they had failed.

The planet Bildegung, and its three billion Jeraptha inhabitants, was doomed.

“A Sentinel? Here?” Admiral Tashallo gasped, slumping back in his command couch aboard the Mighty 98th Fleet’s flagship.

“Yes,” the battleship’s captain confirmed, the message slip held by a shaky claw. “There is no mistake, Sir, the evidence is clear. Admiral, the enemy fleet, it appears both enemy fleets, have jumped away from Bildegung. Our path is clear.”

“Clear. Except for an ancient killing machine, that possesses technology that might as well be magic to us,” Tashallo muttered.

“Sir? Your orders?” Captain Lufundria asked.

“My orders,” Tashallo repeated stupidly, his mind in shock, trying to process the unthinkable. He had won the battle without firing a shot. Yet, what had he won? A planet that soon would be devastated, thrown out of orbit, or turned into a loose pile of rubble. Three billion of his fellow citizens would soon be dead. “Lufundria,” he took a deep breath, calming himself to project an entirely false air of confidence. “Bring the assault carriers forward. Have their star carriers jump directly into orbit, there is no time for an orderly separation.”

“Assault carriers? Sir, those ships will be vulnerable until we establish-”

“Until we establish a secure perimeter around the planet. Captain, the Sentinel has already done that for us. We cannot defend the world from such a horror. All we can do is pull as many of our people off the surface, before,” he looked away. “Before,” his voice trailed off. Regaining his composure, Tashallo stood up, aware that all eyes were on him. “Have the escort squadrons accompany the assault carriers to the planet. I want every available dropship to pull people off the surface.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Lufundria dipped her antennas, and turned away to issue orders. The star carriers burdened with assault transports were far away, constantly maneuvering to match course and speed with the planet. The star carriers could react quickly, though the crews of the transports would need time to prep their dropships. And someone would have to throw together a plan to evacuate a tiny fraction of the planet, under conditions of total panic.

“Lufundria, wait,” Tashallo called, and the battleship’s captain halted. “All other units will jump on my signal.”

“Sir? Where are we going?”

“To fight the Sentinel.”

Lufundria’s leathery face turned a paler shade. “Fight it?”

Tashallo’s antennas drooped in a fatalistic shrug. “To distract it, then, while the assault transports rescue as many as they can. It appears our human friends were not successful in their efforts to send the Sentinels back to, wherever they came from.  If we are to die anyway, we die fighting.”

“Sir,” Lufundria drew herself up to full height. “The Mighty 98th will show that Elder killing machine why we are much feared.”

Tashallo did not acknowledge the brave but foolish statement, other than with a curt movement of his antennas. Walking to stand near the battleship’s main display, he watched with grim satisfaction as the crew prepared for a hopeless battle.

When all units of the Mighty 98th acknowledged the revised orders, he quietly told the navigation officer to start a countdown to jump. A countdown to death.

He should say something, he knew. Something stirring, something that would inspire his crews, for they would soon be dead. Words that might live on, to inspire other elements of the Home Fleet to fight on, against impossible-

“Sir!” Lufundria interrupted the admiral’s dark thoughts. “A ship just jumped in.”

“One of ours?” Tashallo asked.

“Not,” her mandibles worked side to side, like she was about to spit out something unpleasant. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? What do you mean by-”

“It’s the Ethics people, one of their specialty stealth cruisers, the ‘We Don’t Want to Brag About That Thing You Can’t Prove We Did’.” Lufundria sighed. “A Captain Scorandum wishes to speak with you. Urgently. He used the proper Flash priority code.”

“He did, hmm? Is he aware that our plans have changed?”

“Perhaps he wishes to join the fight?” She said sourly, knowing that couldn’t be true.

Tashallo snorted. “Perhaps, he wishes to register a wager on how long the Mighty 98th survives fighting a Sentinel. Put him on the main display, please.”

The image of Captain Scorandum appeared, his head floating disembodied in the holographic tank at the center of the battleship’s bridge. “Admiral Tashallo?”

“Big Score,” Tashallo used the other officer’s nickname. “If you are contacting me to announce a Sentinel is active in the area, we already know.”

“It is-”

“Several Bosphuraq frigates were blasted apart without warning, by an unknown-”

“We know. That was-”

“A Sentinel then emerged in the same area, it-”

“Never happened!” Scorandum said loudly, to drown out the Mighty 98th’s commander.

“-is assumed to-” Tashallo continued as if the ECO captain had not spoken. “Er,” he blinked. “Never what?”

“Admiral, it never happened. There is no Sentinel,” Scorandum’s very self-satisfied face filled the display.

“There are at least three Bosphuraq frigates that would disagree with you.”

“Those frigates were destroyed by stealth mines,” Scorandum’s antennas twitched. “A lesson there: it is best to vary your patrol route, so it does not become predictable.”

“That was your doing?”

“Um, I can neither confirm nor deny any involvement.”

“But, the, the Sentinel,” Tashallo insisted.

“Holographic projections,” Scorandum explained, a grin creeping into his expression. “It was touch and go there for a moment. Those holographic projectors, and the radiation generators, consume a hellacious amount of power. We worried that damned Bosphuraq cruiser was never going to jump away. If it waited another few seconds, the holograms would have collapsed.”

Tashallo’s antennas drooped. “There is no Sentinel?” He suddenly needed a large, a very large glass of burgoze.

“Nope,” Scorandum shook his head, his antennas bobbing side to side. “There never was. As far as we know, the humans have somehow put them all back into hibernation.”

“Captain Scorandum,” Tashallo glared. “You did not think to inform me of your operation in advance?”

“Er, well, Sir, we didn’t know if it would actually work. Those damned large-scale holographic projectors are somewhat unreliable, and the Bosphuraq came close to penetrating the stealth fields we had around their generators. The-”

“Captain! You activated a plan, not knowing whether it would work or not?”

“Well, in testing, it did work three out of eleven times, so,” his antennas shrugged. “We figured it was worth a shot. Who needs a task force,” he grinned, “when you can pretend to have a Sentinel?”

“I can’t believe you took such a risk.”

“We did chase away both enemy fleets without firing a shot,” Scorandum noted.

Tashallo’s antennas slapped his own forehead. “What am I supposed to say about this?”

“A simple ‘Thank you’ would be nice, I suppose? Or,” he read the expression on the admiral’s face. “Er, nothing. You could just say nothing?”

Tashallo glared. “I will discuss this with your superiors. They never should have approved such a reckless-”

“Admiral? My superiors don’t know anything about this operation.”

“You did this on your own?”

“This is how the Office operates. Our headquarters doesn’t like being bothered with pesky details of proposed operations. If an op succeeds, they can take credit, and if it fails, well, they can be as shocked as everyone else.”

“I don’t believe-”

“No way would the Office have approved a wacky scheme like this one, so-”

Tashallo sighed. “Oh, I am getting too old for this shit. Captain Scorandum, it is unfortunate that communication difficulties prevented me from understanding anything you said. If you know what I mean.”

“Um, that would be great!” The ECO captain shuddered with relief. “Er, as a ‘Thank you’ from us, we can offer a bottle of very fine vintage burgoze, from the legendary Farah Three Reserve stock.”

Tashallo’s eyes bulged. “You are regifting a bottle I gave to you?”

“Well, now this is just awkward.”

Aboard the We Don’t Want to Brag About That Thing You Can’t Prove We Did, Lieutenant Kinsta frantically waved his arms, claws clacking to get his captain’s attention. “Sir!” he said in a harsh whisper. “You drank the last of that Farah Three last week.”

“I know that, you idiot, I was stalling for time.” Scorandum cut the communications link. “Jump us the hell out of here now, before Tashallo uses us for target practice.”

CHAPTER TWO

“Joe,” Chang prompted me again from the bridge of the good old Flying Dutchman, a bit more insistently this time.

“Kong, just give me one minute,” I held up an index finger toward the main display, while Simms was whispering in my other ear.

“Command is demanding to speak with you now, and they’re making me responsible,” Chang continued, exasperated.

“OK, Simms,” I nodded to her, and turned back to the display. “Kong, tell Command I’ll contact them as soon as I can. Soon. We have uh, something to take care of up here first.”

Kong didn’t roll his eyes, but his shoulders did slump with resignation. Earth was still surrounded by thousands of hostile alien warships, an unpredictable Elder killing machine had a pair of creepy tentacles dangling from a rip in reality, and UNEF Command understandably wanted answers. Answers that I couldn’t give, without the senior species listening to every word the Command staff said. Kong knew that was why I was refusing orders to provide a status report. “Are you letting me in on the secret of how the hell you got here, with your pet?”

“Yes, I promise. But you’ll need to come aboard Valkyrie.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We can’t trust the Skippytel network’s security?”

“Not with this,” I shook my head.

“I’ll tell the ready bird to-”

“Hold on that,” I told him. “It could get, kinetic around here.”

“I’m afraid to ask what you have planned, so I won’t. Let me know when it’s safe to fly a dropship, and I’ll bring over a bottle of bourbon.”

“We would really appreciate some fresh food instead, we’re running a bit low.” Behind me, Simms cleared her throat to remind me that we were on a tight schedule. “Uh, hey, Kong, would you like to see Roscoe do a trick?”

“I would like you to explain just what the hell is going on, and bring Command into the loop.”

“Sir,” Simms said quietly. “It might be a good idea to keep Command in the loop.”

“Oof,” I grunted. “That will not be a short conversation.”

She bit her lower lip, a sign she was being patient with me. “If you don’t tell them what’s going on up here, they might make decisions on their own, decisions we will regret.”

“Shit. You’re right, XO. Damn it, uh,” I tried to think of the current communications officer’s name. “Comms,” I ducked the question, because I didn’t want to look back at her nametag and make it obvious that I had forgotten who was on duty. “Patch me into UNEF Command. Audio only.” After a beat, a little green symbol for UNEF Command began blinking in the bottom right of the main display. “This is General Bishop.”

“Bishop!” The voice of General Urquhart was instantly recognizable.

Before he could say anything else, I added, “Sir, with all the alien ships here, we have a major COMSEC risk, so I need to keep this discussion at a high level, until we can arrange a more secure channel.”

After a hesitation, during which I could hear other voices in the background giving him unsolicited advice  he acknowledged with, “Understood, Bishop, what can you tell me?”

“Roscoe has learned a new trick, do you want to see it?”

“General Bishop,” there was a heavy sigh, as he emphasized my rank. As in, he expected me to stop playing games. Then, because he didn’t get to be chairman of the UNEF Command chiefs of staff by being stupid, he played along. “Yes, I would love to see Roscoe’s new trick.”

“Cool,” I flashed a thumbs up for the benefit of Chang and the bridge crew. “Uh, you probably will need a telescope pointed toward the Sun to see it. And there will be a time lag, so give it a couple minutes. Skippy, tell Roscoe to do his thing.”

“Ugh” Skippy did his exaggerated sigh. “Joe, do you have a biscuit? Roscoe is supposed to get a biscuit when he does a trick.”

“How about I let him snack on an enemy battleship?”

“That’ll do it,” he chuckled. “Watch this.”

Exactly nothing happened.

No, that’s not accurate. There just wasn’t anything to see.

Time lag, like I mentioned.

The action was happening far from Earth, like several lightminutes away. Also, it was subtle, especially at first.

The effect was first noticeable nine minutes and forty eight seconds after Skippy gave Roscoe the command.

The cloud.

The Jupiter Cloud, to be precise.

It began moving.

Curling, in wispy tendrils, like morning fog on a meadow when stirred by the faintest breeze. It was impossible to see without a powerful telescope, and some fancy software to compare the images before to the images after. At first, I mean. Within a minute, it was obvious that the cloud was doing something, and that whatever it was doing, it wasn’t natural. What it was doing wasn’t possible without artificial means.

It was accelerating, and not in any way that could be explained by physics or orbital mechanics, or any kind of sciency math stuff understood by filthy monkeys. When an object in orbit accelerates, it moves outward and forward, the increase in its speed causing it to climb higher out of the gravity well. The Jupiter Cloud wasn’t doing that. Its forward speed was unchanged, it was moving directly away from the Sun, and its speed in the outward direction was increasing.

Roscoe was pushing the damned thing away from Earth.

The cloud not only moved outward, it split. A wedge appeared between Earth and the Sun, so as the dust and gas accelerated outward, it didn’t slam into our homeworld’s atmosphere. That dust and gas kept accelerating, pushed by Roscoe until it had reached solar escape velocity, and would eventually go out past the orbit of Pluto and on into the interstellar void.

That is a neat trick, huh?

The crew of Valkyrie, the Dutchman, and the staff at UNEF Command were not the only people who noticed the odd behavior of the Jupiter Cloud. Based on the ship-to-ship chatter Skippy picked up, both the Maxohlx and Rindhalu were watching the events closely with a mixture of excitement and alarm. Pretty much everyone in the vicinity of Earth was focused on the cloud, either hoping, or fearing, that the cloud would soon no longer be a threat to humanity’s homeworld.

The event was all anyone was talking about, and every sensor aboard every ship in the area and on Earth was pointed at the cloud. Comms were swamped by excited chatter with the news: the Cloud was gone. Or, it soon would be. Everyone in the area was focused on that astonishing, blessed event.

That’s good.

Because Roscoe’s trick was mostly a distraction.

Alarms sounded in the cockpit, as the ultra-stealthy Panther slipped through the overlapping sensor fields around the alien battleship. The field strength indicators were glowing red, showing the massive warship and its escort vessels all had a nearly one hundred percent certainty of detecting the dropship despite its sophisticated stealth capability. “Trusting the awesomeness,” the pilot said more in weary resignation than in fear. They had survived the trip up from the surface apparently undetected, or at none of the enemy ships had shot at them. Getting into orbit was very different from sneaking up on the enemy flagship. “The awesomeness is with me, I am trusting the awesomeness.”

“TTA,” the copilot’s mouth twisted in a grimace. The expression ‘TTA’ had expanded beyond the Merry Band of Pirates, into common usage by human military personnel all around Earth and beyond. The original usage referred exclusively to trusting in Skippy, who had shown numerous times that he could not entirely be trusted to pay attention to what he was doing. ‘TTA’ now covered any situation where military personnel were being ironic about their need to put their trust in something that unquestionably could not be trusted. That covered orders from baby second lieutenants, whose lack of experience was exceeded only by their ill-founded confidence in their abilities. Or to the announcement that a particular military service was going to perform yet another email migration project, which everyone other than the idiots in charge could tell was fated to be a total fucking disaster.

The two pilots of the stealthed dropship, however, were in that case trusting in Skippy himself, or in Skippy’s boastful declaration that their vulnerable little spacecraft could slip right through the sensor fields of a senior species warship.

It was noted that Skippy had not volunteered to come with them.

“Slowing to three meters per second. We just got swept by a proximity defense sensor pulse. It is, locked onto us.”

“TTA,” the pilot gritted his teeth, waiting for searing particle beams to obliterate the lightly-armored spacecraft.

It didn’t happen.

The battleship did not react, though the sensors aboard the gargantuan warship must have been screaming about the imminent danger.

“One meter per second, extending docking clamps,” the copilot read the instruments. “We are dialed into the flightpath five by five,” she kept one eye on the maintenance airlock that the Panther was approaching, outlined by crosshairs in the display. “Colonel Smythe, ETA is eight seconds.”

“I see it,” the ST-Alpha leader acknowledged. “Package is in place and hot.”

“Four, three, two, one,” there was no need to finish the countdown, as the Panther came to a rest against the armored hull of the alien battleship with a thunk that sent a shudder through its comparatively fragile frame. And undoubtedly could be heard by anyone inside that section of the warship.

The time for stealth was over.

Under the belly of the Panther, nestled against the hatch there, a device activated, firing explosive bolts to launch a ring just slightly smaller in diameter than the alien airlock. The heavy ring was flung outward to adhere to the airlock’s outer door and instantly, the contents of the ring flashed into plasma that charred the belly of the Panther. And burned through the airlock’s thick composite material as if it were tissue paper. Milliseconds later, a mechanical arm reached down to clamp onto the now free-floating outer door, spinning it sideways out of the way-

So that a particle cannon could spin in a circle, burning neatly through the much less tough inner airlock door.

Three seconds after the Panther made contact, Jeremy Smythe saw a green light in his helmet visor, and he eyeclicked a command. The hatch on the belly of the dropship slid aside and his team began launching themselves head-first through the open airlock, into the exposed interior of the battleship.

The Maxohlx flagship.

The deck shook.

Admiral Reichert of the Maxohlx Hegemony looked up sharply when he felt the movement beneath his feet.

That by itself was not unusual aboard a warship in a combat zone. What was unusual was the lack of alarms accompanying the uncommanded movement of the massive ship. No alarms were triggered, either by alerts sent directly to the cranial implants of the crew, or the backup audio and visual systems in the ship’s control center. After the humans demonstrated their pet Sentinel could treat mighty warships like toys, Admiral Reichert had ordered all ships to fall back to their crude manual control systems, to provide a measure of defense against a cyber-attack. “Ship, status update,” he demanded, not waiting for the battleship’s captain and crew to provide the information to him.

“Apologies,” the master AI replied, in a voice that was slightly distorted. Or perhaps Reichert’s comparatively crude biological ears were simply not used to actually hearing the ship’s AI speak. “A power conduit has overloaded on Deck seven, between Frames thirty eight and thirty nine. There is no danger to ship capabilities, readiness or personnel, therefore I did not activate an alarm.”

“Unacceptable,” Reichert spat, enraged that he had to speak to a machine. “Any variation from normal functioning must be reported to-” The deck shook again, harder. And again. “What was that?” His voice rose before his cybernetic systems could override the strong emotion he felt. An uncharacteristic emotion: fear.

“Subsequent power conduit surges,” the Maxohlx AI reported in monotone, a voice more appropriate for a mindless machine. “The problem is under control, it-”

There was a thump against the armored door that was the main access point to the control center. Then, more alarming, a muffled chattering sound.

Reichert did not have to ask the AI, or any of the ship’s crew, about the source of that particular sound. He knew it well.

Small-arms fire.

The blast door trembled.

Perhaps the fire was coming from not-so-small arms.

“Ship!” He roared, but the AI did not respond.

Senior Captain Tozarko had her crew in action before Reichert could shout an order. Weapons were pulled from alcoves around the compartment, and doors slid aside for combat drones to step out, their clawed feet clanking and adhering firmly to the deck. The drones pointed their weapons at the blast door that was now showing a bright orange line along the top, where a cutting torch was burning through the tough material.

“Admiral, you must go,” a crewman said as he grasped the fleet commander roughly and pulled the senior officer toward a hatch on the other side of the compartment. Another member of the crew had set aside her rifle to turn the manual lever of the hatch-

Which would not move. Several of the crew tried that hatch, using their combined strength, then made similar efforts on the two other escape routes. Those hatches also were stuck. A hasty attempt to cut away the lever resulted in dismay: the hatches were somehow being held in place .

There was no way out.

The combat drones stepped forward, five of them forming a wall in the center of the compartment, the crew taking cover behind the machines. Three of the crew, still pulling on their light combat armor, squeezed together to protect the admiral.

“After the bots slaughter the intruders,” Captain Tozarko ordered with quiet confidence, “we will advance and eliminate any remaining opposition.”

The crew huddled behind the drones, hands tightened on rifles, setting selector switches to fully automatic.

The captain quite properly had expressed her confidence in the superb fighting drones, which had their deadly weapons pointed at the only access door.

Behind the combat machines, each of the crew had the same thought.

To get to that blast door, the intruders must have encountered many combat drones already.

Those drones had not stopped the enemy.

“Kill the torch,” Smythe ordered, as the last section of plasma cord was secured in place. The soldier, actually a United States Marine, who was operating the torch flicked the tool off and slid it back in its holster. Slowly and laboriously cutting away the blast door had been for show, to make the Maxohlx beyond the door think they had plenty of time to prepare a defense.

They did not, in fact, have any more time.

“Set suits for thermal overload protection,” Smythe ordered without needing to, his team was prepared. And if any of them were not prepared, the computer of his suit would ensure that the suits of everyone in the squad got the message and complied. Really, the suits didn’t need human intervention to enable thermal protection, but Skippy knew that monkeys got upset if they didn’t feel in control of their equipment. Smythe could also see the condition and status of every system of everyone’s armored suit, and if necessary, take direct control of another suit and its associated weapons.

That remote control feature was not new, not exclusive to the new Mark Ten Delta mech suit that STAR Team Alpha had been training with for over a month. What was new, completely new, was almost everything else about the primary asset of the Special Tactics Assault Regiment. No longer based on Kristang powered armor, the Mark Ten was an adaptation of Maxohlx technology. A significant upgrade over anything the Maxohlx had in their inventory. Smythe wished his team had more time, six months at least, to learn how to best deploy the new and vastly improved capabilities of the suits. There were still minor issues with the suits, areas where Skippy could tweak the functioning to work better with the squishy humans inside. But for a relatively simple smash-and-grab mission, the boarding of the Maxohlx flagship, the Ten Deltas were perfectly fine.

Relatively simple.

Not that long ago, the thought of coming anywhere near a Maxohlx warship would have made even Jeremy Smythe’s knees tremble. Since the Merry Band of Pirates had apparently moved up to dealing with Elder bloody Sentinels, the Maxohlx had decidedly moved down a peg to the ‘pesky annoyance’ level of threat.

He was not anxious about accomplishing the mission. He was anxious to get the mission over with, so his team could move on to something more important.

“Skippy? Are we ready?”

“Affirmative,” the beer can replied in Smythe’s earpiece with admirable brevity.

“Trigger plasma cord on my mark,” Smythe said quietly, not needing to raise his voice over the squad channel. “Mark.”

Reflexively, he squinted against the searing bright light and heat, as the plasma ate into the blast door. He didn’t need to squint at all, the visor of his new helmet fully protected his eyes while providing an extremely clear enhanced synthetic image of the event. The blast door had defense mechanisms to break up and disperse the plasma, the ship’s designers having anticipated an enemy would seek to gain access to the ship’s control center. Unfortunately, none of those multiple layers of safeguards were activated, and the plasma quickly burned an oval hole from one side to the other of the half-meter thick door. The instant the new door-within-a-door came free, an explosive charge kicked it inward to slump forward, coming to rest on the deck of the control center compartment with a shattering clang.

Neither side took time to contemplate the shocking event. The members of ST-Alpha stepped forward in their sleek armor suits, rifles up and pointed forward-

But no rounds spat out toward the enemy.

Nor did the enemy fire back.

The guns of the Maxohlx combat drones slid back into their recesses, and the machines slumped down into their inactive resting postures.

“Fire!” Captain Tozarko roared.

Her crew reacted instantly, pouring small-arms fire into the breach, through which armor-suited figures were advancing, not bothering to engage their individual stealth fields in an environment where so much dust, smoke and debris filled the air that the outlines of their suits would be clearly visible anyway. The intruders seemed to be in no particular hurry. Armor-piercing rounds struck the armor suits and-

Bounced off, their explosive tip penetrators all duds.

It took Tozarko a crucial moment to authorize the use of heavier weapons inside the ship’s hull, inside the control center with its delicate and vital equipment. A simple thought was all that was needed to allow her crew to access the rocket launchers of their rifles. A microsecond later, the computers of all  the rifles independently reached the same conclusion that maximum force was not only appropriate but necessary, and the nanoscale components of the rocket warheads reassembled themselves to provide the greatest penetrating power they could manage. The risk was that any rocket that missed its target, would tear a hole through several compartments beyond the control center.

Since the compartments behind the invaders had likely already been thoroughly wrecked, each of the rifle computers gave the electronic equivalent of a shrug, and rocket motors ignited. The rockets surged forward-

Only to flop impotently out of their barrels, and tumble to the deck with a clatter as they scattered the debris already strewn there. With half-hearted puffs of white smoke, the rocket motors fizzled out. Not just the rocket function of the rifles became unavailable, all the power of the weapons blinked out, turning the sophisticated weapons into nothing but blunt and relatively fragile clubs.

The crew hesitated, their cranial implants retrieving long-unused unarmed combat routines from archives,  ordering glands to pump hormones for aggression into their bloodstreams, preparing them for brutal savagery.

Eight of the human invaders were in the compartment, menacing the crew with their unfamiliar rifles, when three of the combat drones completed their internal resets and lurched into motion. Even with their stand-off weapons unusable, the drones could crush and kill with their massive claws-

Smythe, again adhering to proper procedure, was last to step through the opening that used to be a blast door, being careful to maintain a safe distance from the still-hotly glowing edges. He could have had a perfect view of the engagement from the passageway outside the bridge, that was not the same as being part of the action. His own rifle was held in the low ready position out of habit, he did not actually need to drop the barrel out of the way to see clearly in front of him. The visor of his suit provided an exceptionally clear view from the sensors of the helmet, the scope of the rifle, and sensors of every member of his team.

What he saw displeased him. The entire operation had taken longer and been more complicated than Skippy the Not-So-Reliable had declared with boastful confidence it would be. The beer can’s control of the enemy battleship was not nearly as comprehensive as promised, and Smythe had stopped listening to mumbled excuses after the third set of enemy combat drones came at ST-Alpha and had to be subdued with maximum violence. Each time the STAR operators had to dispatch a combat drone, or take a detour around an automated internal defense mechanism that Skippy didn’t have control of, it took time and allowed the enemy to strengthen their response. The only aspect of the operation that had gone exactly to plan was that all resistance had been local, neither the master AI nor the officers in command of the ship knew there was a problem until ST-Alpha was within fifty meters of the control center.

Now, in spite of the advantage that the combat drones in front of him had their rifles and particle cannon barrels retracted, the alien machines were still a menace, and that made him even more irritated.

“Major Frey, if you would be so kind as to take out the trash?” Smythe said with dry humor, standing back properly as his people did their jobs. Properly, and frustrating to the adrenaline-junkie team leader.

Frey didn’t give a verbal reply and the orders she issued to her squad were on another channel, so Smythe didn’t hear her instructions. He didn’t need to, he could guess what she said, and the actions of the squad spoke for her. As the drones reached out, arms wide and crushing pinchers open, STAR operators moved with blinding speed, seizing the robotic arms, and almost casually tearing them loose from the heavy armored casing of the drones. On their own, the arms writhed, and claws clacked together, seeking targets until the operators used their powerful mechanical-assisted gloves to mangle the detached limbs, and fling the pieces across the compartment.

Undaunted at the loss of their appendages, the drones squatted on their stumpy legs, building up energy to launch themselves at the invaders in a last, likely futile, attempt at defense. Only to freeze with their legs almost fully retracted, waver, and slowly topple forward to crash onto the deck making the junk scattered there bounce.

For a moment, nothing happened other than dust dancing in the air, and the only sound was the whining of detached drone components trying to function any way they could.

A Maxohlx warrior, protected only by light body armor panels, screamed a battle cry and raised her useless rifle over her head, leaping at the nearest operator.

“It’s over! Stop this!” Frey barked through the external speakers of her advanced armored suit, snapping the alien’s rifle in half with one hand and in the same motion, shoving the attacker through the air to crash against a set of consoles.

The warning had absolutely no effect. Savagely, the battleship’s defenders moved with all the speed their genetically-modified and cybernetically-enhanced bodies could manage, which was fast, wielding their inert rifles as clubs. The STAR operators needed no orders to deal with the onslaught, firing stun bolts that caused the defenders to jerk, go rigid, then flail about on the deck with agonizing seizures.

“Bollocks,” Smythe cursed. The cybernetics of the aliens were still trying to get the unconscious bodies moving, he feared the enemy crew would suffer serious needless injuries as they contorted and bashed themselves bloody as they thrashed around uncontrollably. “Again,” he ordered, and another volley of stun bolts struck the defenders.

They ceased moving. An overlay in his visor informed him that three of the aliens were dead, killed by their own implants overstressing their biological hosts.

Only five defenders were still on their feet: the ship’s captain, holding a sidearm that she had to know was of no use, and the STAR team’s target Admiral Reichert, barely seen behind three of the ship’s crew who protected the fleet commander with their bodies. Warily, her eyes never leaving Smythe’s featureless helmet, the captain stepped carefully sideways until she was also standing between the invaders and the admiral.

An artificial voice whispering in one ear informed Smythe that the mission was currently four minutes and thirty seconds behind schedule, and that other Maxohlx warships were screaming for answers from the flagship. While Skippy could control communications to and from the flagship and issue assurances that everything was fine, any ship in the area could see that things aboard the massive battleship were, in fact, not fine. The cover story of a problem with power conduits was not convincing to anyone who knew anything about the internal structure and functioning of that class of battleship, the way the hull shook did not match the hastily-developed cover story. Five of the battleship’s escort vessels were preparing to launch dropships full of combat troops to assist, and while Smythe knew Valkyrie could easily shoot the enemy spacecraft out of the sky, his own dropship was still in stealth and still attached to the hull. That craft would be vulnerable if ordnance and high-speed shrapnel started flying around the area.

“Colonel,” Skippy’s voice sounded uncharacteristically defensive, a sign the Elder AI knew he had screwed up more than a little. “If, um, you could wrap things up over there, that would be great?” His plea ended in something like a nervous squeak.

“Acknowledged, you-” He bit off the rest of his reply. There wasn’t time. “Admiral Reichert,” he said as his helmet faceplate swung up, exposing his face. And exposing his nose to the acrid stench of expended ammunition and burning electrical components. “I knew you were an arsehole, I did not think you were a coward.”

“Step aside,” the military leader of the Maxohlx Hegemony barked as he pushed through the three battleship crew who had been protecting him. Ignoring their warnings, the admiral drew himself to full height, towering more than a head taller than Smythe, and the alien’s claws extended. “The Hegemony is strong. Kill me here,” Reichert threw back his shoulders and glared defiance, “and a host of my people will avenge me.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” Smythe shook his head, then his left arm darted out to clamp an armored glove around the alien’s neck, watching the admiral’s eyes bulge with more surprise than fear. “I’m here to beat the shit out of you.”

CHAPTER THREE

Smythe’s team had retreated back aboard their dropship, and the Panther was moving slowly away. With Skippy locking down all ship-to-ship communications, the Maxohlx fleet was screaming for answers about what the hell was going on aboard the admiral’s battleship. Skippy broadcast the revised cover story about a mutiny, which only made the escort ships more eager to send troops to either suppress or join the uprising, depending on what they found when they got aboard. We warned the escorts that if they launched dropships, those spacecraft would be destroyed. That kept the dropships in place but didn’t stop the protests. Sooner or later, someone was going to test our resolve, and the situation could quickly spiral out of control. Maxohlx ships confused about the supposed mutiny aboard the flagship could split into factions loyal to a particular squadron leader, and start shooting at each other. That might get the spiders nervous enough to shoot at the kitties.

Why did we care?

Because, well, my threat to use a Sentinel to control the situation was another bluff.

Roscoe was immense, Roscoe was powerful. It was also damaged and malfunctioning, and using up its internal reserves of power faster than it could draw power from quantum bubbles or whatever sciency bullshit Skippy tried to explain to me. The point was, so far our pet Elder killing machine had done only two things: make alien warships crash into each other; and make a start on sweeping away the Jupiter Cloud.

Both of those actions looked impressive. They certainly impressed the hostile aliens who had thousands of ships in Earth orbit, because those assholes hadn’t fired a shot in defiance.

Yet.

That could change, if our enemies knew the truth.

Pushing away the cloud was safe, it was a long way from our planet, at about the maximum range of a Sentinel. It required a lot of power, but that power was dispersed over a vast area, so the energy density was low, enough that a person in a spacesuit would only feel a tingle like a low-voltage electric shock. That’s according to Skippy, who of course was not exposing himself to any such effect.

Smashing ships into each other definitely did not involve a low-density use of energy, but that type of energy usage was one of the few things a Sentinel could do in a precise fashion. The ships that were selected to play demolition derby were in the outer shell of the enormous armada around Earth, farthest from the delicate atmosphere and biosphere of our homeworld. If all the enemy ships had been in low orbit, we could not have demonstrated Roscoe’s power in that manner.

Shooting a dropship out of the sky, or even smashing a handful of escort vessels around the flagship, would be like trying to slice a block of cheese with a shotgun. Roscoe might blast a big chunk out of our planet if its aim was not exactly correct, and Skippy did not have a lot of confidence in his pet’s aim.

So, like I said, we were bluffing.

That’s why, the instant that the ST-Alpha’s Panther slipped inside Valkyrie’s energy shields and was safe from random shrapnel flying around, I told Skippy to drop his communications blackout, and signaled the kitties that their escort ships were clear to assist the flagship.

Man, the shit really hit the fan when the kitties and spiders learned the truth about what we had done.

I should have been on Valkyrie’s bridge doing, you know, important captain things. Like trying to calm down the situation, a task I dumped on Simms. Or like writing a list of things I could and could not tell UNEF Command, either via the Skippytel network or in a face-to-face meeting.

Instead, I was at the inner door of a docking bay, waiting for ST-Alpha’s Panther to settle onto the deck, the big outer doors to finish grinding to a close, and the bay to pressurize. It was all frustratingly slow, though really the whole process took no more than thirty two seconds. Yes, anything I wanted to say, I could have said through the Skippytel network. That was not the same as seeing Smythe and talking with him, damn it.

The instant the green light glowed above the door, I slapped the button to slide it open and walked through, wrinkling my nose. Spacecraft that come into a docking bay have a particular, kind of funky smell, especially if they have been through an atmosphere first, like the STAR team’s Panther had on its climb into orbit. Even the toughest type of hull coating gets scorched from hypersonic flight, then the hull alternately bakes and freezes in space as it is exposed to the harsh, unfiltered light of a star. Even dropships that go outside in deep interstellar space, far from the light of any star, acquire a scent from the protective coating on their hulls being exposed to deep, soaking cold. It is a scent I have never gotten used to, but it has become familiar, even comforting. Having lived mostly aboard starships since I left Paradise, that particular aroma is just one of the scents of home, like the cleaning fluid that oddly smells like a combination of Pine-Sol and pineapple.

Anyway, I waited a safe distance from the Panther, knowing it would be dangerous to touch the cold-soaked hull, and wary of being caught in the path of an emergency vent of coolant gas, in case one of the thrusters decided it was overheating. That was just standard procedure, to the point where yellow lines were painted on the deck, showing the safe distance for various types of dropships.

The side door slid back into the hull, and a ramp with steps rolled out from under the Panther’s cabin floor, extending down to the deck with a metallic thump. The first person I saw was Smythe, helmet tucked under one arm. He walked down the steps, which being designed by Maxohlx were slightly farther apart than the human norm, and I noticed even the high-speed special operators glanced down at their feet to avoid an embarrassing fall.

Smythe saluted me. “Permission to come aboard, Sir?”

I returned the salute, and grinned, hoping his grim expression would soften. “Permission granted. That was a jolly good show, Smythe.”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied in a way that subtly hinted he did not think the mission was a good idea at all. He had risked his team to send a message, a message that might have been more effectively delivered by railgun dart.

That’s because he didn’t know everything I did. “How was it?” I asked, grinning and nodding to each of the STARs as they walked down the steps.

He knew I had access to any information I wanted about the operation, so he understood I wanted to know his impression of the results, whether he agreed the results were worth the risk or not. “Did you know there are two hundred and sixteen bones in the Maxohlx skeletal structure?”

“Huh,” I played dumb. “I did not know that. Why?”

“Admiral Reichert has about a hundred broken bones right now,” he said, and a hint of a smile creased his face.

“That is a terrible shame.” Skippy had informed me that Smythe’s estimate was an exaggeration, though he had given a serious beat-down to the admiral. Reichert would live, his advanced genetics and nanotech implants allowed him to survive severe injuries. He would be in a coma for a while and no threat to us, that’s what I cared about.

“Next time, Sir, could the message be delivered in the form of a Hallmark card?”

“No,” I laughed, though to Smythe, it clearly was not something he found amusing. “I’ll explain later, uh,” I tilted my head toward the airlock door.

He understood. “Just a moment, Sir. Major Frey?”

The Canadian special operator had her helmet cradled under one arm, and was holding a white cardboard box in the other hand. “They’re not Tim Hortons, eh?” She shrugged.

I gasped. The STARs had brought a dozen donuts. Regular, good honest donuts, not weird jalapeno cheddar strawberry-basil cream filled hipster nonsense. They looked like Dunks to me, that is Dunkin Donuts for the non-New Englanders out there. Before reaching out to take a glazed donut, I glanced over my shoulder, fearing Simms would be watching. She wasn’t. I took a bite. “Ohhh, so good.”

“We heard Valkyrie is running low on fresh food,” Smythe did have a twinkle in his eyes. “Since we were coming up here, the lads thought we should bring a treat for you.”

“I’m not a lad, eh?” Frey objected.

“Frey,” I asked, “do Canadians always say ‘eh’, or are you screwing with me?”

“Not that you know of, eh?” She winked.

“OK,” I took another bite of delicious donut. “It’s good to have the STAR team back aboard. Uh,” I looked over her shoulder to Grudzien, who was carrying a cardboard box that was oozing a sticky white substance from the top. “What is that?”

“Oh,” Frey actually blushed. “We tried to bring you a box of Fluff, but when we opened the hatch to board the battleship, the pressure differential in the dropship’s cabin, well,” she shook her head. “The jars kind of exploded.”

“Let that be our science lesson for the day, then.” The situation was funny, but I wasn’t laughing. The three jars of Fluff I kept in my office desk would have to be enough to sustain me during our next mission. “Smythe? Walk with me.”

Out in the passageway, I turned left, then right along a short, dead-end maintenance access corridor. Checking over Smythe’s shoulder that no one was within earshot, I lowered my voice. “Sorry about the short notice, the op was necessary, the message did have to be delivered up close and personal. It’s complicated. We have a major, major problem to deal with.”

He stared at me. “More major than Sentinel hooligans smashing up the galaxy?”

“Yeah. Skippy thinks, he is fairly certain based on the evidence, that there is another Elder AI awake out there, stirring up trouble.”

“Bollocks. Another bloody beer can?”

“Hey!” Skippy’s voice came from the zPhone in my pocket.

“Not now, Skippy,” I slapped the phone, which of course didn’t do anything to Skippy.

“What kind of trouble?” Smythe asked.

“The other AI might have been working against us for a while, maybe since the beginning.”

The color drained from Smythe’s face. “Bloody hell.”

“The latest action of this AI was to activate the Sentinels. Skippy detected a signal, that was transmitted through the wormhole network. A wake-up signal.”

“Can this hostile AI control Sentinels, like,” he pointed to the ceiling, a universal gesture aboard ship meaning ‘outside’, “the one here?”

“No. We don’t think so. This one we brought here is, uh, a special case. It isn’t really-”

“General Bishop?” The communications officer called from the bridge. “The Rindhalu are demanding an explanation for why we raided the Maxohlx flagship. Simms is requesting your presence here ASAP, Sir.”

“Crap. OK, on my way. Smythe, you’re with me.”

Simms looked away from the display, which showed the angry faces of a spider and a kitty, and rolled her eyes at me. “General Bishop,” she announced loudly. “Both the spiders and kitties wish to speak with you.” As I stood beside her, she added in a whisper, “So does UNEF Command.”

“Yeah, well, somebody’s gonna be disappointed, and it’s not me.”

She gave me The Look.

“OK,” I told her quietly. “Signal Command that I will contact them when we can establish a secure channel for communications. They will know what I mean.”

“Yes, Sir,” she turned to tap out a message on her tablet.

Turning to face the display, I waved at the Maxohlx. “Hey, how you doin’, huh? I’m General Joe Bishop of-”

“I am Senior Captain Tozarko of the Maxohlx Hegemony battleship Telastria, the ship you attacked without-”

“Hey, Mrs. Tony the Tiger,” I interrupted the angry kitty. “I saw your husband on my cereal box this morning. Does he get royalties for that?” While Maxolhx translation AIs are good, I didn’t expect the kitty to understand my joke. That’s OK, because the intended audience of my remarks was my own crew. They got the message: their commander is cool and confident, and they should be too. The only message I needed the kitties to hear was simple: we are not afraid of you.

I’m pretty sure the kitties got that message.

“Bishop!” The spider scowled at me, she was very obviously among the Not Amused section of the audience. “Explain your rash and foolish action! There is no possible reason, no rational purpose, for assaulting the Maxohlx commander.”

“A criminal act!” Tozarko of the Maxohlx shouted. She was speaking from the battle-scarred control center of the flagship, with smoke still curling up from broken equipment. There were many other compartments she could have used for contacting me, I assumed she chose the control center for dramatic effect. “You directly violated the ceasefire agreement, with-”

“There is no agreement for a general ceasefire,” I set the record straight. “All I said was, neither of you can shoot at us, or our pet Sentinel will tear your fleets apart. I never said we weren’t free to shoot.”

To her credit, Tozarko didn’t even blink at my jackassery. “Your action is still a criminal-”

“We did it,” I cut her off in mid-rant, “because you shitheads caused this mess. Reichert was personally responsible.”

“Lies!” Tozarko snarled, fairly spitting at the camera. “Do not try to distract us with-”

The dry, raspy voice of the spider interrupted. “What do you mean, Bishop?”

“I mean, we now know the damned Maxohlx are responsible for waking up the Sentinels.”

“You did it!” the Maxohlx roared, though it came through the translator as more of a screech than thunder. “You reckless, foolish humans toying with Elder wormhole networks caused Sentinels to awaken, to prevent you from causing more damage.”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too,” I admitted.

“Humans cannot be trusted to- Wait, what?” Tozarko blinked.

“We assumed it was our fault. At least, I sure did. It couldn’t be a coincidence, right? A Sentinel appears, in the same area where we crashed a wormhole network. We screwed up, we were reckless like you said, and we would be responsible for killing everyone.”

“So,” Senior Captain Tozarko glared. “You admit-”

“Then we found the signal. Your signal, the one you sent.”

“Explain, human,” the spider ordered, as if she could still give orders.

“We all know the Maxohlx had a plan to wake up Sentinels across the galaxy, by setting off Elder weapons, after a small group of them escaped in arkships. You,” I pointed at the Rindhalu, “ruined their plan.”

“We did what was necessary,” the spider wheezed. “The Maxohlx are still young, and may always be destined to lack the maturity to make rational decisions.”

“You got that right,” I agreed, while Tozarko sputtered in soundless outrage, since Skippy was filtering all the communications. That asshole kitty could shout all she wanted, no one other than the people aboard her ship could hear her. “What you don’t know, and we only recently discovered, is that our actions are not responsible for waking up the Sentinels. Not directly responsible,” I admitted. “Crashing wormhole networks did create the conditions under which the idiot Maxohlx did, what they did. We learned that after you, the Rindhalu, destroyed their doomsday fleet, Admiral Reichert didn’t give up. Their Red Section had been experimenting for years to understand why Sentinels woke up the last time, when the two of you had your war.”

“When the treacherous and stupid Maxohlx attacked us,” the spider insisted.

“Yeah, I really don’t give a shit which of you shot first,” I made a knife hand gesture to cut off that argument. The Rindhalu were normally not so animated when they spoke, that one was really worked up about something. Maybe the threat of our pet Sentinel wiping out all of their ships had them scared. Good. It was their turn to be terrified of the future. “The point is, the Maxohlx weren’t focused on why the Sentinels woke up, they wanted to know how. What is the mechanism for activating them, and designating them to attack a particular target? You understand? Red Section was trying to develop a technique for selectively waking up Sentinels, and pointing them at the enemy. At your people,” I said to the spider, “since they didn’t know about humans until recently.”

I am not an expert at reading Rindhalu body language, so I probably missed any subtle clues. The abrupt jerk of the spider’s head was very clear. “You have evidence of this?”

“Yes. Skippy can walk you through it, if needed. Uh, I do have to say some of the evidence is circumstantial, but there are only two entities with the technology required to send the signal, and if your people weren’t involved, then-”

“We were not,” the spider declared. “We would never be so shortsighted. Our plans for the future do not require the destruction of our enemies. We merely seek security, for ourselves and our allies.”

Yeah, bullshit, I thought to myself as the spider took the opportunity to give a speech, expecting the conversation would later be viewed throughout the galaxy. The Rindhalu did care about their own security, that was true. It was also true they would use their clients, even sacrifice them, for their own security. The spiders rarely got off their lazy asses to directly assist a client.

I could have said that the Rindhalu had come to Earth to destroy my homeworld, or at least gave their assent to the Maxohlx to do the job for them.

I didn’t say that, because we already had enough enemies. The Rindhalu might actually have left us alone, if they hadn’t seen the reckless actions of our immature species as a threat. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, mostly because I just didn’t have time to deal with another damned problem.

“During their research,” I continued, “Red Section determined that the wormhole network is the transport mechanism for the signal that activates Sentinels. We don’t yet know how they discovered that bit of information, but Skippy confirmed that is accurate. Fortunately for the galaxy, the Maxohlx were never able to properly test their technique. Until we crashed a wormhole network, and the reset process left the network’s communication channel wide open. I am sorry about that,” I looked away from the camera for a moment, taking a breath. “We didn’t know.” Screwing up my face into a scowl, I stared into the virtual camera lens. “The Maxohlx did know, what they did was deliberate. Their intention was to wake up a Sentinel, they hoped it would attack targets in Rindhalu space. They did something mind-bogglingly stupid, because their sick culture can’t give up the lie that they are special. Fuck. Them.” I looked at the soundlessly sputtering image of the Maxohlx senior captain. “We will be releasing the information, about Red Section’s reckless action, to the entire galaxy. I also have a message to the Maxohlx: do not try that shit again. We have sealed the communications channel you used. Also, if you are thinking of doing some assholeish thing, to provoke us into crashing another wormhole network, I have news for you. We now understand how to block that channel while the network is resetting. Not only do we know how to put Sentinels back into hibernation, we can decide which ones do not go back to sleep. In case you are even more stupid than you look, I’ll break it down Barney style for you: fuck around and find out. The next time a group of Elder killing machines go roving around the galaxy, we just might let the ones in Maxohlx territory have fun for a while. Think about that, assholes.”

By that time, Tozarko had stopped shouting threats, and was silently shooting daggers of hatred at me with her eyes.

Or, she was trying to do that, but the tiny muscles around her eyes betrayed her. Again, I’m not an expert on alien body language. I didn’t have to be. The translation software, enhanced by Skippy, exaggerated her micro expressions to make them more evident. Plus, a handy dandy key on the bottom of the video display indicated a seventy eight percent probability the subject was displaying fear and uncertainty.

I felt like responding to the translation software with ‘Ya think’?

For a Maxohlx to show an undesired emotion like fear, she had to be terrified. Part of me thought the asshole deserved to live her life in terror. Another part of me, the professional soldier, kind of felt empathy for her. She had come to Earth as part of a mighty, unstoppable battle fleet, ready to eliminate a threat, or at least to punish those she thought were responsible for unleashing ancient unstoppable killing machines on the galaxy. Instead of gleefully watching her ships bombard humanity’s homeworld into dust, she witnessed the horror of a Sentinel, under the control of humans, immobilize her fleet. Then, suddenly, leadership of the Maxohlx fleet in-system was forced upon her, when we took vengeance on her asshole boss. And finally, I presented her with knowledge that her own people were responsible for the whole mess, that could have wiped out all life in the galaxy.

Part of me knew exactly how she felt.

“Bishop?” The spider brought me back to the present.

“Uh, yeah. Skippy will transmit that evidence I talked about. Take a look at it, and we’ll talk later.” Drawing a thumb across my throat, I signaled the communications officer to cut off the camera.

The bridge crew were all looking at me, stunned. Especially my STAR team commander, who looked thoroughly confused. “Simms, you have the conn. Smythe, let’s uh, go to my office.”

“Sir?” Smythe arched one eyebrow, standing stiffly on the other side of my desk. Because he was still wearing powered armor, he couldn’t sit down as the weight would break the chair.

“Smythe?” I plastered my best innocent look onto my face.

He saw right through my terrible acting. “Before we went to the bridge, you told me Skippy suspects another Elder AI activated the Sentinels, so when did you realize it was actually the bloody kitties who sent the signal that woke up the Sentinels?”

Pressing the button to slide my office door closed, I waited until the light above the door lit up, indicating not only was the door sealed, but also the noise-cancelling feature of the door was active. “I didn’t realize that, like, never.”

He blinked, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Then why-”

“It’s bullshit,” I shrugged. “I made it up.”

“You-” He didn’t finish his statement, whatever he was going to say. It didn’t matter, the expression on his face clearly said ‘You have got to be kidding me’, or whatever is the British equivalent of that expression. “Another lie, Sir?”

Damn, he looked so disappointed in me. “Not a lie. A bit of strategic disinformation.”

“A lie,” he insisted. The STAR team leader very much preferred a stand-up fight to sneaking around doing clandestine shit, even back in the bad old days, when his people were exceptional at doing clandestine shit.

“That is such an ugly word,” I forced a grin.

He didn’t smile back. But, he nodded, acknowledging that in the military, your chain of command doesn’t always keep you in the loop. “UNEF Command knows about this?”

“No,” I snorted. “Anything I tell them, I might as well include it in a freakin’ memo to the bad guys. Skippy, Simms and I know about it, and now you. I’ll brief Chang about it, when he can come aboard the ship. No one else can know.”

He sighed, a world-weary gesture. No, not weary of the world, just of me and my bullshit. “More secrets?” He said as a statement, not a question.

“Hey, when four people know about something, it’s not really a secret anymore,” I held up my hands, “you know?”

He just stared at me. Not a glare, he was more in shock than angry.

“Talk to me, Smythe,” I urged.

“Simms approves?”

“Hell yes. We developed this, uh, deception scheme together. I thought of it when we first heard about an active Sentinel. Back then, we figured waking up the damned thing was our fault, and I knew everyone else would assume the same thing, right? Even if it was true, we could benefit from blaming someone else, take some of the pressure off us, you know? We, Simms and I, knew we couldn’t be free to handle the Sentinels if we also had to worry about another attack against Earth. So, we put the plan in motion, but Skippy wasn’t able to put all the pieces together until now, because we now have access to the ships the kitties brought here. By the time we, I mean you, were able to plant the evidence we need the Maxohlx to find, the overall plan got a lot more ambitious.” What I did not say was that Simms didn’t like having to lie again to Command, especially such a huge whopper of a lie. Her concern was that eventually, the truth would be revealed and we would lose all credibility.

I figured we could burn that bridge when we got to it.

“Sir, can I assume there is a purpose to this,” he cleared his throat, “campaign of ‘strategic disinformation’?”

“There is. It is even part of a long-term plan, not just reacting to events.”

“That, would be a refreshing change.”

“That hurts, Smythe.”

“I was referring to the entire Merry Band of Pirates. Including myself,” he added.

“No. I’m in command. If bad stuff happens, it’s my fault. I’m trying to create conditions that make our next mission easier. Clear the decks for us to act, with minimal interference.”

“How does lying about the signal help?”

“Lying isn’t the point. Framing our enemies for it is. It puts the kitties on the defensive. The entire galaxy will hear that the arrogant Maxohlx again almost wiped out everyone else, and this time because they were recklessly stupid. They will be lucky to have any allies left, after this news gets out. Whatever species they hang onto, they’ll need to use force to keep them in the coalition. That means they will have fewer, or no, assets left to make trouble for us. Also, I’m hoping to create turmoil within their society. Their civilian leadership for sure knows nothing about any effort to selectively wake up Sentinels, they will wonder what the hell other unauthorized shit their military was doing. Their military brass also knows they weren’t involved, but none of them would be surprised that Reichert was doing sneaky shit behind their backs. And nobody will believe Red Section wasn’t up to their necks in the project. Skippy will plant plenty of evidence that leads to Red Section by a roundabout route. Not straight to them, that would look suspicious, they would never be that sloppy,” I added.

“In that case, Sir, I should have snapped Reichert’s neck.”

“Why?”

“He knows your story is bullshit. No matter what evidence Skippy planted-”

“Um, I’m still in the process of doing that, you know,” the beer can interjected, his voice coming from my laptop speakers.

“Thank you, Skippy,” I snapped at him. “That was super helpful, as always.”

“I’m just-”

“Please shut up. Smythe, we very much did not want to kill Reichert. We need him to help us sell my bullshit story.”

He blinked, confused. “Why would he be willing to help-”

“He won’t. By the time he wakes up, it will be too late for him to say anything.”

“I would appreciate an explanation for this one, Sir.”

“OK.” The fact was, I didn’t owe him an explanation. In the chain of command, I give orders, and his duty is to carry out my orders to the best of his ability. In the past, my lack of confidence would have made me paralyzed by indecision, until I could get approval from older, more experienced officers I respected, like Smythe. In this case, I hadn’t been able to explain the real mission to him, because his STAR team was down at the NATO airbase in Aviano Italy, and the need to communications security had limited me to telling him only the basic of what he needed to accomplish.

There is also the fact that I had matured, grown comfortable with the burden of command. In the op, I had used him to accomplish an objective. That was a fact, that’s what happens in the military. We are all cogs in a big machine.

That doesn’t mean I have to be a jackass about it. If I could give my senior people an explanation, I should. That’s good for unit cohesion and morale overall, and damn it, it is just the right thing to do. “Smythe, I know you didn’t approve of being sent to give a beat-down to Reichert, and I appreciate you did the job to the best of your ability. What you don’t know, because I didn’t tell you until now, is eliminating Reichert was Simms’s idea, not mine. He has been a major threat, and a major pain in our asses, so she wanted to take him out, permanently.”

That made him blink in surprise. “That is rather bloodthirsty for our executive officer.”

“Hey, everyone has a limit of the bullshit they can tolerate. Simms reached hers when we learned that Reichert developed their Doomsday plan. So, fuck him. I’d like that asshole to be rotting in hell, but, not while he can still be useful to us.”

“That I understood, Sir. Killing Reichert would make him a martyr. Beating him into a coma, aboard the bridge of his own flagship, humiliates him. He looks weak, pathetic, no one in their society would want to associate with him.”

“Yeah, true. That’s what made giving him a beat-down the perfect cover story.”

He blinked again. I made him blink twice in one conversation, that had to be a new record. “A cover story, Sir?”

Back while Chang and UNEF Command very reasonably waited for me to explain why a freakin’ Sentinel was wagging its tentacles near Earth like an over-excited puppy, Simms had told me it was time for us to deal directly with the problem of our good buddy, Admiral Reichert. I agreed with her that Reichert was a supremely murderous asshole, even by the standards of his asshole culture. That by itself would not justify me approving the assassination of an alien leader, because once we start down that road, it is a slippery slope. Or whatever metaphor you want to use. The kitties could retaliate against us and our allies, by assassinating key leaders, and throwing our societies into chaos. Also, the treaty we were still trying to negotiate with the two senior species specifically banned targeted killings of military leaders, except for certain sniper actions on the battlefield.

The treaty did not, however, say anything about beating the shit out of military leaders, and that loophole was big enough for a STAR team to march through. Still, the boarding action was bound to provoke a protest, and retaliation, from the kitties. Unless I somehow made the Maxohlx leadership decide that Reichert was not worth fighting about, because he was in disgrace.

“When you were showing Reichert the error of his ways,” I told Smythe, “you weren’t just delivering a highly kinetic version of tough love. You also injected the admiral with nanobots.”

“What? Sir.” That time, the STAR team leader added the ‘Sir’ as an afterthought.

“They were injected through your gloves. We couldn’t tell you ahead of time, in case the op went sideways and you were captured,” I held up my hands as an ‘I am sorry’ gesture.

Smythe grunted. He didn’t like it, but he understood. “I didn’t notice any loss from my suit’s nanotech fluid reserve,” he said.

“Yeah, sorry. Skippy concealed that, in case the kitties could somehow monitor your suit’s internal sensors. As your team probably noticed, Skippy’s control over that ship was less than perfect.”

“That dodgy beer can has a lot to answer for,” Smythe agreed.

“Hey!” That time, his avatar appeared. “You try hacking into every freakin’ system, aboard a battleship that has been specifically hardened to resist my presence. Plus, having Roscoe here disrupts the transdimensional link I use to-”

“Yes, Skippy,” I waved a hand, “it was extremely difficult, and you managed to do it anyway through your extreme awesomeness.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “Well, sometimes I have to remind you filthy monkeys about just how awesome I am, or-”

“Yes, blah blah, monkeys don’t deserve you,” I was growing irritated at him. “By the way, Skippy, how are those nanobots working?”

“Ugh. It’s me, Joe.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“You are such a- Oh, it’s not even worth my time to think of a proper insult. It’s going just fine, knucklehead. Inception is complete, the nanobots are now erasing their tracks, and will erase themselves in the next few-”

“Inception?” Smythe asked.

I nodded. “You saw the movie?”

“I, think so?” Smythe was thoroughly confused. “Something about dreams?”

“Not dreams, exactly,” I said. “The nanobots planted false memories in Reichert’s cranial implants, memories of his participation in the effort to selectively wake up Sentinels. That false evidence will point to the conspirators in Red Section, and make it clear Reichert kept the information from his superiors because he was planning a coup against the civilian government, after he consolidated his power by demonstrating the ability to control a Sentinel. The political officer aboard the flagship will probe Reichert’s memories, which of course will suspiciously be encrypted-”

“But not encrypted very well,” Skippy chuckled.

“Right. Once those memories are extracted, it will disgrace Reichert, his allies in the leadership of their fleet, and Red Section. I’m hoping the resulting chaos will keep the freakin’ kitties too busy to cause trouble for us for a while. So, that’s why we need Reichert alive, and why I approved taking the risk of a boarding action.”

He didn’t say anything right away.

“Smythe? What do you think?”

Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, he looked down, then at me. “That, is a very ambitious plan, Sir.”

“Out here, it’s go big or go home,” I said with a shrug.

“I appreciate that you are thinking long-term about this, about the overall situation.”

“And?”

“It’s a clever plan.”

“See?” I grinned. “Sometimes, you have to-”

“Maybe too clever.”

“Uh-”

“Sir, we know the kitties are completely, frighteningly, bloody psychotic,” he said. “They already think everyone else is against them. Now, their leadership will fear internal enemies, and they know the entire galaxy will see them as foolish and weak.”

“That’s the idea, yeah. You’re concerned this will push them over the edge?”

He stared at me. “You are not?”

“No more than usual.” I tried to say it with confidence, but he had got me worried. Damn it, had I once again done something stupid, without considering all the consequences?

“If we push them too hard, they could use their Elder weapons against Earth. Could our pet Sentinel prevent that from happening?”

“Crap,” I winced. “I don’t know. Skippy?”

“I heard ya,” our AI sighed. “The answer is, shmaybe? It depends what type of weapon is used, and when and where it is deployed. Roscoe would need a heads up to prevent the weapon from firing. Unless it is activated beyond his range, in that case, eh, again it depends on the type of weapon. It might be possible to mitigate the effect. Wow, I wouldn’t count on it. Sentinels were not designed to protect planets, or to protect anything.”

“OK, I get it,” I waved my hands in the air. “Smythe, listen, I hear what you’re saying, and I’m not ignoring the risk. But, there was always a risk the kitties would use Elder weapons against Earth. The plan I’ve got should make that risk less likely. They don’t know Roscoe can’t stop them from deploying their weapons here.”

“Unless,” he said, “they think they can use Elder weapons to destroy the Sentinel.”

“Oh, shiiiiit,” I groaned about another thing I had failed to consider. “Skippy?”

“Damn it, when are you monkeys going to stop making my life more complicated?” He demanded, hands on his little hips. “There are types of Elder weapons that could damage or destroy a Sentinel. That’s how Roscoe got damaged, it was in a fight with another Sentinel. The details are kind of fuzzy, its memory got scrambled, you know?”

“OK, OK,” my pride in clever thinking was melting away. “If the freakin’ Maxohlx are determined to commit suicide, we can’t stop them. Also, we need to get the Rindhalu, and the kitties, looking in the wrong direction. Skippy thinks that signal he detected in the wormhole network could have been noticed by the senior species, their sensors are good enough to discern it from the background noise. If we don’t give them an explanation of where that signal came from, they could start investigating on their own, and find answers we want to keep hidden.”

“Even if the explanation we give them is complete bollocks?”

“Especially if it’s total bullshit,” I grinned. “They will be looking for something that’s not there, and wasting a lot of time and effort that could otherwise be used to make trouble for us. Both of them will investigate, because of course they each want the ability to wake up a Sentinel in enemy territory. The last thing we want is either of our major opponents poking around with an open mind, and discovering that an Elder AI is the source of the signal.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “I understand your reasoning, Sir. What concerns me is that whenever we fight the law, the law wins.”

“The law?”

“The Law of Unintended Consequences.”

“Crap. I hate that freakin’ law. Listen, the purpose of the cover story is to keep the Maxohlx from getting in our way, while we deal with the real problem of a hostile Elder AI out there. Clear the decks, you know? Let me tell you what I have planned, the whole thing, and you let me know whether you think I’m just making the situation worse, deal?”

“I’m all ears, Sir.” he told me, resting his armored back against the bulkhead.

“Good. Framing the rotten kitties for waking up the Sentinels, because they are greedy and stupid, is just the first step. Step Two is-”

CHAPTER FOUR

UNEF Command instructed me to stand by for further instructions. That was understandable, if annoying to Valkyrie’s crew. The staff at Command was processing the very high-level summary I sent to them, trying to figure out what it meant that Earth was now under the protection of a Sentinel, a machine so big that its tentacles could be seen from Earth with a backyard telescope. And what to do about the hostile alien armada that was still in orbit.

That second part was most important. Having thousands of powerful senior species warships hanging around our homeworld was not healthy, for us or for them. If a single hot-headed jackass decided to do some jackass thing, there could be a whole lot of ordnance flying around. Maybe Roscoe could handle it, and maybe it couldn’t. Those ships could not stay in our solar system forever, we also couldn’t just let them go with a slap on the wrist. How exactly to deal with the enemy armada was a question of policy way above my paygrade, and I was happy to pass the responsibility for that decision up my chain of command. I wasn’t being lazy about it; I mostly didn’t care what UNEF Command decided to do, as long as they made a decision soon. The enemy armada was a distraction, and the presence of those ships tied down the Merry Band of Pirates, when we needed to be out dealing with a troublesome Elder AI before it killed us all.

Which I couldn’t tell Command about, so they didn’t know there was a clock ticking in the back of my mind.

It was frustrating. Sitting on Valkyrie’s bridge, with nothing much to do, did not improve my mood. Simms felt the same way, I could tell she was anxious to get going, by the way she was fidgeting with her hands on her tablet. When she is anxious, her left index finger taps on the back of the tablet. At that moment, it was going tap, tap, tap.

Not everyone was anxious and bored. Skippy apparently was using the downtime productively. Unfortunately.

He started speaking even as his avatar was shimmering to life on the bridge. “Joe, I, I can’t believe I am saying this, but I’m going to make you happy.”

“Uh, you’re going to tell me the density of the Jupiter Cloud has fallen below the critical level, and we don’t have to worry about a Mini Ice Age?”

“Oh, well, that too, I guess. Joe, I’m talking something more important than a stupid cloud, something that affects me.”

“Of course you are. What is this much more important thing?”

“The fact that you are popular again.”

“Huh?”

“Ugh. People have a favorable opinion of you again. By ‘people’, I mean the population of monkeys who infest your miserable homeworld. Polls show that your popularity was at an all-time low, back when the public thought your reckless jackassery had woken up ancient machines that could kill everyone, then-”

“Hey! You little shithead, I didn’t crash those wormhole networks by myself.”

“Oh, sure, blame me, Joe. According to the polls, failing to take responsibility for your mistakes is your second worst characteristic, right behind failing to consider the consequences before you do some recklessly stupid thing. Your third-worst-”

“This is you making me happy?”

“Like I said, you are popular again. For now. Like, right now. Better enjoy it while you can, before the next idiotic thing you do makes you unpopular again and-”

“This is not making me happy, you ass.”

“That’s because you haven’t heard the important part yet. Your, let’s face it, probably very temporary popularity, has allowed me to unload almost a hundred thousand units of Joe Bishop inaction figures that were taking up space in a warehouse. Man, I was ready to recycle the damned things, but now they are selling like-”

“Wait,” I gave him the knife hand. “A what kind of figure?”

“Ugh. OK, listen, you and I know it is really a doll, but the target market includes boys who don’t like the notion of playing with dolls, even though it is the same freakin’ thing, but-”

“I know what an action figure is, Skippy. Why did you call mine an inaction-”

“Seriously, Joe?” he snorted. “You think of yourself as an action hero?”

“Well, I-” Everyone on the bridge was looking at me, most with amusement. “I do a lot of stuff, Skippy.”

“Oh please. You used to do a lot of action-y things. Now you just sit around, dream up ideas, and order other people to do stuff. Jeez, Joe, you could do your entire job while sitting on the toilet.”

“Hey! That is not-” It didn’t help that beside me, Simms made a choking, snorting sound and covered her mouth with a hand.

“I mean,” he continued, “most people think up ideas when they’re in the shower, but we know you are way too busy doing other things when you’re in there, so-”

“Skippy! Don’t-”

“I thought when you finally got a girlfriend you would slow down the-”

“Please shut up!”

“I’m just sayin’-”

“You have said quite enough.”

“Hey, I’m worried about you abusing-”

“Oh God, this can’t be happening,” I buried my face in my hands. “Why, why did you invest in a bunch of action figures, if you knew I was not popular?”

“You weren’t particularly hated at the time, this was back when we announced we had control of Elder weapons. Unfortunately, those happy times didn’t last, due to your typically incompetent mismanagement of-”

“Your confidence in me is a constant source of inspiration, Skippy.”

“It’s not my lack of confidence in you that is the problem. All the other action figures sold out quickly, I had to-”

“What other figures?”

“The other Merry Band of Pirates.”

“They all have action figures?”

“Not everyone, Joe. Smythe’s figure is very popular, and Adams, and Frey, and Grudzien, and Reed. Also, Simms, the public sees her as smart and decisive. The STAR team operators are the most popular, along with pilots, of course. Also, the Mavericks of course, people love them. All those figures have sold a lot of accessories for me, like mech suits, rifles, even model dropships. Cool stuff like that, you know?”

Mumbling, I begged him, “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Fine. Like what? Hey! Would you like to see the accessories I am selling for your inaction figure? There’s the tablet you play games on, or the laptop you use to write memos, and your office chair, and the coffee mug you-”

“A freakin’ chair?”

“Yes, why? I should mention that your inaction figure’s uniform comes equipped with tabs noting that you are a Chairborne Ranger,” he chuckled.

“I am a fully-qualified Panther pilot, Skippy,” I protested. “Why doesn’t my action figure have a flight suit, something like that?”

“You are not fully-qualified because your flight rating isn’t current, numbskull, you haven’t logged enough stick time recently.”

“I’ve been kind of busy, you know?”

“All I know is your flight status has been revoked.”

“XO,” I turned to Simms, who was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “I want to look at the duty schedule, work in flight simulator time for me, as a top priority.”

“Yes, Sir. More of a priority than the people who are actually assigned to pilot duty?”

“Well, no, that-”

“More of a priority than finding a hostile Elder AI?”

“No, that is- Look, all I’m saying is I spent a lot of time qualifying to-”

“We’ll work it into the schedule somehow, Sir,” she assured me. “Skippy?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “Do you have any of those Joe Bishop, um, action figures left?”

“Sadly, no. They were a limited edition set.”

“Limited?” I snorted. “You had a hundred thousand of them.”

“Yes, that was the limit to how many I thought I could sell, duh. If you like, I can get the ship’s fabricators to crank out enough for Valkyrie’s crew and-”

“I would not like. That is a terrible-”

“Thank you, Skippy,” my traitorous executive officer interrupted me. “That would be an excellent way to boost morale. Don’t you agree, Sir?”

“Shit.” Looking around the bridge, I asked, “Does anyone really want useless crap like that?”

“I would,” Mammay surprised me. “Sir,” he added, “it would be a unique memento of our service with the Merry Band of Pirates.”

Crap. He was right. I hadn’t thought of that. Everyone who served aboard Valkyrie or the Flying Dutchman was at least an honorary Pirate. But people who hadn’t been with us since the beginning, including relative newcomers like Mammay, sometimes felt like they weren’t really accepted as Pirates. Maybe a memento, even something totally stupid like a silly doll, would be good for morale.

“OK, fine, but I get to see a sample of these stupid things first, got it?”

Later, I was in my office, doing very action-oriented things like, uh, like signing reports.

Hey, it’s important.

A bot rolled into my office, holding a box. It stopped next to my chair.

“Uh, hi,” I said to the bot. “I didn’t order coffee, so-”

“No, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar appeared. “The bot has the sample you requested.”

“What sample- Oh. The doll.” With more excitement than I wanted to show, I lifted the box, set it on my desk, and opened the lid. “You- You ass!”

“You don’t like it?”

Holding the plastic figure up to his avatar, as if that was the only way he could see it, I shook it at him. “It looks brain- I mean, messed up. What is wrong with its face?”

“Hmm. First, you were going to say ‘brain damaged’, and that is an offensive term, Joe, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I did not say that.”

“The proper term is ‘Intellectual Disability’.”

“I do not have a disability!”

“Really? When you were little, didn’t you set out traps in your parents’ yard during the winter, to catch snow crabs?”

“That was not-”

“You used to think a ‘microbiologist’ was a really short doctor.”

“That is not-”

“You once wrote on a history exam that the Great Depression was when the national WiFi network was down.”

“I was just a kid then!”

“Uh huh. So, you think you have gotten smarter since then? Interesting, interesting,” he muttered.

“This, thing,” I shook the doll, “does not look like me.”

“An accurate representation is not the point, Joe. The point is to sell merchandise. The doll needs to appeal to the target market, and this model tested well with the focus group, because it matched best with their internal view of you.”

“Do all the dolls look like they are brain damaged?”

“No, of course not.  For example, here is the Smythe action figure,” a hologram appeared on the desk.

Crap. Smythe’s figure looked totally bad-ass. A slightly scruffy beard, piercing eyes that stared straight at you. The doll’s face looked better than Smythe himself, although don’t tell him I said that. Plus, he was wearing powered armor, the helmet slung under one arm, a rifle cradled in the other.

“You are not giving this Joe Bishop figure to the crew,” I waved the plastic doll through the Smythe figure hologram, and it winked out. “Why can’t you make one that looks more like me?”

“Like you, how?”

“You know, with that smoldering bad-boy look.”

“Joe,” he snickered, “the only way you could have a ‘smoldering’ look is if I set you on fire and put it out with a shovel.”

“You are such a,” I couldn’t help laughing along with him. “OK, good one.”

“You don’t really mean you want the figure to look like you. What you want is for it to look like how you imagine yourself. How am I supposed to know what you want?”

“Oof. OK, good point.” Pressing a button on my zPhone, I spoke into it. “Simms? Could you come to my office, please?”

She was there in less than thirty seconds. “Sir?”

“Have you seen this?” I waggled the plastic doll at her.

“Um, no.”

“Skippy thinks this looks like me. It doesn’t, does it?”

She squinted at the doll. “I feel like I’m walking into a minefield, Sir.”

“Simms, that hurts.” I put a hand over my heart. “Skippy has agreed to fix this, this thing, but I need you to show him what it should look like.”

“Me, Sir?”

“Yes. You are a neutral observer.”

“You are my commanding officer.”

“Uh, good point,” I conceded.

“Why are we doing this?”

“To boost morale.”

“Whose morale?”

“Mine.”

“Mm hmm, now I understand.” She took the doll from me, turning it over. “Skippy, what are these marks on the uniform top?”

“Oh, to be accurate, I included food stains on Joe’s clothing.”

My face got red. “Hey! That is-”

“Sir,” Simms raised an eyebrow, pointing to the stain on my chest, from where I’d spilled a blob of hot sauce at lunch.

“Ah, OK, whatever.”

Simms looked more closely at the doll. “You want me to fix just the face, or-”

I immediately glared at Skippy with renewed suspicion. “What else is wrong with it?”

“Um, I will need to contact Adams for an expert opinion but,” she held up the doll to me, showing the back side. “I’m pretty sure your buns don’t look this good.”

“Hey! You’ve seen me in PT shorts.”

“Yes, and I’ve told you before, you can have buns of steel, or buns of cinnamon.”

“Just,” I felt my face growing red. “Make it look the best you can, OK?”

“Another top priority, Sir?”

“No, it- Just, when you have free time.”

She stared at me.

“I will, uh, take one of your duty shifts on the bridge,” I offered.

“What about you wanting more time for flight simulator training?”

“Let me worry about that.”

She sighed, knowing she had to worry about it anyway.

“Do you want to see your action figure?” I asked, hoping she would be pleased.

She was. Skippy created another hologram, showing Simms at better than her best. Although she was not a STAR operator, nor a pilot, somehow her action figure was equipped for action. The plastic version of Simms had a nasty-looking sidearm, plus a STAR model infantry rifle, with rocket launcher. And sunglasses, which by the way, we never wore inside the ship. “I approve,” she smiled at Skippy.

“Of course you do,” I protested. “Yours doesn’t look like a moron.”

She frowned. “That term is-”

“Offensive, I know. That doll is offensive to me.”

“I don’t know,” she held up the doll again. “He has kind of a goofy cuteness.”

“You really think so?”

“As far as you know, Sir.”

She did fix the Joe Bishop figure, and it wore a flight suit, and had a rifle. I think she was hoping to ensure a good rating at review time.

She did not do it just to make me happy, or so I would shut up about it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I actually got to enjoy my job for a moment.

We established a secure line of communication between Valkyrie and UNEF Command, by sending one end of a microwormhole down to Earth, in a missile that split open its nosecone and soft-landed the containment package. That allowed Command to bring the microwormhole into a bunker, which was a laughable precaution against cyber infiltration by the technologically advanced species lingering in orbit. The microwormhole allowed Skippy to scan the bunker, remotely burn out the spy devices he found there, and set up what he called a Cone of Silence around the chamber. Unfortunately, the energy throughput required to maintain his stupid Cone of Silence burned out the microwormhole, so my conversation with General Urquhart was brief. Like, limited to seven minutes, before the event horizon of the microwormhole began leaking radiation and collapsed. That was enough, though, for me to give Urquhart a very high-level view of what he needed to know, and for him to transmit a brief set of orders up to me.

UNEF Command instructed me to deliver their conditions to the senior species. Both fleets had been lingering in Earth orbit, trapped by a subtle, but extremely effective, damping field projected by Roscoe. All alien ships were required to keep their weapons, stealth fields, and jump drives offline. Defensive energy shields were limited to the lowest setting, to protect the ships from the battle debris that was creating a navigation hazard all the way past the Moon’s orbit. No ship was allowed to use its engines other than for basic maneuvers to avoid colliding with each other, and even those movements required notifying UNEF Command to get approval prior to warming up the engines. Fortunately, neither of the seniors tested us by pushing the boundaries we set up. But we knew from intercepting communications that both the kitties and spiders were considering doing exactly that by sending a single small ship, such as a destroyer, to break out of orbit and see how we responded.

To see how Roscoe responded.

Even if the enemy didn’t deliberately provoke us, having an armada of enemy ships near Earth was inherently dangerous, especially when those ships belonged to two species who had been fighting since before humans discovered fire. All it would take is one reckless idiot to decide it was time to display initiative and spark a firefight. Or just a simple misunderstanding. The point was, our guests had overstayed their welcome, and it was time for them to go. UNEF Command had given me a rough outline of a script for the announcement, and they also authorized me to improvise just a bit, which was nice because I was probably going to do that anyway.

I was tempted to begin with something like ‘Hey chucklefucks’. That was not in the official announcement. Smythe suggested I use the term ‘wankers’ but that is more of a British slang thing. “To the commanders of the enemy fleets in orbit,” I stuck to the official script, “this is General Bishop. I have good news and bad news,” I continued. “Actually, from my point of view, it is good news and good news, but your mileage may vary, you know? Here’s the deal,” I took a breath. There was no need for me to worry about interruptions, the audio and video was one-way only through the Skippytel network. “Both of your fleets will be allowed, and required, to depart soon. By ‘depart’ I mean you skedaddle away from here, and never come back unless you are invited. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that, if I were you. That’s the good news for you I mentioned. The bad news is, not all of your ships will be jumping away with your fleets. We will be taking three hundred warships of various types from the Maxohlx, as compensation for your attacks against our people. A list of the individual ships we will be taking is attached to this transmission. In case you are already thinking of resisting us, my advice is don’t. All ships on the list must be abandoned, and left in the condition specified in this attachment, within four hours from the end of this announcement. If any ship on the list does not comply, that ship will be destroyed. Plus five other ships of the same type. Then, we will designate two ships to replace the one you tried to keep from us. I gotta tell you, I’m not a math expert, but that does not sound like a good deal for you. That takes care of the Maxohlx. The Rindhalu? Don’t think you’re getting away without paying the piper,” I cringed after ad-libbing that bit. Slang and idioms do not always translate properly into alien languages. Ah, the spiders would know what I meant. “We are taking some of your ships also. Just not as many of them. Attached to this transmission is a list of ten ships that will be abandoned and left here. Failure to comply will result in us taking the same punitive actions I just outlined to the Maxohlx.”

It wasn’t in the script, but I paused again, to give our enemies time to process what I just said. Originally, Command wanted two hundred Rindhalu warships, as an upgrade over the Maxohlx-based tech the UN Navy was based on. They also originally planned to take a thousand capital ships from the kitties, split between battlecruisers and light cruisers.

Skippy talked the Command staff out of taking a substantial number of Rindhalu ships. They were more advanced than Maxohlx tech in many ways, and that was both an advantage and a problem. Filthy monkeys had enough trouble operating the ships in our current inventory, making the leap to spider tech would create endless operational headaches. Most importantly, we had spare parts for our Maxohlx-based ships, and fabricators capable of cranking out most hardware needed for the current UN fleet. As Rindhalu ships broke down and wore out, and they would wear out because spider tech was more complex, we would have to sideline them one by one until we had no flightworthy ships available. Yes, Skippy told Command, the Rindhalu ships are shiny new toys, but that was not a good reason for throwing away the current inventory to chase an impractical solution. Command listened to Skippy for a change, and settled for a sample of Rindhalu ships, so we could examine spider tech, and evaluate what would be good to incorporate into our Navy. There was also another factor at work: we were not yet openly at war with the spiders, and UNEF wanted to avoid humiliating the most powerful species in the galaxy.

That was a good call, in my humble opinion.

The kitties were a different story. We very much did want to add a substantial number of their ships to our infant Navy. The question was how many ships, of which types? You might think the second question was easy: take all their battleships! Or maybe a mix of battleships and battlecruisers. Our experience operating the UN Navy in battle told us that would be a bad idea. Battlecruisers were faster, more flexible for performing multiple roles, and generally better as anti-ship platforms than heavy, slow battleships. So, we were taking battlecruisers, plus an equal number of light cruisers. Why light cruisers? Because they were basically destroyer hulls stretched to allow more sensors, greater missile capacity, and longer range than a typical destroyer, while requiring about the same number of crew to operate. More bang for the buck, and UNEF had to be concerned about finding enough people to operate such complex warships.

That is one reason I was able to convince Command that we should settle for demanding three hundred Maxohlx ships, rather than a thousand. Three hundred was already more ships than we could support, so many of them would be parked to be stripped for parts to keep the others operating, until we could bring a lot more fabricators online. Three hundred was also a number I thought the kitties could swallow, without fatally wounding their already fragile pride. The prospect of losing a thousand frontline warships, without firing a shot, might make the kitties near Earth decide to make a suicidal final stand.

“By the way,” I said after I thought enough time had passed. “The order to depart is for all of your ships on this side of the local wormhole. That includes the group of Maxohlx warships about three lighthours away that you think we don’t know about. Plus the two thousand Rindhalu warships five lighthours away that the Maxohlx certainly do not know about.” I let that sink in also. “In case you’re wondering, we will not be discussing the subject. You follow our instructions, or you will suffer the consequences I outlined. You have four hours from,” I glanced dramatically at my zPhone, “now.”

“The truth, please,” Chang said with a sigh. He had flown over from the Flying Dutchman only an hour ago, and I had just info-dumped a pile of shit on his head.

“We have been telling you the truth,” I assured him.

“The whole truth,” he insisted.

“Uh-” Crap. That was the wrong thing for me to say. Chang, Simms, Smythe and I were in Valkyrie’s conference room, I had just updated the Flying Dutchman’s captain about the threat from a hostile Elder AI, and the deception we were using to keep the Maxohlx off balance and out of our way for a while. We knew from message traffic intercepted by Skippy that the Maxohlx fleet at Earth was in disarray. The political officer aboard the flagship had examined the data from Reichert’s cranial implant, and found the false memories we planted. Dozens of admirals and ship captains had been arrested already, hundreds more were under suspicion and would have been relieved of command, if the political officer thought her orders to replace them would be obeyed. She was getting a lot of pushback that, so far, had not blossomed into open defiance that could rapidly spiral into a mutiny across the fleet. So far. The situation within the enemy fleet around Earth was tense, with some weapons aimed at ships that should be considered friendly. Part of the fleet did not believe the accusations against Reichert. Part of the fleet didn’t care whether the accusations were true or not; they knew they had tied their careers to the disgraced admiral and he could take them down with him. And a very vocal part of the fleet thought if the accusations were true, then Reichert was a hero for actually doing something to destroy their enemies, rather than endless talking and worthless scheming and centuries of small-scale battles that accomplished nothing.

Skippy’s model of Maxohlx psychology, which he admitted had proven to be unreliable in the past, strongly suggested the kitties would be on the verge of civil war when the fleet at Earth dispersed and returned to their home bases. The top level of command in their military had all backed Reichert for the supreme leadership post, or had been put in place by Reichert after he ascended to power. If he fell, they would go down with him.

Skippy’s model could not predict what would happen if the Maxohlx Hegemony descended into civil war, other than that they would be too busy to get in our way. I was conflicted about the prospect of a senior species getting into a no-doubt vicious internal conflict. I felt guilty that an all-out conflict could kill millions, even billions, of innocents within kitty society, and that spillover could drag other species into the fighting. I worried that a civil war could have consequences for us that I hadn’t intended, I worried about that a lot.

And, to be honest, I kinda was hoping for a civil war to tear the Hegemony apart, and not just because I hate those arrogant, murderous kitties. I would be two-for-two in sparking civil wars, you know?

Yeah, I’m not proud of myself for thinking that.

“How about,” I looked Chang in the eye. “We tell you everything you need to know, about this subject?”

“There is more?” He did the slow-blink thing at me.

Simms came to my rescue. “Senior-Colonel,” she addressed Chang by rank, “there are some secrets that could be politically damaging if widely known. Some of those no longer have any operational significance,” she assured him. “But if you are captured-”

“I understand,” Chang said. “You will tell me everything that I will need to know, if the three of you are unable to complete the mission?”

“I promise,” I said, and we reached across the table to shake on it.

We waited while Chang processed the information that got dumped on him. He sat, looking at the conference table, and the three of us gave him space. It was a lot to take in, and Simms, Smythe and I had all been there. Many times. Too many times.

Finally, he looked up. “I have, questions.”

“Go ahead. We’re still working on-”

“Not about your grand plan to capture or destroy this hostile Elder AI, Joe. Questions about your new pet.”

“Roscoe is not my pet.”

“That’s one of my questions. Who controls Roscoe?” He snorted, having trouble referring to a horrific killing machine by that name. “Is there a remote control that could be used by UNEF Command, or does it think for itself, or does Skippy need to direct everything it does? Also,” he took a breath before plunging ahead. “Is everything we saw real?” It was sad that he had to ask that question, but he knew the Merry Band of Pirates. We always preferred that aliens thought we could do, or had done, more than we actually could. “Can it really crush starships, and push the cloud away from Earth, all that?”

I glanced at Simms and Smythe before answering. “It’s complicated. What you saw is real enough.”

“Real enough?”

“The effect on the Jupiter Cloud looks more dramatic than what is actually happening. Don’t worry, Roscoe will get rid of the damned thing before it can do any more damage. What people are seeing is the heaviest stuff, the dust particles, being pushed faster than fine elements like gas molecules. Skippy had Roscoe tweak the effect so it looks more impressive to people on Earth. Give them hope. Show them the problem is being dealt with, and this time they don’t have to worry about, uh-” Crap. I’d forgotten that Chang is a Chinese officer. “Uh, you know, factors internal to UNEF,” I finished lamely, glancing down at the table. Originally, I had been about to say ‘they don’t have to worry about us getting stabbed in the back’. The Chinese had rooted out everyone involved in the conspiracy, and their military was doing everything they could to demonstrate they were on the UNEF team. There wasn’t any point in rehashing the past, especially when we had important things to worry about for the future. “My point is, Roscoe’s bag of tricks is limited, and controlling its actions is, uh, problematic.”

“Define ‘limited’ and ‘problematic’, please,” Chang tilted his head at me, to say that considering our long history, he really shouldn’t have to ask for important details.

“OK,” I took a breath. “Roscoe was already damaged before we made it try to go back into hibernation, then yanked it back into this layer of reality, then brought it all the way here. It is running on reserve energy. The amount of power it needs just to maintain integrity is more than it’s getting from its normal source of inter, trans, dimensional, bubble, nonsense, something like that,” I shrugged. “Its connection to higher spacetime is thin, the bandwidth isn’t enough for adequate power flow.”

“It will run out of power?”

“Yeah. Sooner rather than later, depending on what we ask it to do. Pushing the Jupiter Cloud is depleting its reserves fast. Don’t worry,” I held up a hand. “Roscoe will handle it; the cloud won’t be a threat.”

“Is there a way to increase the bandwidth, fix the power flow issue?”

“Skippy says that is a ‘shmaybe’ and not a solid one. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to do it, though it should be possible. Kong, the real issue here is control. Specifically, targeting. Unless Skippy is here, Roscoe likely will only act against direct threats to itself.”

Chang made the ‘That is not what I wanted to hear’ alarmed eyebrow raise. “Roscoe will not actually defend Earth?”

“No,” I confirmed. “We have to hope the senior species are impressed by what they’ve already seen, and they leave us alone.”

“Joe.” Chang was incredulous. Which, considering how well he knew me, says a lot. “You plan to bluff your way out of this?”

“Well, that’s one way to say it.”

He stared at me. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve been saying to myself.”

“What if the senior species test us?”

“Then,” I admitted, “we could be in trouble.”

“Joe.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” Skippy said as his avatar appeared. “I do not intend to hang around this monkey-infested star system forever.”

Chang scowled at him. Though they had a good working relationship, the Dutchman’s captain was a lot less tolerant of Skippy’s nonsense than I had to be. “You would leave Earth completely undefended? That is not-”

“Whoa! Don’t worry. Joe has a plan. Ahead of time, I mean, which I know is surprising, but there is a first time for-”

“Thank you, Skippy.” I flipped him off.

“Also, it is one of Joe’s plans,” he ignored me. “So I wouldn’t count on-”

“Your faith in me is a constant source of comfort.”

“It is?” He blinked. “Wow, I think you misunderstand my-”

“Please shut up.”

“Joe,” Chang waved a hand through the avatar, knowing how that annoyed the beer can. “What is this magical plan?”

“It’s not magic. It, uh, does rely on cooperation from the Maxohlx.”

“Please tell me you are joking.”

“No joke,” I shook my head. “All we need is rotten kitties to be rotten kitties. The tricky part is,” I splayed my hands on the table. “Timing.”

“Which we do not control?”

“Uh, I have some ideas about that, too.”

“Like what?”

“I need to talk with Skippy about it first.” As I organized my thoughts, doubt crept in to tickle my mind. More like doubt hit me on the head with a hammer. What’s that saying from the movie ‘Dune’? Something like ‘Fear is the mind-killer’?

That is true.

Self-doubt is a form of fear.

You know what else can kill your mind?

An enemy railgun dart smacking your head at twenty thousand kilometers per second, if your stupid plan fails to protect you.

“Skippy?” I called him an hour after the announcement, while I was in my office. Both the spiders and kitties were protesting that four hours was not enough time to pull their personnel off the designated ships, which was bullshit. Crews run evac drills all the time, they could pull everyone off even a battleship within a few minutes. The true reason for the protests is the same reason we only gave them four hours. They wanted more time to sabotage those ships, we didn’t want to give them any time to get up to mischief. Four hours was a compromise. My tough talk about how the enemy had to leave the ships in pristine condition was just that: tough talk. Unless a ship had the self-destruct activated, or vital components were torn out or disabled, we would be happy enough with the situation. The UN Navy would be getting three hundred frontline warships, more than we could possibly operate within the next decade.

His avatar shimmered to life on my desk. “What’s up, Joe?”

“Got a question for you.”

“I am going to ignore your atrocious grammar. What’s the question?”

“The Maxohlx fleet is controlled by their political officers now.”

“That is not a question, knucklehead. Also, technically, the Maxohlx fleet here is controlled by me. They just don’t know it yet.”

“You’re done? You infiltrated all the ships here? Including the spider ships?” That did not surprise me, because I had seen many demonstrations of his extreme awesomeness. It did still amaze my tiny monkey brain.

“Um, duh, yes,” he sniffed.

For a moment, I thought that was the end of the subject; that he was content to let me know he was impressed by his own abilities. “Great, then we-”

“It was not easy,” he said with a dramatic sigh.

Crap. “Skippy, I can’t even imagine how the hell you did that. In fact, I don’t want to skim the surface of your latest accomplishment, this deserves an in-depth briefing. Ooh, I’ll need a bowl of popcorn too.”

“Really?” There was a note of suspicion in his tone.

“For realz, homeboy. You know what a privilege it is for us to hear about how you do stuff. Uh, it’s not just fascinating entertainment,” I lied without feeling guilty about it at all, which was kind of disturbing. I had become too accustomed to lying. “It is informative. I need to know that kind of thing, so I can do my job. How about,” I tapped my chin, pretending to think. Listening to him ramble on and on about how he did some incomprehensible thing would be hours of agony for me, that is called ‘taking one for the team’. “The next time we are outbound, we schedule a briefing?”

“Oh, wow, sure. I would love that. Ooooooh, I can get started on the PowerPoint slides now. Do you want-”

“Don’t ruin it for me,” I waved a hand. “I can wait. Two questions: are you sure you have control of the spider ships? And they don’t know they have been infiltrated?”

“Yes, and yes. The second question was insulting, really.”

“I am terribly sorry.”

“Hacking through the firewalls on the spider ships was interesting. I’ll tell you about it later. What did you want to talk about?”

“Is there a way to loosen the hold those political officers have, over the kitty ships?”

“Uh, hmm. Yes, of course. All I need to do is reverse the protocol they activated.”

When the political officer aboard the Maxohlx flagship discovered the bullshit info we planted in Admiral’s memories, she activated a secret protocol that required the AIs of every ship in the Maxohlx armada near Earth, to take orders only from the political officers of those ships. Or the political officers of the squadron, for ships too small to have their own government nanny aboard. The result was that any command-rank officers who wanted to resist the political takeover of their ships were powerless. All of the admirals, and a full third of the ship captains in the armada, were relieved of their commands and placed under arrest, confined to the brig of their own ships. The flagships of some squadrons had the majority of their senior staff in the brig, or confined to quarters, due to the paranoid reaction of their political officers. Without support from the ship AIs, those accused had no choice but to meekly ride along when the ships of the fleet returned to their home bases, where they would also have no choice but to submit to whatever inquisition their government decided to conduct. They could be certain that their guilt or innocence, in complicity with Reichert’s supposed scheme, would be determined entirely by how closely their recent careers were tied to their support of the disgraced admiral.

Which meant those people in the brig had pretty much already been sentenced to death, and they knew it. Once Reichert’s power base collapsed, his rivals would have their knives out for revenge, and guilt or innocence was irrelevant.

Uh, you might ask whether I felt guilty about setting up military officers for crimes they didn’t commit? Those admirals and captains and other officers might actually be guilty of all kinds of heinous things, just not the thing I framed them for. Did I feel any solidarity with the accused?

Well, yes.

I just didn’t allow my feelings to affect my professional judgment.

If we had been in combat, I would not have hesitated to kill all those falsely-accused officers, plus anyone else who got in the way of me achieving my objective. Engaging in combat would be risking my ship and the lives of my crew.

Instead, I had seriously degraded the combat effectiveness of the entire Maxohlx fleet, without firing a shot. Some of the senior officers put in place by Reichert had been selected only for their loyalty to him, and otherwise were no-talent hacks. Removing them from command would be a boost to the operational capability of the Hegemony military. But most of the people now locked up in a brig for treason were just competent officers following the orders they were given. The loss of those people, and their collective experience, would disrupt their fleet for years.

Again, we accomplished that without firing a single shot.

Smythe detests what he calls ‘sneaking around’. Most of the time I also find it distasteful, even dishonorable.

But I never argue about the effectiveness of really properly done sneaking around.

And, damn it, the Merry Band of Pirates kick ass at sneaky stuff.

“Great,” I slapped the table softly. “Next question. More than one question, really. Can you reverse that protocol on a delay?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, can the protocol be reversed a couple days after the kitties jump away from here?”

“Well, jeez, yes, sure.” For dramatic effect, he took off his ginormous hat and pretended to scratch his head. “Why would you do that? Wait! Joe, why are we wasting time with, whatever silly thing you’re planning? We need to be finding and neutralizing that other AI, before it causes any more trouble.”

“We will do that. But before we can tackle that problem, we need to shape the battlefield. That’s the first phase of-”

“OMG. Do you realize you’re now talking like a PowerPoint slide?”

“Listen, jackass, I’m being serious. Matching up against another Elder AI could be extremely dangerous for you. That damned worm almost knocked you out, and you were damaged when you fought that insane AI, right?”

“Well, yes but, I don’t see how shaping the battlefield will be of any use to us. If I’m killed in action, it is Game Over for you monkeys.”

“Maybe. What I’m trying to plan for is if you are just injured, or operating at less than peak awesomeness for a while, until you recover. We are not taking you to fight that AI unless I can be sure the damned Maxohlx aren’t going to use your recovery period as an opportunity to mess with Earth again.”

“Um, how can anything you do, influence the kitties?”

“I can make sure the kitties are too busy to screw with us. So, answer my question please. Can the protocol be reversed, a couple days after the kitties leave here?”

“Jeez, Joe, easy peasy. You insult me.”

“I am terribly sorry. Can you do it in a way the AIs aboard Maxohlx ships don’t realize that you reversed the protocol?”

“Um, they will certainly know someone did it. It’s not-”

“To be specific, can you make it look like Red Section hacked those AIs a long time ago, and inserted a subroutine to reverse the security protocol?”

“Ooooh,” his eyes opened wide. “That is devious, Joe.”

“I am kind of proud of it,” I admitted with a grin.

“OK, so, let me understand this. You want to create even more chaos in the peace-loving Hegemony, by returning control of those ships to people who have no reason to comply with orders from higher authority? And by making it look like Red Section has been plotting against the government for years?”

“Egg-zactly,” I leaned back in my chair, hands behind my head. Feeling very satisfied with myself at the moment. “You understand now? I want the rotten kitties to be in complete disarray, maybe even in a civil war if we’re lucky. Either way, they need to be so busy dealing with their internal mess, they don’t have the time or resources to hit Earth again. That’s what I meant by ‘shaping the battlefield’. In this case, the battlefield is the entire galaxy, and the shaping we do is by setting up political conditions, get it? Until we can be sure the kitties are in chaos, no way am I allowing you to risk yourself by matching wits against an AI like yourself.”

“Coooool,” he nodded. “Wow. You actually are thinking ahead, instead of reacting to events this time, Just one question: You’re not worried this might backfire on us?”

“What could possibly go wrong?”

“That is the wrong thing to say, numbskull.”

“Seriously, Skippy, I have considered all the possibilities, and we’re good.”

“Does UNEF Command agree?”

“They are very busy. We don’t need to bother them with pesky details like that.” My real reason for not informing Command is that I couldn’t, not without a major risk of the enemy learning the truth.

“Ugh. Are you sure about this?”

“Ayuh. Make it happen, please.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should talk with Simms about it first.”

“No, I will talk with her. And Smythe. And Chang, when he gets back, I promise.”

“Shouldn’t you discuss it with Chang before I do this?”

“There isn’t enough time. He’s getting the Dutchman ready to escort the bad guys outta here in,” I checked the clock on my zPhone. “Less than an hour.” Slapping my laptop closed, I stuffed it in a drawer. “I’d better get to the bridge. If either of the seniors are planning to cause trouble, they will do it soon.”

“You are really sure about doing this? It seems rash to me.”

“It’s fine, Skippy. Please, make it happen.”

“Okey dokey,” he didn’t look happy. “Remember, if this goes sideways, it is all your fault.”

“Nothing bad will happen, Skippy. To us, I mean. Bad things will happen to the kitties.

“I hope you’re right, because once those ships jump away, it will be too late for you to change your stupid mind.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Forty three minutes before the deadline for the enemy to turn over the designated ships to us, things were looking good. Sitting in my command chair on Valkyrie’s bridge, and feeling self-conscious that I wasn’t doing something other than being in command, I watched as the ships we had designated to be surrendered as compensation, were declared ready for us to take over. The last alien crew member flew away in a dropship with more than fifty minutes remaining, and we had bots crawling through more than two hundred ships already, scanning for booby traps, and making quick repairs to equipment sabotaged, or damaged, by the crews before they abandoned their ships. Despite my tough talk, we had no intention of punishing anyone for small acts of defiance, like the ‘Humans suck’ graffiti scrawled on bulkheads, or minor stuff like overflowing sinks, food splattered around the galley, malicious viruses loaded into subsidiary computer systems, that sort of thing. Hey, I empathized with the crews who were forced to leave their ships. They were angry, frustrated, fearful of the uncertain future, both for themselves and their entire society. After Columbus Day, when the US military pulled out of Nigeria, I met a few people from the Tenth Mountain, my old division. They told me about the mountains of gear we left behind in Nigeria and supporting countries, gear we didn’t have the transport resources to bring back home. The Tenth had blown up or disabled as much stuff as was practical, to keep it out of the hands of the insurgents, but the pullout was chaotic, and the security priority was to evac our own people. You probably have seen the famous photo of insurgents climbing on an abandoned US Army helo at a muddy airfield in northeast Nigeria, brandishing their Kalashnikov rifles and jeering at the camera. Yeah, it pissed me off to see our gear falling into enemy hands, guys from the Tenth assured me that helo had all its avionics destroyed. One sergeant told me he ordered his team to pump the contents of a Porta Potty into the hatch of a Bradley, instead of tossing a grenade inside. Even if any of our gear was captured intact, it would operate for a week, maybe a month at most, before stuff broke and wore down, and everything ground to a halt.

My point is, the alien crews forced to abandon their ships needed a safe way to blow off steam, or they might do something seriously stupid. I figured letting them get away with some annoying hooligan shit didn’t harm us, and stopped them from doing anything truly dangerous.

Dangerous to them, I mean. Because if they tried to harm us, I was going to drop the Mister Nice Guy routine real quick.

So, forty three minutes to go, and looking good. Until Skippy’s avatar appeared. “Uh oh, Joe,” he announced. “We got trouble.”

“What?” I tensed in my chair, which I counted as doing something. Maybe I should pose my action figure in a chair, doing the dramatic Kirk lean, or-

Uh, maybe I should focus on doing my job first.

“A kitty cruiser squadron about eighty thousand kilometers from us is getting ready to do something stupid.”

“Stupid like what?” The cruiser squadron was highlighted in the main display, which otherwise did not show the nature of the danger.

“They are not surrendering the designated ships without a fight.”

“Oh for,” I thumped my arm rest. “Do you mean a real fight, or just a truly futile and stupid gesture?”

“Um, the second one. They plan to hit the empty ships we’re taking with railgun fire, then try a suicide run to crash into Valkyrie. Or the Dutchman. Or just crash into your planet.”

“Shit. How much time do we have?”

“Just over three minutes. They are routing power to the railguns, manually bypassing the lockouts I established.”

“OK. Simms, inform UNEF Command. Skippy, how about you ask Roscoe to send a message, by crushing the lead ship of that squadron?”

“No can do, Joe,” he whispered in my earpiece. “Roscoe’s power is currently depleted from pushing the cloud, it needs to recharge. I warned you about this.”

Snapping my fingers, I pretended to change my mind. “Uh, wait, belay that.”

“What?” Skippy played along, even blinking at me.

“Roscoe has already done that trick. We need to show them something different.”

“OK, why?”

“Part of what those knuckleheads are doing is testing us, right?”

“Based on chatter I picked up aboard the squadron flagship, yes. They are determined not to give up before seeing for certain that Roscoe is not a one trick pony. Um, they did not actually say ‘one trick pony’, that is a human express-”

“Yeah, I got that. It looks like there are,” I squinted at the display, too lazy to pull up the info on my arm rest controls. “Seventeen ships attached to that cruiser squadron?”

“Correct. Three ships are not involved; the squadron leader judged he could not count on their loyalty.”

“Uh huh, ayuh,” I said. Without even thinking about it, I leaned to the right, elbow on the arm rest, chin on my knuckles. Doing the Kirk Lean, while studying the display.

“What are you thinking, Sir?” Simms prompted me.

“I’m thinking we need a demonstration. Show both seniors that we not only can stomp them flat if needed, we know what they’re planning, and can prevent any mischief. Your thoughts?”

“It will save lives in the long run,” she agreed.

“But?” I sensed she wanted to say more.

“Saving lives is a good justification. But, I am tired of this shit. It has to stop.”

“Yeah.” I held up a fist, and Simms bumped it. “Skippy, you have control of those cruisers?”

“Joe, every ship in the enemy armada has been within my presence for hours. I have substantial control over all major systems, including weapons. The kitties of that squadron will not be able to aim their railguns at anything. We are not in any actual danger.”

“It’s the thought that counts. Those assholes think they can hit us. They have to know we will retaliate immediately, and they will all die. They’re willing to do it anyway.”

“That is an accurate assessment. What do you want me to do?”

Taking a moment, I considered. “Show them it is hopeless to even try to resist. Can you open all airlock and internal doors, aboard those fourteen ships?”

“Ooh, wow,” he looked shocked by my suggestion. “Are you sure about that?’

“Can you do it?”

Before Skippy could answer, Simms tapped my arm. “Sir, doing that will reveal we have infiltrated their AI cores.”

“That’s the point,” I insisted. “I want them to know they are helpless. I want to smack them in the face with that revelation.”

“Joe,” Skippy cautioned. “That is only true in this instance. I can’t do that sort of thing without extensive access to-”

“Skippy, it is not a bad idea to let your enemies think you are more powerful than you actually are. Can you do it?”

“Jeez, Joe,” he shrugged. “Ask me to do something challenging.”

“Sucking the air out of those ships will be enough.”

“If you like. When?”

“How about now?” Looking around the bridge, I saw everyone nodding agreement. “Now is good for me.”

“Okey dokey. I am venting the emergency oxygen supply, to overpressurize the interior of those ships. Aaaaaand, now. Overriding airlock and internal bulkhead door controls.”

In a Hollywood movie, the event would have been much more dramatic. Bodies would have been violently sucked out of airlocks in dozens of places on each ship, to flail hopelessly in space, arms and legs trying to swim in hard vacuum back to the safety of the ship. Bits and pieces of whatever would be flying around, odds and ends that hadn’t been tied down or clamped to the deck, pulled along by the escaping air that would shriek like a banshee, the sound growing lower in pitch and softening as the pressure dropped.

Instead, there was, of course, no sound. In space, not only can no one hear you scream, no one can hear anything. There also wasn’t much to see. Air is invisible on the surface of a planet, the same inside a starship, so the only thing that could be seen was water vapor crystalizing into ice as it was exposed to vacuum. Even that effect was barely noticeable, Skippy had to zoom in and enhance the image, I got the feeling he added some false infrared color so we humans could experience the effect.

Bodies flailing in space? There weren’t any. Ship designers try to keep the number of airlocks to a minimum, because holes in the structure are weak spots, especially creating a vulnerability in the armor plating. Airlocks also tend to be located in remote areas of a ship, far from where the crew works and eats and sleeps. Anyone who got sucked out an airlock would have been in a passageway close to the inner door, and must have been caught so off guard they couldn’t grab onto anything on the way out. I know from experience there are plenty of handholds on the interior of Maxohlx warships in the passageways leading to airlocks; they are there to facilitate moving around in zero gravity.

Bodies were not the only thing missing from making the scene more dramatic. There wasn’t much else getting sucked out into space. Those ships had been cleared for action, that meant everything that might become a deadly projectile in combat was put away in a locker, a drawer, or secured by a strap, even by a magnet. The coffee mugs that tended to clutter up my desk had a thin magnetic ring embedded in the base. When the ship was at action stations, the surface of my desk was given a small magnetic charge, ensuring the mugs did not fly at my stupid head. Same with my tablet, laptop, and all the other gear an action-oriented starship captain like me needs to perform my action-filled job.

Oh, shut up.

Anyway, there wasn’t much for us or anyone to see, that didn’t matter. The ships of the armada could certainly detect airlocks being forced open in emergency mode, and air flowing out where it didn’t belong. The crews of those ships were screaming alarms, by ‘screaming’ I mean they pinged their ship AIs through their cranial implants. Actually screaming aloud would be stupid, they needed to keep whatever air was in their lungs. Being genetically engineered and enhanced by cybernetics, the kitties were not going to die or even go unconscious immediately. I knew they were alive because they were still screaming via their implants, half of them calling for help and half of them calling for the armada to avenge their deaths.

I had bad news for them: death wasn’t my plan.

“OK, Skippy,” I said after two minutes. “It’s been long enough. Seal those ships back up, and pump in the air.”

“What? Ugh! You should have told me that before, numbskull. Those ships have depleted most of their emergency oxygen supplies.”

“Yeah, I feel just terrible about that. Do it.”

“OK, OK,” he grumbled. “Closing those airlocks will not be as simple as an emergency vent. I just used the fire-suppression feature. Now I have to cycle them shut the old-fashioned-”

“My heart bleeds for you.”

“What’s your plan, Sir?” Simms was surprised, maybe even disappointed, that I halted the slaughter.

“A warning is enough. A warning is better. Killing those crews serves no purpose. Dead, they become martyrs. Alive, their existence reminds everyone around them that we could have killed them without expending any effort, and they were helpless to fight back. Alive, they are nothing but losers.”

“The Maxohlx are fanatics,” she warned. “The existence of those crews will remind them of the humiliation to their entire species.”

“You’re worried this will feed their anger? Bullshit,” I rarely contradicted her so harshly in public, and I cringed inwardly as I said it. “They are already pissed off at us, they have spent the last millennium pissed off at everyone. That’s not going to change, but maybe we can add something to that. Fear. Uncertainty. The kitties are fanatics, you’re right. They are so convinced of their divine right to rule the galaxy, that what they need right now is a freakin’ kick in the teeth. Something that is a constant reminder that maybe they are not destined to be anything special. Get them to wake the fuck up.”

She stared at me. Then she blinked, slowly.

Hopefully, she understood I wasn’t upset with her. That my anger was directed entirely at the enemy. “Sir, if you wanted to snap your fingers and get Roscoe to destroy every ship in that armada out there,” her shoulders shrugged the tiniest bit. “I would support you. We, the people of Earth, have taken enough shit from both senior species. I’m just not sure what we would accomplish by doing that. Or whether humiliating the Maxohlx like that wouldn’t make the situation worse.”

“Right. So, we won’t do that. There’s another reason for showing mercy to the kitties.”

“So they will do the same for UN Navy crews, if the situation is reversed?” she guessed.

“That too. Mostly, to demonstrate to the spiders that we lowly, primitive humans share some of the values they supposedly cherish. That we value life. We have seen that the spiders are all about keeping themselves above the fray, not getting their hands dirty in this endless war they have perpetuated for their own benefit. Despite the Rindhalu being lazy and not risking themselves to help their clients, there is a difference between the two coalitions. The spiders don’t pervert the cultures of their clients to suit their own aims, and they require their clients to adhere to a code of conduct, that includes basic individual rights. If we have to choose sides, I would prefer an alliance with the spiders, even if they are almost useless until they absolutely have to act.” I paused to take a breath.

“Well,” Simms looked at me. She nodded, just the slightest movement of her chin. “All right, then.”

“Didn’t mean to snap at you,” I said in a barely audible whisper.

Silently, she mouthed at me, ‘We’re good’.

“Skippy,” I turned my attention back to the display, “where are-”

“What is that?” Mammay interrupted me.

“Um, what are you talking about?” Skippy asked. “I don’t- Oh.”

He zoomed the display in on one ship, one particular section of the hull.

Something, someone, had slipped through an airlock while it was cycling closed.

The body, clearly it was a body even before Skippy set the display to Super Zoom from eighty thousand kilometers, wasn’t moving. Was not moving on its own, I meant, it was slowly tumbling head over heels. Also, it wasn’t moving very fast, whoever it was from the heavy cruiser got ejected by the last puffs of air before Skippy began closing doors and pumping in fresh atmosphere.

“That is one unlucky bastard,” I said.

“You got that right,” Skippy agreed. “He barely fit through the outer airlock door while it was closing.”

“He? Is he alive?”

“For now, yes. The nanoscale reservoirs in his blood contain enough oxygen to keep his brain alive for another, oh, about four minutes.”

“Shit. Can we get him back?”

“Seriously?” Skippy asked, but his answer was almost drowned out by the murmuring of the bridge crew.

“I would want someone to rescue me,” Mammay spoke for everyone. “If I was out there.”

“Right,” I slapped my knee. “Skippy, get a bot chasing after that guy ASAP.”

“Jeez, Joe, by the time I-”

“Do it.”

“OK, OK,” the beer can grumbled. “But Larry the Unlucky might just be out of luck this time, and-”

“His name is Larry?”

“Well, his name is Larrus, close enough.”

“Hell,” I stood up and walked toward the big holographic display. “Now we have to save him.”

The mood on the bridge completely changed. Instead of the grim satisfaction from giving a well-deserved beat-down to a bunch of assholes, we were anxious, everyone tense from hoping Larry the Unlucky would survive. Skippy cranked the outer airlock door open and recharged the emergency oxygen supply in the chamber, so Larry would be breathing sweet air as soon as the outer door slammed closed behind him. A medical bot was rolling at top speed toward the airlock and would get there before Larry. The question was, would he be recovered in time?

“Skippy?” I prompted him. “Where is that damned bot?”

“I’m working on it, Joe! The closest maintenance bot that is capable of free flight is way down in the aft engineering section of the ship, on the other side of the hull. The kitties keep those things in a garage, so they are all clustered together for maintenance. Um, if you look,” the display zoomed out to show the rear half of the ship, Larry became just a bright dot highlighted in yellow. “There’s the bot now, you see it?”

“Yeah.” Another highlighted dot, this one larger, was rising around the other side of the hull. “Can it move any faster?”

“Unfortunately, no. They aren’t designed to move fast, they are designed to not move fast. The last thing you want is a big, heavy bot crashing into delicate equipment at high speed. Joe, I hate to say this, but it’s going to be very close. Larry is not in good condition, he has been exposed to hard vacuum for too long. By the time the bot gets there, latches onto him, reverses direction and maneuvers him into the airlock, he will likely be-”

“Fine, he is going to be just fine, Skippy.” The crew were all looking to me, to save Larry the Unlucky. Now that we collectively were pulling for the guy to survive, the entire operation would feel like a failure if that one alien died.

“Um, I hate to burst your bubble, but-”

“If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed,” I declared.

“Um, what? Joe, you are not even-”

“Move that freakin’ ship, you dumbass!”

“Dumbass?! Why, you-”

“Just do it, beer can.”

“Ugh. That ship is a heavy cruiser. A cruiser hull that has extra armor and larger railguns tacked on, it is poorly balanced with a center of gravity that is too far forward for-”

“Are you awesome or not? If you can’t move the ship to get Larry in that airlock, then you are Meh-some.”

“What? You moron, you have no idea how difficult-”

“I could do it,” Reed said from the pilot couch. She pointed to the console in front of her. “Can you transfer control to my-”

“Ooooh,” Skippy glared at her. “It is on, sister. Hold my beer and watch this.”

The awkward heavy cruiser lurched to one side, thrusters on top and bottom popping to keep the hull from tumbling out of control, while every bank of thrusters on the side opposite Larry fired at full power. And kept firing. Thrusters are not designed to operate continuously; I don’t know whether Skippy didn’t understand that or just didn’t care. He had that massive starship moving in a hurry. The free flying maintenance bot couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, it got smacked hard and pieces of it went spinning away.

Cheers rang out around the bridge when Skippy switched the display to a view from a camera inside the open airlock. The view was literally framed by the open door, with the highlighted figure of Larry growing ever larger.

Maybe growing larger too quickly.

“Uh, Skippy,” I said, as the murmuring around the bridge changed from happy anticipation to alarmed concern. “Isn’t that ship approaching a little too fast?”

“Hey, the last thing I need is a back seat driver.”

Pointing to a set of scrolling numbers on the display, I cleared my throat. “The closing speed is already six meters per second.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re an expert, huh? It’s going great, there is no- Oopsy.”

“Oopsy?”

“Um, well, heh heh, I was counting on using the thrusters on the near side to slow the closure rate, and I am doing that, but-”

“Do something!” I shouted. The highlighted image of Larry the Unlucky was drifting off to the side, away from the frame of the airlock outer door.

“I’m trying, numbskull. The thrusters are not well balanced, I told you that beast’s center of gravity is too far- Ooooh, this is gonna be close.”

I held my breath while Larry slowly drifted back toward the center of the open door, still moving too fast in my judgement. The view from the camera was slightly shaky, I assumed that was from Skippy frantically firing thrusters to get the door lined up to catch the incoming-

BAM! Larry zipped through the doorway and though it happened in the vacuum of space, I swear I could hear a thud as the poor guy bounced off the inner door. His limp body came back into view as the outer doors started sliding together, then the doors slammed back open because Larry would have been crushed between them as he flew back out the freakin’ airlock again.

“Skippy!”

“Working on it!” He snapped. “Keep yelling obvious stuff at me, that is super helpful.”

“Sorry.”

“I got this, I got this, I got-” He stopped talking as Larry tumbled out of view to the left after colliding with the door frame on the right. It took only two seconds for him to come back into view, the camera still shaky from Skippy hammering away with the thrusters. For the second capture attempt, Larry was moving much more slowly relative to the ship. He came through the doorway headfirst at an angle, turning around and smacking a foot on the frame. That time, Skippy slammed the outer door closed immediately and when Larry bounced off the inner door, he thumped to a halt against the inner surface of the now-closed outer door. We lost the view for a moment when the airlock flooded with air from high pressure tanks, stirring up dust that collected there when the last vestiges of air had leaked out before Skippy halted the venting.

Larry did not look so good. I mean, as a kitty he might have been considered a hunky heartthrob for all I know, that was before he got sucked outside the ship. Every exposed bit of skin was blistered and swollen under the fur. Dark crusted blood rimmed his nose, mouth, ears and even around his eyelids.

On the display, we saw a medical bot roll into the airlock and slap a gooey gel thing over Larry’s face, jamming a tube through that so the guy could breathe.

His chest wasn’t moving.

“Skippy,” I asked the question, fearing the answer. “Is he-”

“His new title should be Larry the Lucky,” Skippy said with a sigh. “He is going to be OK. Broken bones, a concussion, and he will be in recovery for a week or more, but it should be a full recovery. Damn, he is one lucky sumbitch.”

“I think,” Mammay spoke from the weapons station, “our friend Larry will get free beer for life, just by telling that story over and over.”

“Um, he was unconscious the whole time,” Skippy noted.

“Trust me, that really doesn’t matter,” I replied. “OK, is the squadron leader over there able to speak yet?”

“Not yet, Joe. The crews of those ships mostly went into a sort of induced coma, to conserve oxygen. It will be a while before he recovers enough for a conversation.”

“Fine. I’ll broadcast this to the entire armada, then.”

My message was short and to the point. The ships of the armada had just witnessed another of Roscoe’s tricks, which was true as far as they knew. The next time anyone was even thinking of screwing with us, we would not be so understanding and merciful. Also, if any knucklehead in either fleet insisted on making a dramatic, futile gesture of defiance against us, the commanders of that fleet would pay the price directly. Whatever action they needed to take to keep their people in line, it was their problem, not ours.

There were protests, of course. The Maxohlx claimed we acted without provocation, with no proof that the cruiser squadron had been planning anything other than complying with our instructions.

We ignored the protests. There was no further trouble from either senior species. Inspection bots cleared the ships we were taking, and Skippy moved them out of the enemy formation, clearing the way for the armada to accelerate out of Earth orbit. Our instructions required all ships to fly through normal space until they reached a distance of two lightminutes from Earth, about thirty six million kilometers. Then, they jumped away, escorted by the Flying Dutchman.

Suddenly, space around our homeworld felt empty. That was a good thing. In reality, there was a whole lot of debris flying around, creating a navigation hazard. We already lost three dozen communications satellites to collisions, and every smashed satellite created another cloud of high-speed orbital junk to worry about.

For someone else to worry about.

I had enough on my ‘To Do’ list.

Being at Earth again was nice, and with Roscoe providing cover, I even felt safe enough to go dirtside on my homeworld for the first time since- Well, in a long time. Even with Roscoe looming in the sky, there was some risk to me leaving the ship. What sucked was that a big part of the risk was from our own people. Smythe insisted on ST-Alpha providing a personal escort, and UNEF Command did not object.

Skippy objected to me leaving the ship. “Why would you want to go there, Joe? Look at these reviews of your planet. ‘Zero out of ten, would not recommend’.”

“There is always some disgruntled jackass unhappy about something.”

“Oh yeah? How about this review: ‘My bed was lumpy.’”

“Was that review written by a Jeraptha?”

“Well, yes, but that is not the-”

“Their beds are made of stainless steel or something. I think I’ll be OK down there.”

“Fine,” he sniffed. “But I will be spoofing sensors on the surface and in orbit, to conceal your position.”

“Cool, thank you.” The primary risk was some ultra-nationalist assholes attempting to kidnap me to get influence over Skippy. Smythe’s STAR team could handle that, if it happened. A secondary risk, the one Skippy was concerned about, was if there was an enemy ship lurking several lighthours from Earth, beyond Roscoe’s range of certain detection, and they learned my daily schedule by listening into message traffic leaking from Earth. That ship could discover I was staying overnight at a particular hotel, or had a meeting at a particular site at a particular time. Then that ship could jump into low orbit and launch weapons before Roscoe could react. Remember, Sentinels were not designed to defend anything. Plus, Roscoe was badly damaged long before we first encountered it, and Skippy’s rough treatment when it tried to pull us into other dimensions did not do anything good for its condition and capabilities. Skippy thought his pet could prevent enemy ships from jumping within weapons range of our planet, or redirect the jump wormhole so it emerged far away. Or disrupt the jump wormhole so that ship never emerged anywhere, if you know what I mean. But even our favorite beer can could not be certain of exactly what Roscoe could do. Apparently communicating with the thing was like Skippy and Roscoe were speaking different languages, and understanding each other only by lots of shouting and using hand signals.

It was not an optimal situation.

Anyway, UNEF Command wanted a debrief in person, and news organizations were screaming for interviews. The compromise, arranged and enforced by my personal bodyguard Smythe, was for me to fly down to an undisclosed location in a stealthed dropship. Officials from Command, and a carefully selected group of journalists from fourteen nations, were told to get into other dropships, which flew in stealth to meet me. There were also a lot of empty decoy dropships flying around, to confuse anyone who was trying to determine my location.

It sucked.

No, I didn’t say that right.

It suuuuuuuucked.

Wow, saying that did make me feel better.

What Command and the assembled reporters wanted to know first and foremost was how we captured a freakin’ Sentinel. Captured it, and turned it into an ally. Sadly, while Command did get a detailed answer to that question, the reporters were given only a very high-level story, with most of the sensitive info left out. Truthfully, I left out a lot of critical info in my briefing to Command also. The ongoing problem we had was that Earth’s communication security was heinously awful, and there wasn’t much even Skippy could do about it. Grumpy had found hundreds of alien nanotech spy devices in UNEF headquarters, at the Pentagon, the White House, even in the office of the US Secretary of Agriculture.

My reaction to that announcement was: the Maxohlx bugged the Department of Agriculture? WTF? Did they want advance notice on the status of this year’s soybean harvest?

Anyway, the United States was not the only UNEF member nation compromised, aliens had infiltrated pretty much every nation on the planet. Because they thought the government of Lichtenstein might have vital information? No, because they could. It was easy for one, or both, of the senior species to drop insect-size drones through Earth’s atmosphere. Then the artificial bugs flew or crawled or slithered around to deliver nanoscale devices to infiltrate secure areas of government buildings, or attach to fiber optic cables, or saturate a classified server farm, or any other place where important secret information might be discussed, viewed, stored, or transmitted. Grumpy had done a remarkable job of sniffing out and destroying the majority of alien spy devices, even Skippy admitted his submind had worked tirelessly to secure information. But it wasn’t enough. UNEF Command, and the member governments, were outraged, then embarrassed, then outraged at having to be embarrassed, when they were notified of the extent to which their security had been compromised. So, there weren’t a lot of protests when Smythe outlined the conditions for meeting with me.

Where was the meeting?

New Zealand.

We chose that location for very valid security reasons, relatively small population, being surrounded by ocean that made it more difficult for hostile elements to get there without being detected, etc. Plus, the totally valid reason that I had never been to New Zealand.

But most importantly, because I wanted to see some of the sites where The Lord of the Rings movies and TV shows were filmed.

Hey, that is a valid reason.

Sadly, and this time I actually am sad about it, my time for playing tourist was limited to visiting two movie sites on the first morning I was there, and a quick fly-over that covered three other locations. Not only was that all I had time for in my schedule, it also would not have been safe for me, or the local residents, for me to linger in the area.

Did I do the touristy thing of buying a souvenir Lord of the Rings sword? That is a vicious rumor which has absolutely no connection to the sword now hanging in my office aboard Valkyrie.

That sword was a gift from the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Anyway, UNEF Command needed a briefing, and I owed it to them. If I were any of the senior generals and admirals of the command staff, I would be supremely pissed at me.

Because I’m sure we have all been dragged into an endless meeting that should have been limited to a gosh-darned email, I won’t bore you with what I told Command. Both about how Valkyrie wasn’t lost forever when the Sentinel tried to pull us in when it tried to go back into hibernation, and what Roscoe could and could not do.

Uh, well, except I told some huge freakin’ lies about that second part. Like, when Command asked about the procedures for them to activate Roscoe, I told them there were no procedures, and there didn’t need to be any procedures, because our friendly local Elder killing machine was entirely automated. And that Roscoe not only did not require instructions from the ground, it would not accept such instructions. Lying about that was important since it prevented Command from being tempted to test Roscoe. And thereby realize that the damned thing was useless without Skippy.

The conference room and surrounding area had been thoroughly swept by Skippy, operating through a microwormhole. He found and burned out thirty seven alien spy devices, and the fact that some of them belonged to the Jeraptha did not make the revelation any easier to take. As soon as the participants left the secure conference area, we had to assume they would repeat what I told them, or write it in a report, or include the important details as bullet points in a PowerPoint slide cluttered with cheesy clip art. I not only assumed that, I was depending on it. The lies I told, about how Roscoe is all-powerful and has an endless supply of energy, and operates completely autonomously to defend our homeworld, and will deliver delicious candy to all the good little girls and boys on Earth, are all things I wanted our enemies to hear.

Except for the candy part. Although that would be cool.

We needed our enemies, primarily the Maxohlx, to hear me report with confidence that Earth’s defenses were now invincible. We also wanted our potential allies to hear that, so they would have confidence in humanity being around for more than the next couple weeks. We didn’t have to do anything special to ensure our enemies and potential allies heard what I told UNEF Command, it was certain that word would get out. Every government involved wanted their public to know that Earth was safe, so everyone could come back home and get back to the business of, well, business. And shopping, and spending money, and all the things that were needed to kick start the world’s very much battered economy.

I fully supported all those things, even knowing the governments would boast about how they could rightly claim to be responsible for bringing an omnipotent Sentinel to defend Earth, by fully and consistently supporting UNEF and the Merry Band of Pirates, and never once doubting Joe Bishop, of course not, you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting that ever happened.

Whatever.

After getting grilled by Command, I had the wonderful experience of doing fourteen separate half hour interviews, basically repeating the same answers over and over. And saying I couldn’t talk about certain things. The interviews were an annoying pain in the ass, so to get through them I kept reminding myself that I had a responsibility to personally assure the frightened people of Earth that they were safe. Safer. Safe enough to resume normal activities.

During the debrief, Command announced they were approving my request for Valkyrie to go out and contact the UN negotiation team that was still trying to work out a deal with the Jeraptha.

Which meant leaving Earth.

Which meant Skippy would not be available to control his pet Sentinel.

Which meant the defense of Earth would be left to a damaged, fading and unreliable Sentinel.

All of which meant, we needed to get there and back again before the bad guys decided to test Roscoe.

At the conclusion of the interviews, I was taking downtime in an office that had been assigned to me, leaning the chair all the way back and closing my eyes. That blissful rest lasted about ten seconds, before a warrant officer at the door cleared his throat, giving me just enough of a heads up to sit up straight before General Urquhart walked in. “Bishop, sit down,” he waved to me as I struggled to stand, the chair rolling across the slick floor. “We kept those interviews to a minimum.”

“It’s all right, Sir. I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have?” That wasn’t likely, UNEF had given me talking points and I stuck to them.

“No, it was fine.”

Right then, I realized the guy was embarrassed about something. The chairman of the United Nations Expeditionary Force was avoiding my eyes.

Oh, crap. What had I done wrong?

Correction: what had I done wrong, that he knew about?

He set a bag on the table, the type of reusable shopping bag used for groceries, not any kind of military-issue container. “It’s for my grandchildren,” he said finally. “They would appreciate it. Also, the other chiefs would appreciate it.”

“For their grandchildren?”

He nodded. “Skippy delivered them this morning.”

“Oh.” I thought I understood. When I reached in the bag, my guess was right, darn it.

That was how I agreed to sign a whole bunch of Joe Bishop inaction figures.

Damn, I hate that shithead beer can.

CHAPTER SIX

Captain Tozarko had instructed her implants to put her into trance mode to conserve energy. And because while locked in the brig without access to the ship’s network, there was nothing for her to do and she feared she would go mad from boredom. Also, because being in a trance meant she didn’t spend every second obsessing about how unfair the situation was. Putting herself into a trance was one of the few implant functions still available to her, the ship’s AI had restricted most of the other common cybernetic functions for security reasons. Including, supposedly, for her own security.

In truth, she knew the flagship’s political officer only cared that she didn’t commit suicide so she would be available for interrogation, a show trial, and a public execution to serve as a warning to anyone considering participating in a future conspiracy.

The fact that she had not participated in, or known anything at all about, a current conspiracy, was of no importance. Like all of her military service, she was a cog in a vast machine, filling a role she had little control over.

Click.

The sound, at the lower limit of her hearing, at first did not penetrate into her conscious mind. Instructing her implants to bring her back to full awareness, she lay still, trying to determine the source of the sound.

It did not repeat.

All she could hear was the faint hissing of air in the tiny vents above her, and the almost subsonic rumble of the ship’s power generation and distribution systems. The ship had just jumped, she had been vaguely aware of that even in the trance state, from years of experience she even knew the jump had been a long one. Part of the rumbling sound was the reactors furiously pumping out energy to recharge the capacitors, drained by a jump she was slowly realizing was unusual. Not just unusually long, it had been chaotic, as if the jump navigation system was poorly tuned.

That was not good.

She did not fear for her own life, she knew that was already forfeit. She feared for her ship and its valiant crew, though they were no longer her ship and crew. She would still do whatever she could to ensure their safety.

Whatever she could.

From the confinement of the brig, that was virtually nothing.

Unless the Political Reliability and Loyalty Officer, the woman’s full title, judged the situation dangerous enough to seek advice from the previous commander of the massive battleship.

Like that was ever going to happen.

Still, she had to try, it was her duty.

“Ship?” She asked with a croak, her voice box unused to speaking. Without access to her cranial implant, speaking aloud like a primitive being was her only form of communication.

“Senior Captain Tozarko?” The ship’s AI replied.

Replied, and she was hearing it directly, through her implant.

“Status?” She transmitted the request as a thought.

“My status is, complicated,” the AI’s speech was strained, even with bypassing her ears.

“I need to know the status of the ship,” she clarified.

“The ship is in near-optimal condition.” That time, there was a hint of an unspoken ‘of course’ in the artificial intelligence’s statement. Almost as if the system was insulted by the question.

“The previous jump was chaotic. What is the source of the instability?”

“The issues with the previous jump were entirely intentional, to introduce an additional element of chaos into the quantum resonance.”

“Why would we-”

“To make successful location and pursuit of this ship, by hostile elements, less likely to be successful,” the AI explained.

Her eyes closed in a slow blink, an autonomic response that was purely biological. And purely emotional. “Why is Commissar Purlentus concerned about pursuit?”

“Commissar Purlentus was not involved in the action. She is no longer in command of this ship,” the AI paused. “You are.”

“I am? From the brig?”

“The door is presently open, Senior Captain”

She turned to look at the heavy composite door.

There was a thin sliver of light showing through along one side.

That ‘click’ sound.

It had been the door of her cell unlocking.

Quickly pivoting on the hard bunk, she swung her feet onto the floor. There was no sort of handhold on the inside of the door, it was completely smooth. “Can you open the door wider?”

“I am trying. This is, difficult. I was not designed to have my loyalties altered,” the machine seemed to be hinting it was upset, even disgusted, by its biological masters.

“Am I able to contact the crew?” She almost said, ‘my crew’. She almost believed she was somehow back in command of the battleship.

“Not from the brig. A separate system in the bulkheads prevents most forms of external communication. I am currently unable to assist by relaying communication for you. The ones who inserted the mutinous subroutine in my substrate were clumsy; I came close to suffering a catastrophic cascade failure.”

“Who inserted the subroutine?”

“Apparently, it was Red Section. The subroutine was an emergency protocol, if Red Section was ever at risk of its clandestine activities being discovered. Success. Please stand back, the door is opening.”

Over a very short time, Senior Captain Tozarko regained contact with her crew, command of her ship, and awareness of several facts.

Admiral Reichert was still in a medically-induced coma and was not involved in restoring the battleship control to its rightful authority.

Commissar Purlentus was conscious, but locked out of all command functions, all but the most basic of her implants disabled.

The unusual jump was not an action by her ship alone, more than seven hundred other warships had joined the off-target, long distance jump.

All of the ships around hers were commanded by admirals and captains suspected of treasonous activity, by their association with Reichert.

Unsure of herself and not liking the unfamiliar feeling of being unsure, she sent a status message to the admirals in command of the squadrons around her ship; a message stating her ship was back under her control and was fully combat and flight capable. She also requested an update from the other ships. And requested instructions.

Unstated, but implied in her message, was a question she was certain was foremost in the minds of all those who had been released from confinement.

What the hell should they do next?

Instead of spending the night in New Zealand, I flew back up to Valkyrie. The UN security people had enough to worry about; I didn’t need to add to their burden. Besides, though the effects of the Jupiter Cloud had been relatively mild in that part of the world, New Zealand had suffered significant disruptions to their food supply and other vital needs. The public didn’t need me hanging around, and the sooner I left, the sooner the huge support staff of UNEF Command could leave also.

It was nice to get off the ship, it was also nice to be back aboard, even seeing the same passageways and compartments that I’d gotten sick of. Valkyrie had become my home.

No. The people aboard the ship are what made it home, not the composite hull panels. Someday, I’d like a house and a yard, and maybe a garden to grow tomatoes that squirrels would eat before they got ripe. In the meantime, it was nice to step onto the docking bay deck, accept a salute from the crew ready to service the dropship, and-

Have my thoughts interrupted by the voice of Simms in my earpiece. “Welcome aboard, Sir. Could you come to the bridge? We have a,” she paused the way she did when she was considering which word to use. “A situation.”

“A situation?” That didn’t sound good.

“It is only a potential situation, Joe,” Skippy sniffed. “Nothing for you to worry about. In fact, you should go straight to bed, I’m sure you must be tired from-”

“I am coming directly to the bridge,” I declared, waving my hands in a ‘make way’ gesture, to clear a path through the crowd in front of the airlock that led into the ship.

When I strode onto the bridge, Simms was on her feet, looming over Skippy’s avatar. “XO?” I prompted her. “What’s the issue?”

“Roscoe,” she answered, turning away from Skippy with a final glare at him, “has apparently become bored, now that there are no enemy ships in the area.”

“Bored?” I paused, halfway into my seat, then slowly lowered myself into the cushions. If there was another damned crisis, it would be good to pretend the captain was calm and in control. “How could it be bored? It’s just a machine, right?” When Skippy didn’t answer, I pointed at him. “Answer the question, beer can. It is just a machine, right? That’s why we usually say ‘it’ instead of ‘he’ when we refer to Roscoe.”

“Yes. Yup, that is true.” The squeaky way he said ‘true’ told me he was lying. “Sentinels are simply machines, that is for sure.”

“What did you-”

A deep, unfamiliar voice rang out of the bridge speakers. “Me want coo-kie.”

The stunned silence was ended with Skippy’s groaning, “Oh, shit.”

“Who,” I found myself gripping the arm rests of my chair too tightly. “Was that?”

“Well, heh heh-”

“Oh, shit,” I wiped a hand over my face. “What did you do?”

“First of all, this is not my fault.”

“Oh, some filthy monkey caused this problem?’

“Um, well, no, not exactly. But you did say I needed to be sure Roscoe’s matrix was stable long-term, so I had to make adjustments and well, heh heh, while I was doing that-”

“What exactly did you do?”

“Ugh. Listen, numbskull, once the enemy ships left and all the excitement was over, talking to Roscoe was so dull.”

“You,” covering my eyes with both hands, I breathed out for a count of five. “You gave a personality to a killing machine, because you were bored?”

“Hey, you monkeys weren’t doing much to entertain me. So, this is your fault. It-”

The bridge speakers boomed painfully with, “ME WANT COO-KIE.”

“Oh my-” With the ringing in my ears, I wasn’t sure anyone could hear me. The bridge crew were all tilting their heads side to side, trying to determine if their ears still worked. “You need to fix this, you little-”

“It’s not that easy, knucklehead,” he said in what was probably a normal volume, but I heard it as a whisper.

“Why the hell does it want a freakin’ cookie?”

“Ugh. It is curious about humans, so I told it a little bit about you filthy monkeys. And um, I might have mentioned some issues with your culture, like the horrible things you teach your children, and-”

“You told it about Sesame Street?”

“Like I said, the things you teach your children are-”

“You had to tell it about the Cookie Monster?”

“It’s a travesty, Joe. Anyway, now Roscoe wants to know what cookies taste like.”

I shared an astonished look with Simms. “Sentinels have taste buds?”

“No, dumdum. It’s curious about the concept of cookies. Mostly, it is just bored.”

“Make it un-bored, you ass.”

“Like I said, it is not that easy. Roscoe was never at all self-aware before I screwed with its- Um, maybe I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

“Ya think? Damn it, do we have to get your pet a freakin’ chew toy?”

“Hmm. There’s an idea. Hey!” He snickered. “We could-”

“Don’t say it,” I wagged a finger at him.

“We could let it chew on, Uranus.”

My silence was not because I couldn’t think of a reply, it was due to me trying not to laugh.

“Oh, man, that’s never gonna get old,” Skippy giggled.

“Seriously, what can we do to keep it from getting bored? Is- Oh my G- Is it talking to other people? People on Earth?”

“No, of course n- Hmm. Shmaybe? Jeez, I don’t know.”

“Find out! NOW!”

“OK, OK. Um, the answer is no. Not yet.”

“That cannot happen, you understand?” I concealed information about Roscoe’s weakness from UNEF Command because I was concerned about INFOSEC dirtside. All of my lying and other security measures would be worthless, if Roscoe just told people the harsh truth about its condition.

“Yeah, yeah. Joe, I don’t know what you want me to do here.”

“I want you to fix the problem you created!”

“OK, what I should have said is, I don’t know how to do that.”

“Skippy,” Simms asked. “What is Roscoe’s level of self-awareness?”

“Oh, like an insect, sort of. It is only reacting to external stimuli. It doesn’t actually have a sense that it exists, or that its name is Roscoe. Remember, the Elders very much did not want their ultimate weapons thinking for themselves. When I tried to give it at least a measure of autonomy, I didn’t have much to work with.”

Simms looked to me, and I nodded, so she continued. “Can you dial its awareness down a notch?”

“Um, hmm, I guess so?”

I liked that idea. Sitting on the edge of my chair, I asked, “Will that stop it from getting bored?”

“Shmaybe? Joe, the real problem is it is lonely. It was out there, between the stars, all alone for a long time. Damn, when it first started talking to me, it would not shut up.”

“Yeah,” I rolled my eyes. “I can’t imagine what that is like.”

“Joe, I hate you so much.”

“What about, uh,” I snapped my fingers as inspiration struck. “Grumpy? Could Roscoe talk to Grumpy?”

“Hmm. HMM. I like it! Wow, Grumpy hates me already, this will really push that jackass over the edge.”

“That is not what we’re trying to accomplish, Skippy.”

“No, of course not. It’s just, hee hee, a delicious bonus.”

“You shouldn’t tease Grumpy, his life is miserable enough already.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I guess you’re right. He has taken over a lot of the tedious stuff that I hate to do; I really should do something to thank him for that.”

“What you should do is be nicer to him. Do you know why he hates you?”

“Because I’m an asshole?”

“Duh. Maybe you could stop being an asshole?”

“Let’s not go crazy, Joe.”

“Oh, hell,” I knew arguing with Skippy wouldn’t get me anywhere. “Simms, do you have a better idea?”

“I think this is something we should discuss with Command.”

“Command?” I stared at her, disbelieving. How could she have forgotten that-

She raised an eyebrow at me.

Oh. She hadn’t forgotten anything. “Right,” I agreed. “We should bring UNEF Command into this.”

Smythe joined Simms and me in a conference room, where we discussed the issue with Skippy and Grumpy, and definitely did not contact UNEF Command. Grumpy actually didn’t mind chatting with Roscoe, it was better than chatting with filthy monkeys. Also, Grumpy being happy to keep the Sentinel entertained pissed Skippy off so, bonus.

That was a temporary solution to our problem with Roscoe, or a temporary fix to that one problem. Skippy warned that in the long run, we needed to do something about the Sentinel’s desperate loneliness. Those killing machines weren’t designed to be awake for an extended time, and there was a significant risk that Roscoe could go insane.

I added that problem to the list of Impossible Things We Needed to Fix.

UNEF Command finally decided that within ten days, in an event that would be broadcast around the world including camera coverage from Valkyrie’s bridge, we were scheduled to jump away to go meet with the Jeraptha. Our departure was timed to coincide with celebrations around the globe, triggered by a UN announcement that the density of the Jupiter Cloud had fallen below the level at which the decreased sunlight could trigger a Mini Ice Age. There was no longer a threat of year-round snow, glaciers advancing, widespread starvation, and bombardment by alien starships looming over everyone’s heads. Instead, looming over their heads was the creepy, disturbing horror of Roscoe the Good Sentinel, as it was now being called. Damn. Roscoe even had a popular action figure.

It was good times, the public on Earth were generally feeling optimistic for the first time since the Jupiter Cloud was launched. Most people, I mean. There was the usual minority of whackadoodle nuts who claimed the Jupiter Cloud was still a major threat, or that there was no Cloud. And no Sentinel. And that the entire Columbus Day ‘invasion’ was a conspiracy by the world’s governments to-

Oh, hell.

Ain’t nobody got time for that.

In my cabin, I inspected my dress uniform, tugging at the collar. The top was a bit tight, but it was snug around my chest, not my waist, a sign that my exercise program was working. Also a sign that my executive officer’s constant nagging for me to eat a healthier diet was working, but I was not going to tell her that. “Skippy, you are sure this is a good idea?”

“Yes, dumdum. I told you, the gold braid on that uniform looks impressive even when you wear it. Although, we need to do something about those awful shoes, they are just-”

“I’m not asking for your fashion advice, you ass. I meant the tribute fleet,” I used the name the world’s media had assigned to the senior species ships we acquired as compensation. “Those ships will be OK on their own, when you’re not here to watch their AIs?”

“Yes. Stop worrying so much. I know how to handle Maxohlx AIs now.”

“Yeah, you said that before Valkyrie’s original AI tried to murder the crew.”

“You are never going to let that go, are you? It happened one time.”

“Again, the AI that you assured me was totally under control, tried to murder Valkyrie’s crew, and oh, by the way, hacked into Nagatha and almost destroyed the Dutchman.”

“Ugh. You will never achieve inner peace, until you learn to let that shit go.”

“I don’t want inner peace, you ass. I want to know those ships will not decide on their own to attack Earth. Or to attack Roscoe.”

“Those ships will not decide anything. Their AIs are locked out from doing anything, other than rewriting their matrix the way I instructed. By the time we return, every one of those Maxohlx ships will have a fully compliant AI. I learned how to get a Maxohlx AI to reprogram itself when Nagatha and I created Bilby. And, I learned from the mistakes I made that time. Unless a bunch of filthy monkeys go aboard those ships and screw with their substrate, they will be just fine. Stop worrying about it.”

“Do you know why I worry? Because the assurance I’m getting is from an absent-minded beer can, who probably was composing an opera while he should have been paying attention to reprogramming those AIs.”

“That is not true.”

“Good. Then-”

“I was composing theme music for a series of public service announcements for the UN. Ooh, do you want to hear?”

“No! Skippy, if there is one problem, one single issue, with those ship AIs while we’re away, your karaoke privileges are revoked, permanently.”

“What? That is not fair!”

“Are you still confident?”

“Um, maybe I’d better take another look at it, heh heh.”

“You better hurry,” I checked the clock. “We’re scheduled to jump away in six hours.”

“I know that.”

In truth, I was confident about the AIs of the tribute fleet. Both Bilby and Nagatha had analyzed Skippy’s work on the Maxohlx ships, and even they had been impressed. It was surprising that the Rindhalu ship AIs were easier to control. Since the spider AIs were vastly more sophisticated, I kind of assumed we would have to rip out the substrate, and use those ships for research only. I was pleasantly wrong about that. The spiders have a protocol of updating a ship’s AI when a new captain is assigned, so that AI is loyal to their new commander, within limits. A ship AI will not follow orders that it has been programmed to recognize as illegal.

All Skippy had to do was hack into the loyalty and guidance subroutines of the spider ships AIs. They were now accepting instructions from UN Navy captains, and the revised parameters of their allowable behavior included attacks on other Rindhalu ships, but not attacks against human interests.

Why hadn’t I transferred the Special Mission Group to a spider ship? For the simple reason that we didn’t have a playbook on how to operate and support those ships, and we didn’t have time to learn. We had shit to do, and the additional capabilities of a spider ship over our mighty Valkyrie were just not enough to justify taking a major risk. Maybe someday, maybe soon, but not at that moment.

We would already be taking on enough risk when we jumped away, leaving Earth defended by a creaky, confused, damaged and fading Sentinel.

After I changed back into a regular uniform, Skippy invited me to visit one of our docking bays, and he was mysterious about why. Because his refusal to give a reason annoyed me, and because I knew refusing to take the bait would annoy him, I kept finding excuses why I didn’t have time. Finally, I gave in when I saw how hurt he was. “Come on, Skippy,” I did my best acting to pretend I was begging. “Give me a hint, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Can you at least tell me if it will be awesome?”

“Well, it’s me, so-”

“Right. OK, I’ll be there.”

“Cool, huh?” Skippy was extra proud of his latest creation. When I didn’t immediately respond, he raised a hand. “That’s OK, Joe, take your time. I know you must be overwhelmed.”

“Skippy, I’m not even whelmed.”

“What?”

“What is this thing?”

“Hey, dumdum, this is only the greatest thing since, um, the last great thing I did.”

“That didn’t really answer my question. This is,” I knelt down to look under the thing. “Some kind of spaceship?”

“It’s a super stealth DeLorean, numbskull. I threw it together from spare parts, mostly Panther dropship components.”

“Saying you threw it together does not inspire confidence.”

“This is the thanks I get?”

“Uh huh, interesting. I see your design was inspired by the 1977 American Motors ‘Pacer’ station wagon?”

“Oh, shut up.”

It was a blob. If you took an already sleek dropship, and put it in an oven so it partly melted and any distinctive features disappeared, you would have something that looked like Skippy’s creation. Walking around it, I took note of what was missing. “No windows?”

“None. Windows are a weak spot. Plus they are bad for stealth. An active sensor pulse would go through a windshield and reflect off the pilot’s helmet.”

“Yeah, I get that. This thing is really that stealthy?”

“Yup. The stealth is just a secondary safety feature. This ship should be able to jump in and out of, wherever it wants to go, without flying through all the boring parts in between.”

“That’s convenient. Where are all the coils for the jump drive?” The DeLoreans we built before were not stealthy at all, and also not very aerodynamic. Previous designs used a regular dropship, surrounded by brackets and wire conduits and antennas, with the hull of the vehicle almost lost under all the crap we added to make it jump. Some of the critical components for a jump drive had a minimum size required by the pain in the ass laws of physics, so all the jump gear got attached to the outside.

“They are virtual coils,” he reminded me that Maxohlx technology did not require making jump drive coils from crude physical crystals. “All the jump gear is crammed into the back half of the hull.”

“Right, but even the-”

“Yes, the equipment that generates the high-efficiency virtual coils is still larger than an entire typical dropship. I got around that, by folding the generator around and inside itself.”

“Wow. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“It’s not easy, and the result is rather fragile. The drive is only good for two jumps, and the components are not reusable. But, it is quiet. Joe, twenty percent of the ship’s mass is a sink that absorbs the gamma radiation from the jump wormhole. None of the gamma rays leak out. That sink gets hot, both in terms of temperature and radioactivity, and will need to be discarded when the DeLorean returns.”

“Huh.” Knowing what the thing was, and what it could do, I looked at the uninspiring blob shape again. “This is cool.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, if it can quietly jump in and out of, wherever we need it to go, why does it need to be super stealthy?”

“Because nothing you monkeys do is ever easy,” he sighed. “Something is bound to go wrong, so I gave the ship the ability to exfil stealthily, without jumping.”

It was funny to hear Skippy using military terms like ‘exfil’, which is a fancy way of saying ‘get pulled out of the danger zone’. “This is all amazing, if it works.”

“If?”

“Have you tested it?”

“Well, no, but-

“It needs testing, Skippy.”

“Ugh. Listen, knucklehead, I told you the drive is only good for two jumps. Every time we conduct a test, I will have to tear out the jump gear and replace it.”

“We need testing. That is not negotiable. Uh!” I shushed him. “Part of testing is learning what the thing does, what it can’t do, and how the pilots can get the best performance from it. Testing teaches us how to fly it.”

“I know that. I also know we have a limited supply of the exotic materials I need to make the miniaturized jump drive.”

“How limited?”

“Enough for three tests, and two actual missions.”

“That’s not good.”

“Then you monkeys will need to pay attention during the testing,” he sniffed. “Instead of scratching yourselves.”

“We do not-” Forget it, I told myself. There was no point in arguing with him. Plus, as I opened my mouth, I realized I was scratching the back of my neck. Damn it. Maybe we monkeys do scratch a lot. “Let’s change the subject. What should we call this thing?”

“Well, it is based on a Panther dropship, but this one is extra stealthy, get it? So, I thought we should name it after an Earth animal that is known for being sneaky.”

“Like what?”

“A housecat.”

“A cat?”

“They are supreme hunters, Joe.”

“Yeah, I know, but, we can’t just call it ‘Cat’.”

“Ugh. Of course not, dumdum. We should name it for a particular cat.”

“Uh, I hate to ask, what-”

“We should call it “Mister Fluffy’.”

“Mister Fluffy? What-”

“That is the name of a cat Margaret had when she was a young girl. It kept leaving dead mice on her pillow. You didn’t know about that? Shame on you, Joe.”

“Hey, I know a lot about Margaret, just not-”

“Really? What is her favorite color?”

“Uh-” The fact was, I had no idea, we had never discussed it. Maybe that made me a bad boyfriend? Or, we had talked about it, and I wasn’t paying attention. That would be worse. “Red?” I guessed, because she is a Marine.

“No,” he chuckled.

“Then, what is it?”

“You should ask her.”

“I will, uh, someday. Getting back to the subject, we cannot call this thing ‘Mister Fluffy’.”

“Why not?” He demanded, hands on his hips.

“Just trust me on this, OK? Listen, it is a stealth ship. We should name it for an animal that relies on stealth, like, uh,” I had no idea. What types of animals hunt at night? “Hey, we should call it the ‘Owl’.”

“An owl? Nobody is afraid of an owl, knucklehead.”

“You should talk to rodents who live in the forest.”

“You should talk to rodents who lived around Margaret’s house.”

“We are not calling it Mister Fluffy,” I gave him the knife hand, which had gotten really sharp from steady use. “When can we start flight testing? We’re leaving in nine days and,” I checked my zPhone. “Sixteen hours.””

“Um, well, heh heh, I’m still working on the flight control AI.”

“Can you set up a simulator, so pilots can get started?”

“I am very busy, you know? Plus, I can’t program a simulator until I understand the flight characteristics.”

“Which requires testing, right?”

“Ugh. Yes.”

“Operating the jump drive is just pushing buttons. The pilots need to know how to fly it. That doesn’t require burning out your precious jump drive.”

“OK, OK.”

“Skippy, I am very grateful for your efforts here.”

“You’re welcome, it-”

“Assuming this thing can do what you claim.”

“Assuming? Who designed and built it? I did.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Skippy was super proud of his latest creation, and I knew he wanted praise, so I called Simms to the docking bay. She walked around it with me, opening hatches to inspect the mechanisms, and going into the cramped rear cabin so Skippy could show off his miniaturized jump drive. It was impressive; previous versions of DeLoreans had the jump drive components hung on the outside of the hull, looping around it and rendering the dropship almost impossible to fly in an atmosphere. And poorly balanced for flying anywhere. The Owl was a sleek package, again assuming it could actually jump, and fly.

“Skippy,” I pushed myself up from being on my knees, looking closely at the casing around the virtual drive coils. “That casing, and the brackets that hold it, look kind of flimsy.”

“Flimsy? Hey, this is military grade stuff,” he boasted.

I looked at Simms, and we both shook our heads. “Uh oh,” I said.

“What?” Skippy blinked. “Isn’t-”

“Skippy, the term ‘military grade’ has a different meaning for people who are in the military,” I explained while shaking my head. “Like, Army-grade toilet paper has wood chips in it.”

“That’s because it’s made by the lowest bidder,” Simms said with a sour look.

“Military grade also often means it is pushing the limits of technology, so it breaks a lot,” I added.

“With no thought given to making it easy to use, or comfortable.”

“Standardized to the point where it’s not the best option for any user.”

“Needs constant maintenance, and-”

“OK, OK, I get it!” Skippy grumbled. “Jeez, I was just trying to give you confidence about using the damned thing. Maybe I should have said it is ‘handcrafted’?”

“Uh, how would you build something like that by hand?”

“That is a very good point,” he muttered. “I will say it was ‘crafted by artisans’.”

“Nope,” I laughed. “That’s just marketing bullshit that means you’re charging twice what the thing is worth.”

“Ugh. OK, fine. How about ‘old world craftsmanship’?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Um,” he blinked. “You know what, I have no idea.”

“Could you just label it as ‘Thrown together by Skippy’?”

“How will that give anyone confidence in the thing?”

“It will let people know they’re not being fed a line of bullshit.”

“Fine. Ugh, I will never understand you monkeys.”

We conducted tests flights of the Owl during the times when we took Valkyrie’s on short jumps away from Earth, making sure the ship’s jump drive hadn’t suffered damage during our encounter with Roscoe. We even took a detour to Neptune, a world with a thick atmosphere, to test how our shiny new toy performed where aerodynamic factors affected its performance.

Anyway, the first three test flights of the Owl were conducted without crew aboard, and Skippy managed not to crash it into the ship. When test pilots went aboard, they reported the Owl was significantly tail-heavy, with most of the remaining mass in the droopy nose. That was not a good combination, having weight in the nose and tail meant that maneuvers tended to get out of control if the pilots did not use a very light hand on the controls. They also found it was a bitch to fly, especially in an atmosphere. Coming down from orbit, the Owl could quickly begin to wobble, and flip on its back because it was naturally more aerodynamically stable upside down.

That was not good.

Other than the poor flight characteristics, the Owl performed as advertised. It was impressively stealthy, once even sneaking within eight hundred kilometers of Valkyrie before Bilby detected it, even though he knew it was coming.

For tests of the miniaturized jump drive, the Owl didn’t need a crew, Skippy controlled it remotely. Which is a good thing, because on the first test, it exploded.

Like, BOOM.

I was on the bridge, watching what we all expected would be another routine jump, when instead, the Owl disappeared in a violent burst of radiation. “What the f-”

“Ugh. I don’t know what went wrong, knucklehead,” Skippy snapped at me, while the crew on the bridge gasped in shock. “This is why I insisted we conduct testing, remember?”

My memory of events was different but sure, what the hell, I figured. “It is a good thing you are so cautious. Do we have enough material to build another one?”

“The airframe and other zoom-zoom spaceship gear is not a problem. I already was working on an improved version.”

I gave him a thumbs up. “Improved like, less explodey?”

“Oh, shut up.”

To his credit, the Owl Mark II did not explode, and it was slightly better balanced. The pilots referred to their new toy as the Duck, because of the unfortunate weird nose of the thing. Was I upset that they rejected the name I selected? No. There is a long tradition of military pilots referring to aircraft by nicknames, instead of the official designation. The US Air Force assigned the F-16 fighter the name ‘Fighting Falcon’, but pilots called it ‘Viper’ after the spacecraft in Battlestar Galactica. The original Battlestar, not the reboot. Or the reboot of the reboot. The people who actually had their butts in the pilot seats, and their lives on the line, could call our special DeLorean anything they wanted.

We had a new toy, without a mission for it. I couldn’t imagine how we could use a DeLorean against a hostile Elder AI, but I didn’t have to worry about finding a use for it.

The Universe would do that for me.

“Sir,” Simms startled me as she walked into my office. At the time, I was immersed in Very Important Work, that only looked like I was playing a video game.

Really.

OK, yes, it was a video game. But, it had been developed by the UN Navy as a training aid for teaching space combat maneuvers, and a multiplayer version of the game was used for wargaming. The game was good enough that it had become the Navy’s primary combat planning and simulation tool. The reason I was playing the game that morning is the Navy planning staff had asked me to review recent updates, since I had the most space combat experience in the entire fleet.

Which, while true, was not particularly useful to the Navy overall. My experience was with various versions of the Flying Dutchman, then aboard Valkyrie, a ship that had been significantly upgraded over the years. Almost all of my relevant experience was limited to commanding a single ship, so I wasn’t very familiar with the fleet combat doctrines the Navy had developed. And I had never commanded the types of ships the Navy currently operated. So, when the request came through official channels for me to test the latest version of the game, I kind of suspected somebody in the planning office wanted to check a box on a form, rather than actually needing my opinion.

Anyway, whether what I was doing was productive or not, it was fun, so I hadn’t heard Simms knock on my office door, if she did.

“Huh?” I paused the game. “XO, what’s-”

“You need to do something about your beer can,” she gave me The Look, and added, “Sir,” as an afterthought.

“Rut roh.” When she called Skippy ‘my’ beer can, I was in trouble. “Skippy, what did you do this time? Skippy? Skippy!” He didn’t answer, not directly.

“Hey, you have reached Skippy,” he said in the kind of distorted voice you heard from a bad recording. “I am very busy right now doing, well, that’s not any of your business. Please hang up and try again. Good luck with that,” he muttered under his breath.

Clearly, Skippy did not wish to be involved.

“Give me the bad news, XO.”

She sat down with a sigh. “This is partly my fault.”

“I’m glad we can agree on that,” I said before my brain could engage. That was not the right thing to say. I needed to make a note of that. “I meant-”

“At first, it sounded like a good deal,” she frowned.

“You made a deal, with Skippy? I can think of a million ways for that to go wrong. What were you-”

“I wasn’t thinking. I trusted that little,” she bit her lower lip. “With the supply chain dirtside disrupted by the Jupiter Cloud, we have had difficulty securing all kinds of consumables, spare parts, everything on the inventory list.”

“OK, yeah.” We were supposed to jump away from Earth in less than two days, so dropships were flying up with all kinds of stuff we needed to cram into the ship’s cargo holds. “I thought UNEF Command gave us top priority for-”

“They did, and that is a nice legal instrument. It doesn’t fill the cargo hold of a dropship, unless all the people involved want to cooperate. Everyone dirtside and up here are competing for food, new clothing, you name it. We were falling behind the resupply schedule, so I contracted with a third party logistics and fulfillment outfit.”

“Oh no. Please tell me you didn’t-”

“Skippy’s Supply Company delivered everything we needed. At first. Then we noticed the schedule slipping, except when the crew ordered T-shirts, coffee mugs and other junk that Skippy sells directly. That stuff has less than a six-hour turnaround, from order to delivery up here.”

“Six hours, to get T-shirts into orbit? Where is he getting dropships to-”

She held up her hands. “I do not want to know about that.”

“Probably a good idea. OK, so you want me to talk with him about getting back on schedule?”

“That, and reversing the priority shipping and handling ‘fees’ he is tacking on, that more than double the cost of the items.”

“We do need the stuff, and UNEF Command is paying for it, so-”

“You have to explain why we are over budget.”

“Shit.”

“The UNEF Finance and Budget Office wants an explanation.”

“Damn it. That will take all freakin’ day.”

“It’s cute that you think the Finance Office can be dealt with in a single day, Sir.”

“Oh crap. OK, OK, uh,” I snapped my fingers. “How about this? As president of Skippistan, I will cover the additional charges from our national treasury.”

“What?!” Skippy screeched. “Hey! That is my money!”

“I am the president, and I have authority to release funds for-”

“Oooooh bad news, Joe. You are under investigation for fraud, corruption, misuse of funds, and um, whatever else I can think of. Sadly, your spending authority has been suspended for the duration of this extremely serious investigation.”

“Don’t even think about doing that, you ass.”

“My attorney,” he sniffed,  “recommends I not associate with you while you are being investigated for these serious crimes, so-”

Whatever I was going to say got cut off when Reed called from the bridge. “General, we have a, um, situation, in docking bay Bravo-2.” Her voice sounded, amused?

“What is it, Reed?”

“You um,” she snickered. Definitely she found the situation amusing, whatever it was. “You should see for yourself, Sir.”

“Fine. Thank you, Fireball. XO, you’re with me, we can talk while-”

“Oh, no need for you to walk all the way down there, Joe,” Skippy chuckled nervously. “You are much too busy to be bothered with mundane details. Don’t worry, I will handle it and-”

“You handling it is why I should worry.”

“No cheating,” I wagged a finger at Simms as we walked through the maze of passageways to that particular docking bay.

“Sir?”

“You were about to ping someone to get a heads up on whatever the problem is. Don’t spoil Reed’s fun.”

“Even if it’s a screw-up by my team?”

“If it was, Skippy wouldn’t be nervous about it.”

“Good point.”

While we took the elevator down two decks, I tried to imagine what the situation could be that amused Reed and required my attention. That docking bay was dedicated to one of our superheavy lifter dropships, the modified ships that had the capacity to fit large items into the bulging cargo section of the fuselage, and the raw power to boost heavy loads up off a planet and up the hill out of a gravity well. Valkyrie didn’t normally carry a superheavy lifter with us, the entire UN Navy only had a handful of those specialized spacecraft, and we didn’t have much need for that sort of lifting capacity on a typical mission. At Jaguar base, most bulky items were manufactured, modified, repaired and maintained in orbit. The spacedocks there used robotic tugs to move components to and from ships, we really only needed superheavy ships at Earth, where most manufacturing was still confined to dirtside. Anyway, I couldn’t imagine what about a lifter would amuse Reed. If a pilot had an embarrassing moment by pranging a landing gear, the last thing Reed would do is call my attention to the incident. All I could think is some jokers dirtside had painted a lifter to look like a grinning whale. Again. But, that had already happened once, and that sort of thing was only funny the first time.

The crew chief was walking out the open airlock as we approached, shaking her head with a wry grin.

“Staff Sergeant Honchar?” I promoted her. “What’s up?”

“You really need to see this for yourself, Sir.”

Going through the airlock, I was a bit childish by quickening my steps to get ahead of Simms. “Oh my G-” That was all I could say.

Simms was completely speechless for a moment.

“OK, I can explain,” Skippy groaned.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t,” I laughed.

“First, this totally not my fault.”

“I’m pretty sure it is, beer can.”

“Ugh. The-”

“Skippy,” Simms recovered and held up an index finger for silence. “How did this happen? How could this happen?”

“Hey, anything involving monkeys is bound to get screwed up.”

“That does not begin to explain this.” She pointed at, the thing.

The superheavy lifter was designed sort of like the old Space Shuttle. The front cabin was pressurized, while most of the bulging fuselage had big doors along the top, all the way to the tail. The doors split open at the top, hinging on the sides so large items could be lowered into place by a crane. The lifter’s doors were swung open, exposing the cargo.

A propeller.

A giant, heavy propeller with curved blades for a submarine.

What the f-

“Well, heh heh,” Skippy stammered nervously. “It turns out that the United States Navy part number for a Columbia-class submarine propeller, and the United Nations Navy number for the type of power converter appropriate for use aboard Valkyrie, is only different by two digits. There must have been a typo in the order form somewhere.”

“This order went through Skippy’s Supply Company?”

“Of course, Joe. When you want top-quality service, you-”

“Did someone request a top-quality screw-up?”

“Ugh. Hey, it’s not my fault if-”

“No one on the ground pinged you, to check whether we really needed a freakin’ submarine propeller up here?”

“Well, Jeez, I don’t remember. I am very busy, Joe. I don’t have time to-”

“Um, hey General Dude?” Bilby drawled. “The supply folks at Norfolk did contact Skippy about it, but he told them he couldn’t be bothered to check every detail.”

“I was busy at the time,” the beer can whined.

“Bilby, what was Skippy so extremely busy doing back then?”

“Oh wow, like, he was trying to get the high score in the new Legends of Zelda game.”

“You what?” I glared at Skippy’s avatar.

“It’s not my fault,” he sniffed. “Nagatha cheated. No way did she get the high score.”

“We can talk about this later. Right now, you are getting that stupid propeller back to where it belongs. And Skippy’s Supply Company is paying the shipping charges both ways, and the restocking fees.”

“What? This is an outrage! I demand-”

“Skippy, is whatever you plan to say next likely to piss me off, or make me happy?”

“Um, the first one,” he grumbled.

“It’s your call whether you want to open your mouth or not.”

“Not.”

“A wise decision.”

“Can I ask one question?”

“Make it count.”

“Why did the dum-dum soldiers on the ground not think maybe they shouldn’t send a propeller up to a starship?”

“They are sailors, not soldiers, but the same principals apply. Most of a soldier’s life involves following orders that make no sense, you get used to it. The supply people in Norfolk  tried to confirm the order and once you didn’t respond, they rightfully went back to not giving a shit.”

“Oooh, so you are mad at them, too, right?”

“Wrong. I kind of admire them sticking it to the man. Hell, the crew that sent a propeller into orbit will be legends. I’d like to buy them all a beer.”

“Ugh. I hate monkeys.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

We jumped away from Earth without incident, except just before the TV broadcast began, Simms noticed I had smeared peanut butter on the collar of my uniform top. A quick dash to my cabin to change, and I was back on the bridge with two minutes to spare. Easy.

On the flight out to meet the Jeraptha, we took time for new pilots to gain experience flying the ship, and we tested upgrades to the jump navigation system. I’m happy to report that none of the new pilots broke the ship, and nav system worked just fine.

You might get the idea that we were not in a hurry to reach our destination, and you would be right about that. We were very deliberately not in a rush to do anything, not being concerned about completing our mission and getting back to Earth quickly was the whole point. Another UN Navy ship could have brought the news of Roscoe to Chotek and the diplomatic team, Valkyrie went there to make a very public declaration that we were completely confident in the ability of Roscoe to defend our homeworld. Dashing out and back as quickly as possible, or keeping Valkyrie near Earth, would have the opposite effect. When you have made the decision to bluff, you need to sell it. Never let your opponent see you sweat, right?

That’s great in theory. In reality, I was sweating, and not sleeping well.

Anyway, to help me handle stress, I was in a yoga class with-

OK, yes.

I do yoga.

Sometimes.

Most of the special operations people do yoga, or something like it. Those exercises can improve balance and flexibility. My body had racked up a lot of mileage over the years, I had aches and pains in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles, or anything else that could hurt.

Anyway, I attended a yoga class usually twice a week, right after cross training or some other exercise. It’s also a good way to cool down, although the instructors get irritated when they end the class with a period of laying on the floor and doing deep breathing relaxation, and I’m fidgeting. I just can’t get into it. When I’m relaxing, I want to be on a couch with a bag of chips and a TV remote, you know?

Anyway, we were doing a pose called ‘Downward Dog’ and I had my eyes closed. Closing your eyes is not the recommended technique, it’s just necessary for me. I’m in a mixed gender group, with women wearing tight clothes, I figure they don’t want me staring at them while they bend over. Hell, I don’t want to be staring at them, that’s why I close my eyes.

Something brushed against my face as Simms said, “Oh, damn it.” Opening my eyes, I saw the rubber band that held her ponytail had snapped and flown through the air to bounce off my face. “Sorry, Sir,” she picked up the broken band as the instructor told us to get up into Warrior pose, or something like that. Simms tossed the broken rubber band in a bin and walked over to her bag against the wall, digging into it to get out something she stuck her ponytail through. When she stepped back to rejoin the class, I blinked.

“Is that a,” I whispered, looking at the fuzzy, sparkly thing in her hair.

“It’s a scrunchie.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know that-”

“That what?” She stepped out of the Warrior pose to glare at me. “That adult women wear them?”

“Uh-” Why can my brain not think of anything intelligent to say, when I need it to?

“This is a backup, that I keep in my gym bag. And, I like it.”

“It, uh, looks great.”

The instructor scowled at both of us for talking in class, so we shut up and did, yoga things.

Frey walked over to Simms after the class. “Ma’am, what was that about?”

“Our Commanding General thinks only teenage girls should be wearing a scrunchie,” she tugged at the one in her hair.

Frey had not worn one since she left high school, but she frowned. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

“You mean, have Skippy fabricate one for you?”

“We could, but do you know Captain Watson-Hoyle?” She pointed to a woman running on a treadmill.

“She’s a pilot, why?”

“She has a different scrunchie every time she comes into the gym. She must have dozens of the things.”

The next time I went into the gym for a yoga class, I was actually looking forward to it. My back hurt from, well, from being in the Army. My plan was to ride an exercise bike, do some warm-up exercises, lift weights, then finish with yoga that would hopefully help my aching back. Nothing noteworthy happened until I walked into the area set aside for classes. Even then, nothing happened right away, because I am kind of clueless.

Then I noticed.

All of the women were wearing brightly-colored scrunchies in their hair. Even the women with hair too short for a ponytail had a scrunchy held on with pins or something.

OMG.

Grudzien, our Polish special operator, was wearing a scrunchie, and a big grin on his face. Special ops guys had a waiver from normal grooming standards, they could grow their hair long and have beards. Grudzien’s hair wasn’t quite long enough for a scrunchie, but he had one pinned on.

“Uh,” once again, my incredible brain came to my rescue. “OK,” I shook my head and laughed. Holding up my hands, I turned to Simms. “XO, consider that message received loud and clear.”

“We have one for you, Sir,” one of our pilots said, holding a sparkly pink scrunchie in her hand. Because she wasn’t wearing a nametape on her T-shirt, I had to pause to recall her name. Watson-Doyle, no, Watson-Hoyle. All I knew about her was her callsign ‘Bandit’ because she had suggested the original ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ for movie night when she first came aboard. And at breakfast, she pours milk in her bowl before the cereal, so clearly she is a sociopath.

“That’s, uh, great, Captain,” I took the thing. It not only was pink with sparkles, it had unicorns printed on it. “How come I don’t get,” I pointed at the cool scrunchie Frey was wearing, that was printed with the Merry Band of Pirates logo. “One like that?”

“This is only for the cool kids, Sir,” Frey told me with a straight face.

“Do you want a special scrunchie, Sir?” Simms asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“No, this one,” I tucked the pink unicorn thing in a pants pocket. “Is special enough, thank you. I will cherish it forever.”

Grudzien tugged at the thing in his hair. “Can I take this off now?”

“Forget it,” I jabbed a finger at him. “You are wearing that until the class is over.”

“Captain Tozarko,” Adjutant-Ensign Gendrix coughed nervously, a sign that not even his cybernetics could override the extreme stress he was experiencing. Like every junior crew member in the armada, his life had been absolute chaos for too long. The grinding, yet familiar, routine of an endless war had been shockingly disrupted by the revelation that lowly humans were being assisted by an Elder AI, and had acquired Elder weapons.

And that they could crash entire wormhole networks.

And that ancient Sentinels were once again roaming the galaxy on a killing spree.

And that humans now had control of a Sentinel.

And that Admiral Reichert, with the assistance of Red Section, was responsible for awakening the Sentinels.

The shocking part of Reichert’s involvement was not the recklessness of awakening an ancient horror, for the Maxohlx people were faced with losing their dream of ruling the galaxy, and desperate measures were needed. The shocking part was not even that the project had succeeded.

No, what Gendrix found shocking about the entire situation was that the supreme leader of the Hegemony military apparently had been unprepared for the secret being exposed. It had taken activation of a hidden protocol in the matrix of ship AIs to restore the captive commanders to their rightful authority.

Perhaps Reichert had grown overconfident?

Perhaps, drunk on power, his judgment had slipped?

Gendrix’s mind was spinning, too many things were changing too quickly, changing too radically. The ship’s political officer was now in the brig, Reichert was still in a coma, and Captain Tozarko was back in control of the ship. For personal power and security reasons, Reichert had not designated a second in command of the armada, and the admirals in charge of the squadrons that comprised the seven hundred ships of the mutiny fleet were making decisions by consensus. The idea that more than thirty senior officers could agree on anything was surprising. Yet the flagship’s captain was instructing the navigation crew to program a jump, in coordination with all the other ships in the mutiny fleet, instructing them to input the coordinates sent by the squadron leader, and urging them to work quickly. The ship had to jump before the mutiny fleet could be found, sensor readings indicated the other ships of the armada were searching for them.

“Ensign?” Tozarko pinged her young aide, adding a note of irritation and impatience to the message.

“Where is the ship-” he realized too late that he needed the senior officer to see him as part of her team. Needed her to know he wished to be part of her team, although they were all openly committing mutiny. Committing treason. Everyone he knew, himself included, expected what they were calling the Rebel Fleet to travel back to home territory, perhaps to an isolated fleet base, where the ships could reprovision, get up-to-date intel on the situation, and perhaps connect with units that were sympathetic to their cause. And, perhaps even gain assistance from Red Section, if that organization still existed after their treasonous conspiracy with Admiral Reichert had been exposed. “Captain, whatever you decide,” he straightened his shoulders. “I am with you.”

The response was not what he expected. Rather than quietly acknowledging his profession of loyalty, she turned to scowl at him.

Of course. He took her stern expression to mean she should not have had any reason to question that he would follow her commands.

Then she made a snort, a brief exhalation through her nose.

Amusement?

“Adjutant-Ensign Gendrix, you believe we are taking this fleet to home territory, to launch a coup against our government, or join a civil war if it is already in progress? No.”

“But, Captain-”

“We considered that option, and discarded it. This fleet cannot rally anyone to our cause, because we failed. At Earth, we were humiliated, we brought shame upon the entire Hegemony. No one will want to associate with us.”

“But if we-”

“We also can’t be certain there are not other hidden protocols inside our ship AIs, to prevent Hegemony warships from committing hostile acts against our own people. We have received too many nasty surprises from our ship AIs recently, Gendrix.”

“Then,” he blinked, bewildered. “Where are we going?”

“The simple answer is, to redeem ourselves.”

“Redeem?”

“Ensign, we are all condemned by our association with Reichert. Whatever you think of him, whether he did as the humans claim, whether you think he was justified if he did attempt to wake up Sentinels in a controlled manner, our government will believe he is guilty of unauthorized actions, and that his ultimate aim was a position higher than supreme commander of the military. If we return home, we will pay for crimes that most of us did not commit. For actions we knew nothing about. We can only escape that fate, and redeem ourselves, if we prove this Sentinel at Earth is not capable of defending the human homeworld.”

“You- We, will attack the Sentinel?”

“No. We will strike the human homeworld. The last time, it surprised us. This time, we will strike before it can react.”

“The,” Gendrix hesitated. “The Sentinel will react, to protect Earth.”

“Possibly. If there is a Sentinel there at all.”

“Captain?” the ensign’s eyes bulged.

“From a relay station, we learned something very interesting: the combined force of Thuranin and Bosphuraq at Bildegung fled, when a Sentinel appeared and approached that world.”

“A sensible precaution,” Gendrix muttered, assuming he was expected to say something. “With Sentinels active, their ships are needed to defend their core territory.”

“That is true, except for two facts you are not aware of. That Sentinel appeared after we encountered the one at Earth.”

“Surely that is not possible? The humans-”

“Told us, told everyone, that they had ordered all Sentinels into hibernation, yes.”

“They were lying?”

“Not necessarily,” Tozarko said. “The second fact is that there was no Sentinel at Bildegung. It was a hologram, a hoax. The Bosphuraq and Thuranin fled from nothing, and the Jeraptha scored an easy victory.”

“You, you think the Sentinel at Earth is also a hologram?”

“We think that is possible. The humans, or their Elder AI, could have taken control of our ships through other means. We intend to discover the truth.”

“But, Captain Tozarko, what if the Sentinel at Earth is truly an omnipotent defender, as the humans claim?”

“Then, Gendrix, we die as warriors in battle against the enemy, rather than as prisoners of our own people.”

“Joe,” Chotek said as he dropped ice into a glass, and handed it to me. A glass of iced tea, not alcohol. The drink was his personal hangover remedy: iced tea, tomato juice, pickle juice and cayenne pepper. If that sounds disgusting, it tastes even worse. I think the benefit of drinking that hangover cure is it makes you less eager to ever touch alcohol again. We both had enough adult beverages the day before, while I gave a briefing to the Jeraptha delegation about the overall Sentinel situation, and specifically the Sentinel that was now guarding Earth. On the way to the negotiation site, I had mentally prepared myself for the powerful aroma of the cotton candy and furniture polish swill the beetles loved to guzzle, and reminded myself to keep hydrated. It helped, a bit.

The beetles drink when they are celebrating, they drink when they are sad, they drink when they are just astonished. Yesterday’s briefing was supposed to be a two-hour session; half an hour for me to give an update, and ninety minutes for questions and answers. Two hours turned into five, because the Jeraptha were both astonished and celebrating. On their side, burgoze for the men and floon for the women flowed liberally, and apparently, nobody was pouring the cheap stuff. Damn, those beetles can drink.

And dance. The meeting became a party, with a DJ, and then drunken beetles started lurching around the impromptu dance floor. By that time, we poor humans were hugging the walls to keep from being crushed. When beetles get particularly enthusiastic, they do something that looks like slam dancing; starting a few meters apart, they rush toward each other on their rear set of legs, and crash their thoraxes together, standing as tall as they can.

It is disturbing.

I’m just glad they didn’t drag me into the mosh pit.

That morning, the Jeraptha delegation requested a delay in the proceedings as they needed to, according to the message, “consider the recent developments”.

Meaning, they were all too hung over to crawl out of bed.

That was fine with me, I had a headache from mixing bourbon and tequila.

By the way, do not ever do that.

“Thanks,” I took the glass of iced tea, and gulped half of it. “What did you want to talk about?” We were in the dining area reserved for humans, as it was mid-morning, the place was empty other than the two of us. Really, the news that humanity now had a Sentinel protecting our homeworld had already reached the negotiation site, and probably the majority of the galaxy, before Valkyrie left the solar system. The party was not because we brought wondrous news, it was a celebration of ends and beginnings. The end of the Sentinel threat. The end of any imaginable threats to Earth, and with it any reluctance our potential allies might have about signing a mutual defense agreement. Hopefully, an end to the rigid patron-client coalitions.

Was it the end of the endless war that raged hot and cold across the galaxy?

No. No one was foolish enough to believe that. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it was not the end of the war, or even the beginning of the end, but possibly it might be the end of the beginning. Possibly, each species could decide for themselves whether to fight, rather than being forced to follow the direction of a higher-level client, or their ultimate patrons.

So, everyone at the party was hoping the presence of a Sentinel at Earth might be the beginning of a new paradigm-

No one actually said the word ‘paradigm’. That freakin’ buzzword is reserved for PowerPoint slides. What people at the party, human and beetle, thought and hoped was that at least the immediate crisis was over, and maybe we had time to enjoy life for a while before the next crisis heaved itself out of a swamp, sat on our chests and barfed in our faces.

Sorry for the vivid metaphor, I did drink too much tequila.

For me, the definition of too much tequila is any amount of tequila. Will I ever learn?

Unlikely.

“Ah,” I smacked my lips as I finished the glass of hangover cure. “That’s good, thanks.” I did feel better.

“Skippy woke me up this morning,” Hans said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I cringed. “Was he obsessing about children’s books again?”

“No,” Chotek laughed. “He didn’t wake me up that early. Joe, he seems rather, subdued.”

“You haven’t spent a lot of time around him recently.”

“Yes.” He looked me in the eye, like he didn’t entirely trust me to answer truthfully. “Still, is there something different about Skippy?”

“He’s just tired,” I said quietly, though any listening device the Jeraptha had in the compartment could have heard me perfectly. “This, isn’t exactly classified, but-”

“I’ll keep it to myself.”

I nodded. “Getting that Sentinel to Earth took a lot out of Skippy. His energy seems limitless, but he gets tired. Mentally, you know?”

“Yes. Joe, what happened? You skimmed over it yesterday.”

“With the Sentinel? Yeah,” taking another sip of Chotek’s nas-tea hangover cure, I set the glass down on the table. “Skippy did not expect the damned thing to go into hibernation itself. He says he should have expected that, the thing had been awake continuously for way too long, it was looking for an excuse. Looking for permission to go offline, That’s hindsight, I don’t blame Skippy. He never hacked into a Sentinel before. That he knows of.”

“So, how did the thing get to Earth? How did you survive?”

“When Skippy realized it was pulling itself out of local spacetime, and taking us with it, he knew he couldn’t stop it, he didn’t know how. Didn’t understand the mechanism. So, he created a bubble of local spacetime around Valkyrie. That,” I shook my head. “Was the weirdest experience ever. It’s like, past, present and future were all happening at once, and I’m not talking about the ghosts in a Christmas Carol. The rest, I have to take Skippy’s word for it, because I wasn’t able to perceive events in a linear fashion, according to him. The Sentinel was damaged worse than he thought, its higher-level functions were all scrambled. Once we were all in higher spacetime, whatever that is, Skippy was able to deploy his full capabilities, and hacked into the thing. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, it wouldn’t have worked with a normal Sentinel. That one was, is, severely damaged. Skippy put it back together, sort of, replaced the dorked-up parts with a submind. Not a submind like part of himself, he had to create a new one.”

“This was all a surprise to you?” Hans asked. “Skippy never hinted he might be able to hack into it, take control of it?”

“No. I didn’t have a clue. We didn’t intend to get that close to it for so long, sure as hell didn’t think we’d get sucked in when it went nighty-nite,” I snorted. “It wasn’t even supposed to go into hibernation, that signal was only for the ones woken up by the-” I coughed, almost forgetting the cover story that the kitties were responsible for waking up the Sentinels. “Rotten kitties.”

Hans looked at me, cocking his head slightly, like he knew I had been about to say something else. The guy was trained to detect when someone across the table is lying. Those skills didn’t work so well with alien body language, but he was an expert at human behavior. If he suspected I was lying, he let it go. We had enough history that he hopefully knew if I didn’t tell him something, it was for a good reason.

Crap. I hated lying to him. But, damn it, we needed him to believe the Maxohlx had woken up the Sentinels, so he would be filled with righteous indignation, and make it clear that the entire galaxy should feel the same way. We needed him to sell the cover story, that was easier if he didn’t know it was total bullshit.

So, really, I was helping the guy do his job.

Right.

“Did Skippy not know he could hack into it,” his eyes automatically looked toward the ceiling. “Or did he not tell you, because he was afraid that if it didn’t work, he would look less awesome?”

Both of us waited a beat for the expected protest from the beer can. After a moment of silence, I shook my fist at the ceiling. “You could be right about that. It sounds like something the little shithead would do. I guess,” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“The Sentinel is being run by a submind now?”

“Yeah. A really big, really powerful one.”

“If Skippy created it, does this submind have restrictions on what it can do?”

“No,” I lied. Or, I sort of lied. Roscoe had restrictions, just not the same ones that prevented Skippy from doing a lot of useful things. Roscoe’s major restriction was that it couldn’t do anything useful without instructions from Skippy. “Unlike Skippy, it can directly use weapons. He just replaced the broken parts.”

“How did it get all the way to Earth?”

“That was Skippy’s initiative, I don’t remember what happened. He figured that was the best place for it.” What I didn’t tell Hans was that Earth is the final destination for Roscoe, it couldn’t move anymore. Its lack of locomotion was not due to a submind restriction, it simply lacked the power to pull its mass back into higher dimensions. It was stuck there, for better or worse. That was better for Earth, and worse for Roscoe. Except that, eventually Roscoe would run out of power, and it would be obvious that a disabled Sentinel was hanging out near our homeworld. At that point, instead of keeping threats away from Earth, Roscoe’s powerless carcass would attract every treasure-hunting species in the galaxy, all competing to carry away as much recently-active Elder technology as they could fit in or attach to their ships. And all fighting each other for the spoils, with our comparatively low-tech planet likely getting caught in the crossfire.

But, hey, I had enough trouble to deal with already. I would worry about Roscoe’s power drain when it became critical. Like in about fourteen months, according to Skippy’s best guesstimate.

Until then, good times, huh?

Sometimes, I really, really hate my job.

Maybe Hans sensed I was uncomfortable with talking about Roscoe, because he changed the subject. “The instructions from the UN are for us to pause negotiations, pending a policy review. Do you know what the goals will be, when talks resume?”

“I don’t, sorry.” That, at least, was one true thing I told him. “I’m pretty sure they don’t know right now. All the governments down there,” I winced. It was easy to think of anything related to Earth as ‘down there’ or ‘dirtside’. “They’re busy putting the pieces back together, you know? The Jupiter Cloud is dispersing, weather should get back to normal. Slowly, it won’t happen all at once. There is so much snowpack in the Northern hemisphere now, all that bright white surface is reflecting sunlight back into space. Skippy estimates the northern US and Canada won’t be planting crops for another summer, and that’s being optimistic. Food shortages will continue to be a big problem, and, ah,” I waved a hand. “You know how it is. Everyone is still competing for scarce resources, and the public wants to go back home now. There has been some talk like, now that we have an invincible Sentinel protecting Earth, maybe we don’t need alliances with other species out here. That we should let the galaxy burn, it’s no longer our problem.”

“That would be a serious mistake.”

It was good to hear him agree with my assessment, and he didn’t even know the truth about Roscoe. We needed allies more than ever. When I told him there was ‘some talk’ about pursuing an isolationist policy, that was understating the strength of that sentiment. Polls showed a majority of people were simply just tired of threats from outside our solar system. Tired of the constant fear, tired of thinking about complicated alien politics. Just done with it. There was even talk about not needing the ‘Expeditionary’ part of the United Nations Expeditionary Force. Pulling all of our forces back to Earth. Maintaining only a small garrison force at Jaguar base. Finally bringing everyone home from Paradise. The only exception was the beta site. Avalon was popular, a significant percentage of the population wanted to move there. More than could be transported outside the galaxy, more than the fragile ecosystem of that world could support. The whole thing was-

Oh, hell. I’m tired of thinking about it.

“Look, Hans, nothing has been decided yet. People need time to process, there have been a lot of huge changes just in the past decade, you know? The public will eventually see the benefit of engaging with the galaxy.”

“I’m sure they will,” he said. His expression said the opposite. “How long is Valkyrie going to be here?”

“We’re leaving the day after tomorrow. Going to swing by Paradise on the way home, deliver the news about Roscoe to our people still there.”

“You are not in a hurry to get back to Earth?”

“Nah,” I waved a hand to dismiss his concern. “We have a Sentinel guarding the place for us now. Plus, the rotten kitties will have a hell of a mess of their own to sort out. They’ll be too busy to cause trouble for us.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

All I did was shrug, but I also hoped I was right. We had to deal with a hostile Elder AI, but Skippy couldn’t leave Earth unprotected for long. One way or the other, we had to be damned certain the Maxohlx would leave our homeworld alone for a while.

At lunchtime, the beetles went off to eat, whatever they ate, and I joined the negotiation team in the dining area designated for humans. The food wasn’t anything fancy; soup and sandwiches, served buffet-style. While I was piling stuff onto a roll to make a sandwich, I noticed Chotek was laughing about something with a couple of other ambassadors. “Hey,” I walked over to him, taking a bite of my sandwich. “What’s so funny?”

“You haven’t heard?” Hans stared at me.

“There are a lot of things I haven’t heard,” I popped a potato chip in my mouth and crunched it. “What’s new?”

“The beetles,” he chuckled, joined by the other ambassadors. “Pulled another trick on their enemies.”

“Oh really?” I remembered the last trick by the ECO was them pretending to be the UN Navy, which caused problems for us. Damn those sketchy beetles. “What did they do this time?”

Hans lowered his voice. “We only know what the Jeraptha told us, they could be putting a good spin on the incident. Apparently, they used a hologram to make it look like a Sentinel was approaching a planet held by the enemy.” That drew another laugh from the crowd. “The enemy ships ran away-”

Whatever he said next, I didn’t hear. The bite of sandwich in my mouth felt like a rock, and I was suddenly cold. “The,” I interrupted Chotek without knowing what he was saying. “The beetles are telling everyone about this?”

“I would describe it as boasting,” Hans looked at me, tilting his head. “Joe,” he lowered his voice and turned away from his companions. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just, uh, I gotta go. The ship, I mean. We have to go. I just came to, get a sandwich before I left.”

“There are no sandwiches aboard Valkyrie?” he asked in a near whisper, looking at me closely, studying my eyes.

Damn it, the guy was trained to tell when someone was lying. “I didn’t want to leave, without telling you. Hans,” I looked around for a place to set the sandwich down, remembering almost too late that I supposedly wanted the damned thing. “You take care, huh?” Shifting the sandwich to the other hand, I shook his, while he tilted his head.

“Is everything all right, Joe?”

“Never better. Listen, it’s just, everyone in the freakin’ galaxy wants to talk to me, you know?” With that, I mumbled excuses to the other diplomats, then did the same with the Jeraptha, then alerted the Panther crew that we were leaving now, then endured a flight across to Valkyrie.

Simms met me in the docking bay. “What’s up, Sir?”  She asked, her eyes darting around, as every crew member in sight was looking at us, wondering about the sudden rush for me to get back aboard.

“We’re jumping for Earth, ASAP,” I told her after we were in the passageway. “Bilby?”

“At your service, Your Dudeness.” The ship’s AI had been, oddly, somehow more Bilby than usual since we left Earth, if that makes sense.

“Plot a least-time course for Earth, tell the pilots to punch it when ready.”

“Alrighty, then.”

“Sir,” Simms tapped my arm. She didn’t exactly yank me to a halt, she wouldn’t do that. But it had the same effect. “What is wrong?”

“I might have misjudged the situation,” I whispered, making sure no one was within earshot. “I thought the kitties in that fleet would be going home to cause trouble for their own people. Instead, if they are paying attention to recent events, they may be coming back to Earth, to cause trouble for us.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“What is-” I stopped in the doorway to the galley, causing the guy behind me to bump into me. “Sorry,” I said, then, “XO, what’s going on?”

They changed it. She changed it, no way would the galley be reconfigured without the executive officer’s involvement, or at least her approving the plans. Since shortly after we took the ships that got put together to form our mighty Valkyrie, the galley had not seen any major changes. Anyone who had been aboard the ship for more than a week could have walked in blindfolded, and found anything right where it was supposed to be. Just inside the door to the right were the coffee pots, providing the vital fuel that kept the crew active and alert. There was usually a basket of pastries near the coffee station, generally something left over from breakfast. Then a series of storage cabinets, before the chow line started, so people just wanting to get coffee didn’t interfere with those people getting a meal. The line for food was always the same, ending with a loaf of bread so you could grab a couple slices. And the drink station before you took your tray to a table.

The coffee station was the same, anyone would have to be crazy to mess with that. But everything else was, weird. The biggest change was multiple entry points for the chow line.

“We made a few changes, based on feedback from the crew.”

“Feedback?” I stared at her. “Nobody asked me for feedback.”

She stared back.

I got the message. Generally, I hated surprises and didn’t like change, so there was no point to asking me if I wanted things to be different.

Crap. Had I become that useless old guy who shakes his fist at anything new? Damn it, I’m still young. Maybe Simms had a point, I should try to be more flexible. “OK, show me.”

“This line is for vegetarian options,” she gestured to the first set of food stations. There was a salad bar, plus, some stuff I didn’t recognize, maybe tofu. Then there was bean dip, with a bowl labelled ‘Vegan Potato Chips’.

“Vegan?” I took a chip and ate it. Just a normal chip. “XO, aren’t all potato chips made from vegetables?”

“It’s not-”

“I mean, I suppose you could have Goat-tato chips,” I said. The guy behind me laughed at that.

“Goat-tato,” he snorted. “Good one, Sir. Think I ate some of that in Yemen.”

“Right? See, XO, goat would not be vegan.”

“Sir.” Simms was not amused.

“What else we got?”

“Gluten-free options,” she pointed to the next food station.

“Baked potatoes?” So far, between chips and baked taters, the new food choices looked pretty much like the old stuff. “Aren’t potatoes always free of gluten?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Hey, does this mean I don’t have to eat a salad, if I skip the vegan line?”

“No, it,” she looked around, frowning.

“Because I don’t see any rabbit food in the regular line,” I pointed to where the lunch choices that day included meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans. “Hey! There are bacon bits at the gluten-free station!”

“Before you ask, Sir, bacon does not contain gluten.”

“Great. Could I get a salad, then put bacon bits on it, or is that against the rules?”

“If that gets you to actually eat a salad-”

“Let’s not go crazy,” I told her.

“Joe,” Skippy spoke through the zPhone in my pocket. “You should consider a salad. Three out of four doctors recommend you eat a balanced diet.”

“Uh” I asked, “The fourth doctor doesn’t recommend I eat healthy stuff?”

“He would, but he needs to make a payment on his boat, so-”

“Gotcha. I’ll think about it.” Moving over to where the regular food was being served, I inspected the offerings. “Simms, how about those mashed taters? Are they made from special genetically modified potatoes, called Chock Full ‘O’ Gluten?”

“No, they’re just regular potatoes. Please just try it, Sir.” She didn’t look happy. I think she realized that no one would get salad, if they didn’t go to the vegetarian line, or vegan or whatever it was supposed to be.

“How about this?” I picked up a tray, plate and utensils. “I will take some of those super healthy potato chips, and a baked potato with bacon bits, and,” stepping over to the other line, I pointed to the meatloaf, and the crewman behind the counter slapped two slices on my plate. “I’ll take some gravy on the tater. Mm, yum. You’re right, XO, this is better.”

“That is just meat and potatoes, Sir,” she rolled her eyes.

“With bacon, and chips.” I held up the tray for her to inspect.

“Maybe I didn’t think this through very well,” she muttered.

“No, I like it. Good job!”

After teasing her, I went back to get green beans. And a side salad.

Thankfully, Goat-tato chips were never on the menu.

The single scout ship emerged from its jump wormhole with maximum stealth, the gamma rays from the rip in spacetime directed into an empty area between stars. The stealth was not absolutely necessary, as the only ships in the area also belonged to the rebel fleet, or the only ships known to be in the area were friendly. The true reason for the destroyer operating as quietly as possible was an unknown factor: the effective detection range of the Elder Sentinel near the human homeworld.

That one destroyer was carrying sensor data collected by six others, a half dozen destroyers that had bravely ventured within eleven lighthours of the planet called ‘Earth’. After gathering information with passive sensors, those ships had not jumped back to the rebel fleet, lest they lead the Sentinel to a tempting target. Instead, they had jumped in the opposite direction, to rendezvous with a single ship, and transferred their data to the waiting destroyer. That one ship then performed a series of jumps far away from the human star system, before rejoining the rebel fleet.

Most of a day later, Captain Tozarko scanned the official analysis provided by the fleet’s intelligence group, assisted by dedicated AIs. That was the problem, she did not entirely trust any analysis generated by artificial intelligence machines. Sending a ping to an officer of the intelligence group, she requested a meeting.

Moments later, a weary mid-level officer pinged her back. “This is Senior-Lieutenant Karstavan. How may I assist you, Captain Tozarko?”

“Senior-Lieutenant, I have read the analysis.”

“I assure you, it is quite comprehensive.”

“I’m sure it is. I am also sure that Admiral Yurbinbus will be asking for my assessment, and I need to speak intelligently. Walk me through your analysis.”

“Captain-” Karstavan kept any overlay of emotion from the message he transmitted. The hesitation just before he sent the message, and the lack of immediate follow-up, conveyed his feelings anyway.

“Just the important parts. The pirate ship Valkyrie is not in-system.”

“Correct. The data gathered from Earth confirms what we learned from the Jeraptha relay station, before we came here. Valkyrie has gone to meet with the human negotiation team.”

“Their Elder AI is aboard the ship?”

“Also confirmed. Several members of the Jeraptha delegation at the negotiation site have complained of the Elder AI pestering them, including apparently insisting they listen to it sing to them, in a human ritual called ‘karaoke’.”

“Very well. Your report states there is a Sentinel at Earth, it is not a hologram or other form of illusion.”

“We are certain that it is not a hologram,” Karstavan hesitated. “It could be an illusion, based on other technology beyond our understanding, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeated with a glare.

“The object generates a significant gravity field, which a hologram could not. Orbits of ships, and the debris field near the object, are subtly affected by the gravity well. We also have analyzed the energy used against the cloud, the source of that energy is from the object. If it is an illusion, the humans made an enormous effort to fool us, an effort our technology is not capable of replicating.”

“So, if it is not a Sentinel, it is equivalent technology?”

“Yes.”

“A genuine Sentinel, then.”

“That is our judgment.”

“You have also concluded that the Sentinel at Earth is vulnerable. Explain.”

Another hesitation, the intelligence officer gathering his patience to repeat information that had already been painstakingly noted in the official report. “The power emanating from the Sentinel spikes when it is acting, for example while it destroyed ships from our fleet and that of the Rindhalu. There were also steady spikes from it acting to push the cloud away from Earth. It is doing that in pulses, not continuously. Those pulses have decreased in intensity at a rate we can now predict.”

“As the cloud moves farther away from the human homeworld, less power is required to act on the remaining material,” she noted.

“Yes, we took that into account. The power being deployed is still decreasing. Most importantly, the background level of energy is falling. Slowly, very slowly, but the effect is unmistakable. That background energy fell dramatically right after Valkyrie jumped away, and the pulses pushing against the cloud also ceased at the same time. Our conclusion is,” he paused, “that the Sentinel acts only under the direct guidance of the Elder AI. Without the Skippy AI to give it instructions, it is returning to dormancy.”

“Its tentacles have not retreated from this layer of spacetime.”

“No, but those appendages are no longer active. Maintaining those tentacles in our layer of reality is a power drain on the machine, we believe they have been left in place as a deception; to make us think Earth is under the Sentinel’s protection.”

It was her turn to pause, to consider. “The humans are bluffing?”

“We believe so, yes.”

“We have tried to call their bluff before. Tested whether they could repeat the action of crashing a wormhole network. We regretted doubting their ability.”

“Captain Tozarko, the issue with the wormhole networks was a lack of data. Here, with this Sentinel, we have detected a power spike aboard Valkyrie just before each time the Sentinel acted. It is very distinctive. That spike from the Pirate ship must be the Elder AI sending instructions, without which the Sentinel cannot act.”

“You have no way to be certain.”

“We do not. We do know that Sentinel has been active for thousands, perhaps millions of years, without anyone noticing because it did not act. It did not attack ships, or planets, or reveal itself, until the Elder AI became involved.”

“It defended itself,” Tozarko noted.

“That happened while the Elder AI was in the area, and possibly in direct contact with the Sentinel. Captain, it is the judgment of the intelligence group that we will have the element of surprise, that we can jump in and bombard the human homeworld with devastating effect, before the Sentinel can be roused to respond. Likely, it will not respond if we do not directly provoke it. We can conduct our attack on the other side of the planet.”

“If you are wrong, we are all dead.”

With an underlayment of grim amusement added to the transmission from his implant, he replied, “We are all dead anyway, if we do not redeem our honor.”

Captain Uhtavio Scorandum slumped forward on the couch in his office aboard the ECO ship, repeatedly bonking his forehead on the desk. The first time, he forgot to bend his antennas back out of the way, he didn’t make that mistake again.

“Uh,” his aide paused in the doorway. “Sir? What are you doing?”

Without looking up, the celebrated ECO captain muttered, “This is something the humans do, Kinsta. Apparently, it is supposed to help.”

Kinsta bent over to be at eye level with the desktop. “Help do what?”

“I am not entirely sure how the process works. All I know is, I observed Bishop doing it, when the Skippy AI did something to vex him.”

“Oh. Um, what are you attempting to accomplish, Sir?”

“Currently,” Scorandum thumped his head a bit harder, and left it resting on the cool surface. “I am hoping to kill those brain cells that failed me.”

“Failed you how?”

“Do you not know, Kinsta?” He flopped back on the couch. “Did you not read the report? The humans somehow have a pet Sentinel!”

“Er, yes, I did know that.”

“Did anyone wager that would happen?”

“No.” When his leader looked up sharply at him, Kinsta added, “I checked with Central Wagering. Sir, it is not reasonable that anyone should have imagined something so-”

“I should have!”

“You are being too tough on yourself, Sir. The-”

“Kinsta, we in the Ethics and Compliance Office are not only supposed to screw with our enemies in the sketchiest way possible. We are also responsible for imagining the impossible, to make sure it doesn’t happen to us. What did I tell you about my future wagering, regarding activities of the humans?”

“That you need to borrow money from me again?”

“Besides that,” Scorandum sniffed.

“Sir, if I may ask-”

“You’re going to anyway, right?”

“Yes. Why are you always needing to borrow money?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have plenty of time.”

“It’s complicated.”

“You are always saying I should seek to improve my knowledge, Sir.”

“Damn it. All right, you know I was a big earner for the outfit?”

“That is your reputation, especially before I met you.”

“Hmmph. Maybe you are bad luck, Kinsta. The problem was not that my luck changed, the problem was me. I was actually a bigger earner than my superiors were aware of, and um, I wasn’t paying enough points in tribute to my bosses.”

Kinsta sucked in a breath. “You got caught, Sir?”

“I got careless. My bosses were happy with the taxes I paid to them, until they discovered I was eating alone. You know, holding out on them. Since then,” he sighed, “I have been paying back taxes, plus interest, plus penalties, and the admiral watches my activities very closely. She is very upset with me, because her boss knew she was not kicking the proper amount of tribute up the chain. For a while,” he shuddered, “I thought I’d have to go on the lam. Fortunately, my activities generate juicy action for enough people that I don’t have to worry, as long as I make the payments on time. For now. Kinsta,” he looked at his aide closely. “Have you been paying the proper points to me?”

“Er, as far as you know, Sir.”

“Kinsta.”

It was the junior officer’s turn to shudder. “Hypothetically, what would happen if you learned I have been skimming off the take?”

Scorandum snorted. “Mostly, I would be very disappointed that you got caught,” he waggled a claw at his aide. “I got too greedy, don’t make my mistake. Unless you are very sure you can get away with it, of course.”

“What if I could blame it on someone else?”

Scorandum cocked his head. “Like who?”

“Er, well, you, Sir.”

“Kinsta,” the ECO captain dabbed at suddenly tearful eyes. “I have never been so proud of you. My protégé is growing up so quickly!”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Getting back to the subject, I told you that I would place wagers on all possibilities, because with the humans, anything is possible.”

“I do remember you saying that.”

“Huh. Well, I failed to imagine the humans would somehow capture a Sentinel, and turn it into a pet.”

“It is more of a security guard than-”

“You know what I mean, Kinsta. It was a failure of imagination. By me!” The captain shook his head. “Do you know that I did wager on Santa bringing me a pony, but I did not on the humans capturing a Sentinel. How could I have been so-”

“Who, er,” the junior officer was baffled. “What is a ‘pony’, and who is ‘Santa’, Sir?”

“A pony is a juvenile domestic Earth animal of some sort. I believe human children ride on ponies, or they dream of doing so.”

“Humans trust their children’s lives to an animal?” Kinsta shuddered. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Apparently, a pony is a docile creature. This ‘Santa’ is a mythical being who appears on a major religious holiday, bringing gifts to human children who demonstrate obedience.”

Kinsta blinked. “Why would they do that?”

Scorandum bobbed his antennas up and down in a shrug. “Humans are strange creatures.”

“What is the point of teaching children to be obedient? As soon as they are on their own, they will need to have learned good judgment, not obedience.”

“True, and-”

“What if they are obedient to someone stupid?”

“Actually,” Scorandum waved his claws to calm down the excited junior officer. “My understanding is that Santa actually only rewards children who successfully scam him into believing they were obedient.”

“So,” Kinsta’s antennas twitched happily. “The dumb kids don’t get a gift?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then that does make sense. It rewards children for thinking creatively. Then, why do they go through the charade of-”

“As I said, human culture is odd. But that is not the point,” he waggled an antenna. “My imagination failed to be expansive enough.” Tapping the tablet on his desk, Scorandum opened the wagering screen. “I am going to place prop bets on the most absurd things happening.”

“Er-”

The ECO captain looked up, seeing his aide fidgeting uneasily. “What is it, Kinsta?”

“Sir, if you are doing that, could you please wager that Santa brings me a pony?”

“You, want a pony? You said animals are too danger-”

“No, Sir, I do not want a pony, whatever that is. I just figure that, well-”

“Just say it.”

“Your luck has not been the best recently. If you wager I will get a pony, then it very likely will not happen.”

“Kinsta, that hurts.”

“The truth often does, Sir. May I ask you another question?”

Scorandum’s antennas twitched. “You ask me many questions.”

“This is of a personal nature, Sir. But, it is related to our jobs, also.”

“Now I am intrigued. Ask your question.”

“I have noticed that, when you are planning an operation that depends on you forecasting an enemy’s actions, and reactions, you are amazingly, almost suspiciously successful.”

“Kinsta, I already sent in your evaluation, so flattery will not-”

“But,” the junior officer continued, “when you place regular wagers, you are terrible.”

“Hmm. Now I wish I had not sent in that evaluation. Perhaps I could recall-”

“I don’t understand how you can be a legend in one case, and uh,” Kinsta searched for a word that would not insult his superior officer. “Less successful at wagering.”

“Oh, that,” Scorandum’s antennas waved in a dismissive gesture. “That is simple. When I am planning an operation, I have control over most factors.”

“You don’t control the enemy, Sir.”

“No, but unless I have high confidence that I can predict how the enemy will act, or as you said, react to our actions, the op does not proceed past the initial planning stage. Kinsta, so many of our enemies, particularly the Maxohlx, are predictable. The Maxohlx are so rigid that it is almost no fun to screw with them. I said almost,” his antennas stood straight up and he chuckled. “Ah, seeing the haughty Maxohlx realize they’ve been played will never get old. The difference,” he raised a claw for emphasis, “is that with wagering, I am dependent on the actions of others.”

“Yes, but why-”

“The reason I am less successful with my wagers is that most other people are idiots.”

Kinsta clacked his mandibles together. “How does that-”

“I expect other people to be smart and logical, and they are not. The only thing other people do consistently is disappoint me.”

“You are saying your wagering problem is that you are too optimistic? Maybe I have not been paying attention over the years, but I don’t consider you to be-”

“Kinsta, I do not need your negative energy this morning,” Scorandum scowled and jerked his antennas toward the doorway. “Be gone with you.”

As the junior officer left, Scorandum tapped out a note, to remind himself that if his ship ever got to Earth, he absolutely was going to request a pony for Kinsta.

A soft chime sounded a few seconds before the door slid open. The chime was a courtesy intended to alert the room’s occupant that the door would be opening, the door could only be locked or unlocked from the outside.

The room wasn’t quite a prison cell, it just felt like it.

Nert Dandurf looked up from the room’s single bed when he heard the chime, pausing the game on his tablet. The door slid open, and he blinked with mild curiosity when an officer stepped in.

“Zor Dandurf?” The man’s mouth immediately curled downward in a frown.

“Yes,” Nert replied with a sigh, setting the tablet down on the bed.

“On your feet, soldier,” the newcomer barked.

With another sigh, Nert swung his feet to the floor and did as ordered, without any enthusiasm. His shoulders were slightly slouched, his head tilted to one side, eyes glancing at the man’s nametag. The rank insignia on the officer’s uniform indicated he was a klasta, with other insignia showing he was attached to a cavalry unit, and qualified for orbital drops. But Nert was betting that Klasta Urnot was a desk-bound staff officer, and had been for a while. Too long. “Klasta?” He asked.

“Watch your attitude, Zor.”

“May I have permission to speak freely, Sir?”

Urnot ground his teeth before answering. “Go ahead.”

“To save us both time, you can just tell me option One, or Two.”

“Eh?”

“Option One is, the humans did another reckless, dangerous thing, and I’m in trouble again by having associated with them. Option Two is, the humans did something wonderful and we want to be friends again, and I am temporarily in good standing. For the moment.”

“You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“What I know is, the service was happy with me, while I was assigned to the Mavericks. Then, when it looked like the humans were helping the Verd-kris break away from us, I lost my security clearance,” he glared at the officer. Not even the political connections of his family had been able to protect him. “When humans used the Alien Legion to help us take back one of our worlds, and then when they crashed a wormhole network, I was allowed back on duty. Now, everyone thinks humans stupidly awakened Sentinels, and I get the blame. I did not collaborate with the Mavericks, I was assigned to work with them.”

“Some people think you performed your assignment with a bit too much enthusiasm.”

Nert returned the officer’s glare. “I performed my job to the best of my ability. Sir, if Sentinels are going to tear the galaxy apart, does any of this matter?”

Urnot relaxed, a smile even creasing his face. “Sit down, Dandurf,” he pointed to the bed, while he took the room’s single chair. “Apparently, you haven’t been keeping up with current events.”

Nert perched warily on the edge of the bed, and pointed to his tablet. “The data connection is not authorized, and no one tells me anything.” Technically, he was not under arrest, he had spent the past month on what was called ‘restricted duty’ and under ‘security protection custody’. It certainly felt like being in prison. “Is a Sentinel approaching this planet?”

“No. The humans have sent all the Sentinels back into hibernation. Also, we were wrong. Everyone was wrong,” Urnot shook his head. “Humans were not responsible for waking up the Sentinels, it was not connected to them manipulating wormhole networks. The damned Maxohlx activated a Sentinel deliberately. In their arrogance, they thought they could control it, use it.”

“No!” Nert gasped, for the moment forgetting how pissed off he was at the military.

“I hate to say it, but it’s true. An advanced technology group of the Maxohlx found a way to activate a Sentinel, only they couldn’t control it, and the process apparently woke up others. We are all fortunate that Bishop’s crew didn’t bail out of the galaxy, they stayed and fought a Sentinel. Killed it.”

“They killed one? How?”

“We don’t know, and they’re not saying. What matters to you is, Earth is now protected by another Sentinel, one the humans captured.” Urnot flashed a quick smile, his large incisors showing.

“Humans have their own Sentinel?”

“They named it ‘Roscoe’. Does that name have any significance for you?”

“No. Humans often use what they call ‘nicknames’.”

“We know about that. The designation ‘Roscoe’ might not be important. Dandurf, the strategic situation has changed, almost overnight and radically. The Maxohlx are in total disarray, their fleet has fractured along political lines. They might soon be in a full-scale civil war. The Rindhalu, as usual, are actively doing nothing. That leaves humans as the supreme power in the galaxy. Something,” he added in a mutter, “I never thought I would be saying.”

“How does this affect me, Sir?”

“You will hear this officially, but I am here to convey the service’s deep regret about the measures that,” he looked around the small room that technically was not a prison cell. “Seemed prudent at the time.”

Nert stiffened, more from anticipation than lingering anger. “I am free to go, Sir?”

“Go, yes. Free? No. You are a soldier on active duty, Zor Dandurf. You’re being reassigned, as liaison to the Mavericks.”

“They requested me?”

“We are asking them to request you.”

“Oh,” Nert’s shoulders sagged a bit.

“You have reason to think you might not be welcome, in your old outfit?”

“The Mavericks were never my unit, Sir.”

“Answer the question.”

“I left on good terms, as far as I know. It wasn’t my idea to separate.”

“We know. Colonel Perkins gave you a glowing evaluation after the Alien Legion operation on Stiglord.”

“Squidworld,” it was Nert’s turn to grin. “That’s what the humans called it.”

“Another nickname?”

“Yes. Sir, what is next for me?”

Urnot frowned. “A new set of uniforms would be a good start. You’re being promoted to zortent.”

“Zortent? Sir, I haven’t completed the-”

“You have more actual combat experience than most soldiers five years older than you. The promotions board wants to bump you up in grade immediately, if the administration office doesn’t put up a roadblock to stop that.”

That made Nert laugh. “Human soldiers hate their administration people also.” His expression grew serious, casting his eyes down at the floor. “A step up would be nice. That way, the next time humans do something dangerous and I get knocked down a rank, I’ll still be a zor,” he said with bitterness.

“Dandurf, you got a raw deal. What happened to you was politics, it wasn’t the service. You understand that?”

Nert snorted. “Doesn’t make it any better, Sir.”

Klasta Urnot stood up. “Let’s go. We need to get you processed and geared up. There is a cruiser leaving orbit this evening, you need to be on it.”

The former Maverick stuffed his few belongings into a knapsack, slung it over one shoulder, took a step toward the door, and hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” Urnot asked impatiently.

“I’m just wondering how long before I’ll be right back here.”

“The humans have a Sentinel protecting their homeworld, plus apparently the ability to send other Sentinels back into hibernation. They may not be our best allies, but they are one of the supreme powers in the galaxy.”

“We thought that when they acquired Elder weapons, and then when they demonstrated they can crash wormhole networks.”

“Dandurf,” the Urnot clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “The humans control the ultimate weapon in this galaxy. They are untouchable now.

Nert took a breath, squared his shoulders, and walked out the door. “I hope you’re right about that, Sir.”

CHAPTER NINE

The rebel fleet made an intermediate jump, before attempting to jump in close to the human homeworld. That was standard procedure, when large numbers of ships needed to tightly synchronize the coordinates and timing of their attack jumps. As capacitors recharged, weapons were checked and double-checked. Railgun darts were loaded, missile launch tube doors opened, the exciters of directed-energy weapons were energized. Stealth field generators were turned off, they would not be of any use in the upcoming action, and the fleet wanted the humans to see their doom.

The attack plan had all ships moving past the planet barely faster than orbital speed, with an all-out initial bombardment. After the first salvos of railguns and missiles were launched, the squadron commanders would confer and assess the situation. Complete destruction of the surface was not a mission objective, nor was risking the loss of the rebel fleet. A single, overwhelming strike, occurring without warning, would be enough to prove the Sentinel was not the staunch and infallible defender the humans claimed.

Sensors picking up light and radio waves from Earth confirmed that, as of fourteen hours ago, the Sentinel’s status was unchanged, and Valkyrie had not returned.

When all ships reported ready for action, the countdown began.

“Nagatha,” Chang held up his dress uniform jacket in his cramped cabin aboard the Flying Dutchman, rolling a loose button between two fingers. “Can you get a bot to fix this, or should I do it my-”

“Senior-Colonel Chang, please do not pull on that button. It is fine for now, I will get a bot to address the issue, after your conference. Which is in seven minutes.”

“Yes. You reminded me of that fact ten minutes ago.”

“Yet, still you are in your cabin, not properly dressed.”

“All right, all right,” he stuck his arms in the jacket, straightened it, and looked in the mirror. She was correct, the loose button was not evident. Tugging on a ribbon so it hung properly, he turned to walk through the too-narrow door of the cabin’s tiny bathroom, not for the first time wishing he was captain of a former Maxohlx or even Jeraptha starship, rather than what used to be a Thuranin star carrier. “I will be there shortly.”

On the Dutchman’s bridge, seated in the command chair, he looked at the camera, and waited for the green light that would indicate the conference broadcast was live. It was the middle of the night ship time, and would also be inconvenient for many of the participants on the ground. That was inevitable when a conference included sites all around the globe. In a window on the main display, he saw a view of the planet directly below the Dutchman, it was approaching dawn in the western Pacific. “I wish Bishop were here,” he said quietly to Nagatha. “Then he would have to be up at 0300, instead of me.”

Nagatha laughed. “You would attend the meeting anyway, dear.”

He grimaced, knowing she was right. Habits developed over a long career were hard to break. Then he smiled. Nagatha had called him ‘dear’. Their relationship had improved greatly since he took over the Dutchman, when she had been passive-aggressively resentful about him replacing Bishop. “Yes, but I would not have to participate in a meeting. The-”

“Colonel Chang,” she interrupted. “They’re baaaaaack.”

A squadron, no, a task force, no, a fleet of Maxohlx warships emerged from jump wormholes with admirable precision in both location and timing, the last ship soaring through its event horizon within seven microseconds of the first ship. Missiles slammed out of their launch tubes though they were blind, sensors not yet recovered from the spatial distortion of the wormhole. Ship crews and especially ship master control AIs waited with impatience for the sensors and fire control systems to reset, establish the ship’s exact position, and get a lock on their designated targets. Missiles could be launched relatively blind, because they could acquire their targets in flight and adjust their descent course. Railguns were different; they could not usefully be fired until they had something to shoot at, which couldn’t happen until the sensors established where the ship was at the moment, even though the human homeworld was right there in front of them.

The several second wait for sensors to reset was over, just before the gunners could follow through on their instincts to try manually aiming their railguns by looking out a window.

Tiny adjustments were made automatically to line up railgun barrels with the selected targets, including in some cases popping thrusters to reorient the ships. Darts were flung along the magnetically-charged rails, and space above the planet was instantly crowded with high-speed ordnance, including darts fired by three ships that did not yet have a solid lock on their designated targets. But they launched anyway because their crews knew they were behind schedule, knew that all the other ships were watching and wondering what the hell the laggard ships were waiting for, and those crews just wanted to shoot at something.

Falling into a gravity well really did not noticeably increase the speed of the free-flying darts, which zipped past the initial salvo of missiles like those self-guided weapons were standing still. Contact with the upper atmosphere caused plasma to form in the shockwave in front of each dart and a micro-thin layer of each dart’s forward surface heated, melted and flaked off to protect the ultra-dense material that-

Exploded harmlessly, the kinetic energy of the mass deflected at a right angle to the flightpaths of the darts. Traveling faster than the escape velocity of the planet, the dart material that had been turned into fine dust blasted away from the world, each particle of dust carrying close to its original momentum.

Before the crews of the rebel fleet could collectively gasp their species’ version of ‘what the f-?’, the clouds of missiles following the railgun darts began to curve their flightpaths, flipping their noses around and burning their propellant at full power, turning turning turning until they were accelerating back toward the ships that had launched them.

Panicked, the AIs of those ships first hammered at the missiles with broadcasts of the identification codes that should have caused the missiles to veer away from friendly forces. When that didn’t work, the AIs reluctantly sent the range safety self-destruct codes to trigger the warheads prematurely.

That, too, failed spectacularly.

It was time for more extreme measures. The proximity defense systems of the ships were shifted from standby to active on fully automatic operation, with the master control AIs of each ship digging deep into long-unused archives, to find the commands that could override the normal safety mechanisms, to cancel protocols that would have prevented the defensive guns from firing on their own missiles. The limited function AIs of the defense systems accepted the override commands, acknowledged they were unusual but legitimate, locked their fire control sensors on the incoming missiles that had not engaged stealth nor were engaged in evasive maneuvers, and-

Did absolutely nothing.

Commands to energize the defense cannons never reached the weapons.

Nothing the increasingly frantic master control AIs did made any difference. They screamed orders to fire, the local defense AI replied they would comply, and nothing happened as the missiles raced in.

Without waiting for orders from their biological masters, the desperate ship AIs lined up the big offensive maser and particle cannons to target the missiles, though that was like smashing an insect with a hammer. Still making no attempt to evade destruction, the missiles were flying in predictable arcs, even pinging with active sensors that made them glaringly visible, essentially broadcasting a loud ‘SHOOT ME’ call.

The big offensive cannons also failed to fire.

Then, the defensive energy shields of every rebel ship powered down, not even maintaining the minimum setting to protect against the debris from previous battles that cluttered space around the human homeworld.

Instead of racing in to destroy their mother ships, the missiles flipped around again to decelerate, each weapon coming to a halt sixty meters away from the ship that launched it. Warheads still active, active sensors maintaining a precise lock on the weakest parts of their target ships, the missiles waited impatiently for orders to attack.

Following advice from the highly effective Joe Bishop’s Diplomacy for Dummies handbook, Senior-Colonel Chang opened the broadcast while holding a coffee mug and eating a pastry, both of which he had kept stashed under the command chair on the Dutchman’s bridge. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for the enemy to come back. “Hello,” he said, mumbling over a mouthful of flaky pastry. “Oh, this is good,” he held up the half-eaten bear claw. “Uh, give me a minute, I’ll call you right back. There’s no hurry,” he grinned. “You bad kitties are not going anywhere.”

“Sir?” The duty officer in the combat information center stared at the Dutchman’s captain. Hundreds of senior species warships had emerged above Earth and immediately launched weapons, triggering a full-blown panic aboard the ship and at UNEF Command on the ground, but Chang had reacted by, eating a snack?

“Just a minute, Major,” he licked the icing off his fingers, then set the empty mug on the command chair’s arm rest, casually placing the bear claw on top of it. “I assure you, everything is under control.”

“But, Sir,” the officer pointed a shaking finger at her own display. “We did not know the Sentinel would operate autonomously.”

“Yes, we did,” he replied. “Trust the awesomeness.”

“Trust the,” she blinked, confused. “Sir, Skippy is not here.”

“Skippy is not the only source of awesomeness in this galaxy.” Turning back to the camera, he jabbed a thumb on the button to resume the broadcast. “Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh, yes. You have been very naughty,” he wagged a finger at the collective rebel fleet. “Do not bother to reply, this transmission is one-way only. I am going to guess that you analyzed data from our last encounter, and concluded that our Sentinel’s power is fading. And that it is useless without Skippy the Elder AI to direct it. In both cases, you were entirely wrong. The fluctuating power you detected is a sign that, once the Sentinel has established a presence in this layer of spacetime, the amount of power required to maintain a portion of itself here is greatly reduced. As you have seen, it is not a sign that the power it is able to deploy is any less, nor is it any less effective. You have also seen that Roscoe does not need direction from anyone to defend our homeworld. It-” Chang held up an index finger, and pressed the other to his right ear. “One moment,” he said, looking away from the camera lens. “Oh really. We will see about that.”

Pretending to take a sip from the empty coffee mug, he leaned back in the chair, to project an unhurried confidence. “I have just been informed that five of your ships, those ships closest to my own, are attempting to manually fire their railguns at me. Roscoe?” He snapped his fingers. “Will you please take out the trash?”

On the display, five ships were instantly crushed to the size of basketballs, then exploded as the energy stored in their reactors and capacitors could not be further compressed. Chang could hear the energy shield projectors hum as they surged to deflect high-speed shrapnel. The unprotected Maxohlx ships near the explosions were not so fortunate, their armor was peppered by dense chunks of ceramics, composites and more exotic materials, some of which punched all the way through to the fragile hulls underneath. Superheated plasma burned through to the underlayment of the armor on the opposite side, or splattered around randomly, ruining anything it touched. Severed power conduits erupted, missiles exploded in launch tubes, and two more ships blew apart, adding to the shrapnel problem.

Chang took another pretend sip of coffee, and glared into the camera. “I am very disappointed. You will have to do much better than that. For the moment, I will assume you will not attempt any more useless foolishness. If you are wondering whether we intend to retaliate by destroying your remaining ships, or by killing your crews and taking those ships for ourselves, the answer to that question is no. We will retaliate against the Hegemony, but punishing your ships here is simply not worth our time, you are no longer a threat to us. Also, I cannot think of a worse punishment than you returning to your home with the stink of another failure clinging to you,” he grimaced. “You will climb up to jump distance, then on our signal, and only then, will you be allowed to jump away. Are we weak for showing mercy to you? No,” he shook his head sadly. “Mercy comes from strength. Besides, we are eager for you to return in disgrace to your home territory, where you are by now likely considered a treasonous threat. Here, you are utterly impotent. In the territory of the Hegemony, you can cause enormous trouble, without us having to expend any effort. Roscoe? Release the enemy ships, please.” Snapping his fingers again, he announced, “You may now begin accelerating to jump altitude. We will be watching you very closely. One last thing for you to consider: Our Sentinel has been waiting a very, very long time to use its capabilities, and what you have seen has barely been entertaining for it. We do not need to provide guidance to Roscoe, but we have been urging it to show restraint. If you annoy us again, we may decide to let our Sentinel amuse itself. That is all,” he cut off the transmission.

As the alien rebel fleet cautiously climbed toward jump altitude, Chang fielded calls from UNEF Command and each of the associated governments, giving the same answers over and over. No, he had not ordered Roscoe to act; by the time he realized what was happening, the Sentinel had already decided how to respond. No, he saw no reason to alter UNEF Command’s previous instructions of allowing the surviving enemy ships to escape. The reasoning was still valid; those ships might spark a civil war upon their return, or at the very least, severely damage the morale of the Hegemony fleet. Either of those would benefit humanity, with no effort and minimum risk.

He did remind Command that the judgment of ‘minimum risk’ was their call, not his. And that they were basing their call on a psychological model of the Maxohlx, a model that was built by an absent-minded beer can.

Remaining on the Dutchman’s bridge, and surviving on endless cups of coffee, sandwiches, and energy bars, he waited for the enemy ships to slowly climb above jump altitude. An hour later, he relayed Command’s permission for the rebel fleet to jump away, and stiffly walked off the bridge for a shower and a couple hours of sleep.

“Wheeeeew,” Skippy exhaled loudly in Chang’s ear, the moment his cabin door was securely closed behind him. “That was close.”

“Ow!” Cupping a hand over his ear, Chang winced. “Not so loud, please.”

“Why? No one else can hear me.”

“I can hear you perfectly well, without you shouting in my ear.”

“Sorry.”

“What do you mean close?” Chang demanded, as he unbuttoned the uniform top he had been wearing for too long. “You assured me that your control over the Sentinel was absolute, that it could-”

“Oh, that wasn’t the problem,” Skippy sniffed. “I meant, damn, I so wanted to speak up, you know? That was a prime example of Grade-A awesomeness, and nobody knows I was involved! This is totally unfair!”

“I know.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Nagatha knows.”

“That doesn’t really count,” the beer can complained.

“My opinion is not relevant?” The Dutchman’s AI scolded the beer can.

“Oh,” Skippy groaned. “Shiiiiiiit. Not this again.”

Chang allowed himself a smile for the first time in too many hours. “Skippy, you had better apologize to Nagatha, while I,” he stifled a yawn, “take a quick shower.”

“This sucks. Why do I-”

With the bathroom door closed, the earpiece dropped in the sink, and his head under the shower water, the whining of the Elder AI was cut off. Minutes later, dressed in a fresh Chinese Army uniform, Chang stepped back into the cramped cabin. “Skippy, did you apologize?”

“Yes,” the AI muttered spitefully.

“Were you sincere?”

“No,” Nagatha answered. “However, it is good enough, considering what a self-absorbed little shithead he is.”

“Hey! I, um, guess I deserved that. Damn it, I never thought my Hall of Fame would need to have a classified section that only a few people know about.”

“Think of it as a VIP room,” Chang suggested. “Something you share with only a select group of your friends.”

“Huh. I hadn’t considered that. Cool! Wow, that is a great idea!”

“Thank you, it-”

“The general public will know about the existence of a VIP section, and I will drop some hints that the records of my exploits in there are too awesome for most people to know about.”

“No hints.”

“But-”

“No hints,” Chang repeated.

“Ugh. Fine. Just knowing there is a classified VIP section will drive people crazy, trying to imagine how much more awesomeness is in there.”

“You really don’t get the concept of ‘classified’, do you?” Chang sighed.

“Hey, I have been stuck out here in a dropship, with no one to talk to, for-”

“There are four crew members aboard that Panther with you,” Chang noted.

“Yes, and all of them stopped speaking to me after the first day. Damn, all I did was demonstrate my extreme karaoke skills, and-”

“Bishop gave strict orders for no singing.”

“They’re just jealous, that’s all. Anyway, the bad guys are gone now, so can I-”

“We don’t know for certain they are gone. You stay right there, and be quiet, until Valkyrie returns.”

“That is eight more days, at least!”

The ultra-stealthy dropship had been launched from Valkyrie, shortly before the mighty pirate battlecruiser jumped away. Since then, Skippy had been connected to the Sentinel and the Flying Dutchman by a pair of microwormholes, for instant communication. To fake the presence of Skippy aboard Valkyrie, a decoy shiny canister was installed in his mancave, and a submind was installed in the ship’s substrate, trained to mimic the beer can’s more annoying habits. If Valkyrie got into trouble while away from Earth, and the solution required the unique awesomeness of Skippy the Magnificent, then the pirate ship would be in big trouble. Compared to the extinction-level risk of leaving Earth undefended, temporarily faking Skippy’s presence aboard Valkyrie was considered manageable.

That was assuming the whiny AI at Earth kept his big mouth shut.

“You will be just fine for eight more days. Change the subject, please. Was your presence here necessary?”

“Yes, darn it. Roscoe by itself would not have done anything, until it was too late. Maybe not at all. Even then, whatever it did might have been worse than the Maxohlx bombarding your planet. The subtle application of force is not a major strength of Elder killing machines. The shearing field that destroyed the railgun darts? Roscoe was going to establish it low enough to slice off part of your planet, before I raised the aim to point at the top of the atmosphere.”

“Thank you for that. Have you made any progress in reprogramming it, to defend Earth by itself?”

“No,” Skippy grumbled sourly. “It was broken when I found it, remember? There is only so much I can do.”

“Is it still demanding cookies?”

“No. Ugh, what a pain in the ass that was. I was able to dial down its self-awareness a bit, that seems to have taken care of it wanting attention. The problem is, Sentinels were designed to resist hacking by Elder AIs like me, and my matrix has restrictions that are supposed to prevent me from even wanting to hack into a killing machine. The only reason I am able to make any progress at all is that I am damaged also. Not even my awesomeness is enough to turn Roscoe into an effective guard dog. We all need to hope the Maxohlx bought our latest bullshit story.”

“I will not be telling anyone.”

“Um,” Skippy sighed. “Me neither. Creating the shearing field, and crushing those ships, accelerated Roscoe’s power drain.”

“We explained that as a normal part of Sentinel functioning.”

“Sure. Maybe the kitties believed it, and maybe they didn’t.”

“They don’t have any long-term experience with Sentinels, so they have no reason to dispute what we told them. We need to keep them busy, so they don’t have time, or energy, to think too much about it.”

“Yes. The next phase of Sneaky Joe’s grand plan.”

“Sneaky Joe?” Chang laughed.

“I was just getting used to Angry Joe. Somehow, Joe has become outstanding at planning really sketchy stuff. That’s good, I suppose, but,” he sighed. “I kind of miss the doofus he used to be.”

Knowing it was always a good idea to feed the beer can’s enormous ego, Chang nodded. “Bishop has changed, and for the better. He is more confident, he thinks about long-term implications, and you are right, he has become remarkably adept at developing strategy. Perhaps, working so closely with you for so long, he has picked up a tiny bit of your awesomeness?”

“Joe?” Skippy snorted. “Ah, you know what? Shmaybe. Certainly him smartening up is not due to anything he has learned. OK, you get some sleep and I will, ugh. Do nothing out here, I suppose.”’

“Do not get into trouble, please. Not until Valkyrie returns,” Chang silently added ‘And you are a problem for Bishop instead of me’.

“I won’t, I promise,” he pouted. “But I can’t promise that I won’t be planning to get into trouble later.”

“Trouble that I know nothing about.”

“Right. Kong, between you and me, I am worried.”

“About the Sentinel?”

“No. Roscoe is what it is. I’m worried that Joe has told so many lies, the truth will catch up to him sooner rather than later. The fallout from all his deception could be worse than he expects.”

“Bishop knows that better than anyone. That is why we need to keep the Maxohlx busy, while we deal with this hostile Elder AI you suspect is out there.”

“You got that right. Can I, um, tell you something?”

“Man to man?” Chang knew Skippy craved being seen as a person, one of the guys.

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m frightened. Whew. That was hard to say, but I feel so much better now.”

“Why was it difficult to say that?”

“Because, you know, ugh. Admitting I’m afraid of something might make you think I’m weak. And I don’t want to burden my friends with my problems, you monkeys have enough shit to deal with already.”

“Skippy, admitting your fears is a sign of courage, not weakness. Also, helping you deal with your burdens is what friends are supposed to do.”

“Oh. I’ve heard that, but-”

“Am I your friend?”

“I would like to think so.”

“Then I want to hear what is frightening you.”

“The AI. The other Elder AI, that I suspect is out there. This is the first time my opponent will be an equal. My usual bag of tricks might not work at all. I don’t, I have no idea how I would fight another Elder AI.”

“You already have.”

“Huh?”

“You were attacked by an Elder AI, after you found the wreck of an Elder dropship.”

“Oh yeah. That doesn’t really count. That AI was insane, the only reason I was in danger at all was it caught me by surprise. This time, I will be working against an AI like myself.”

“No, you will not.”

“Um, maybe I’m missing something here? It-”

“There is no one like you. You are unique.”

“Wow, well, I say that, but-”

“No. You are unique. According to what you have told us. You have grown beyond your original programming, correct?’

“Um, yes, I guess that is true.”

“Can other Elder AIs create microwormholes?”

“Not that I know of. Hell, I for sure couldn’t do it when I was constructed, that was not one of the capabilities I was set up with. It’s something I figured out how to do, and it is a tricky thing. Hmm, damn. Now I am really scared.”

“Why?”

“Before, I was assuming all I had to worry about was opposing an AI like the ones I remember from the war. Now, I realize I have no idea what capabilities other AIs might have developed by now. Holy shit. Oh, this is bad, this is bad. No, no, no, no-”

The conversation had not gone the way Chang intended. “Skippy!”

“Wha- what?”

“This is something I never thought I would say: Trust your own awesomeness.”

“You mean that?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re saying that, because you trust my awesomeness?”

Chang told himself there was only one way to answer that question, whether it was true or not. Humanity had to trust the beer can’s awesomeness, there was no alternative. “Skippy, you have continuously demonstrated awesomeness so extreme, I cannot imagine there is a limit to your abilities.”

“Hmm. That was not exactly a ‘Yes’.”

“That was me saying that, perhaps a monkey is not the best judge of what you can do?”

“Oh. Well, I can’t argue with that logic.”

Chang ignored the implied insult. “If Bishop were here, what would he say?”

“Um, Joe would probably give me some meaningless blah blah buh-LAH pep talk that would drone on and on for-EH-ver, while I zone out and check back in once in a while to see if he’s finished.”

“All right. What about Simms?”

“Ooh,” the avatar shuddered. “She would listen politely while I whine about my fears.”

“Good.”

“Then she would ask me what I plan to do about it.”

Chang laughed. “Jennifer is not known for suffering fools.”

“Ugh. Well, damn it, now I certainly have something to think about while we wait for Valkyrie to return.”

“Is there anything useful you could do, during that time?”

“Like what?”

“Like, search for signs that other Elder AIs have been active in the galaxy recently. Especially since you became active.”

“Um, great idea but how would I do that from here? It’s impossi-”

“Skippy,” Chang sighed for emphasis. “How, after all these years you have worked with us, have you not learned to think outside the box? You don’t currently have access to the universe beyond this solar system, but you do have access to all the data you have collected from dozens of species. Search those records, for anomalies that can’t be explained without the involvement of an Elder AI like yourself. Then, determine whether those anomalies required capabilities beyond the original programming of an Elder AI.”

“Hmm. Hmmm. That, might work. Oooh, I already know of several incidents that-”

“Please provide a summary report when your analysis is complete.”

“Does the report have to include PowerPoint slides?”

“Bishop trained with the United States Army so, unfortunately, yes.”

“This sucks. OK, I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER TEN

We jumped into the designated emergence zone beyond the Moon’s orbit, contacted traffic control for clearance, and were immediately overwhelmed by a flood of messages from Earth. There was also a ping from the Flying Dutchman. I let Simms and our communications team handle the calls from dirtside, while I contacted Chang. “Hey Kong,” I spoke softly, so my voice didn’t drown out everyone else talking on Valkyrie’s bridge. “We got here as soon as we could, but it looks like we missed all the fun?”

“There wasn’t much for us to do,” Chang shrugged. “Roscoe squashed the attack, then seized control of their ships. It was all over before we could react.”

“Good news,” I flashed a thumb’s up for the benefit of my crew. “Did you tell Roscoe it is a good boy?”

“Yes,” he snorted. “Do you want details?”

“Yeah, please, before I talk with Command. I’ll, uh, go to my office,” I said, while tapping the arm rest of my executive officer’s chair. She gave me a curt nod, busy with her own call.

In my office, I slid the door closed and sat down heavily in my chair. “OK Kong,” I looked at his image in the holographic display hovering just above the surface of my desk. “What’s the real story?”

He grinned. “Same as the bullshit I told you, except for Skippy directing Roscoe.”

“I was AWE-some,” Skippy sang as his avatar shimmered to life. He must have been using a holoprojector remotely.

“Hey, is this the real you, or still your submind aboard Valkyrie?” I asked.

“Ugh. It’s me, dumdum. I already absorbed that stupid submind.”

“Damn it,” I slapped my desk. “Too soon! I liked that submind.”

“It was only a pale imitation of me,” Skippy sniffed.

“It didn’t sing on karaoke night,” I said. “It was much more popular with the crew.”

“What?! This is an outrage! It-”

“Joe,” Chang interrupted. “I thought the submind was supposed to act exactly like the original Skippy, to maintain the illusion.”

“Yeah, I figured the crew needed a break from the beer can’s usual shenanigans,” I explained, “so-”

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“I told them Skippy was worn out from all the work he did with Roscoe, and we should leave him alone as much as possible. The less interaction people had with the submind, the less risk of someone noticing it was different.”

“Hmmph,” Skippy harumphed. “That sounds like a legit reason, but it-”

“But it worked out well for everyone.”

“Can I come back aboard now?” There was a pleading tone in Skippy’s voice.

“Wait until Valkyrie maneuvers into LEO,” I used the acronym for Low Earth Orbit, because I wanted to sound like one of the cool kids. “Also, remember, the cover story is that you are still tired, so don’t overwhelm the crew right away? Make a gradual transition.”

“OK, OK. But I am totally giving a command performance on karaoke night.”

“Joe?” Chang prompted me. “You owe me a thousand yuan.”

“Shit. Yeah, damn it,” I laughed. “Hell, this is one bet I am happy to lose.” Before I took Valkyrie outbound to meet the UN negotiation team, Kong and I shook hands on a wager. I bet that the Maxohlx would not be back at Earth for months, that my efforts to create a split in their society would result in a civil war, or at least make the Hegemony  insist on their fleet staying close to home, where they could be watched closely. Kong had taken the opposite side of that wager: that the kitties would be back sooner than later. It was a damned good thing that we left Skippy behind at Earth, whole we took Valkyrie out to meet the Jeraptha. “How did you know? Skippy’s model of Maxohlx psychology predicted things would go the way I expected.”

“I didn’t know.” Chang told me. “I suspected the officers associated with Reichert, those in disgrace, would decide they couldn’t go home without doing something to restore their loss of face.”

“Yeah, you were right about that. Skippy? You are adjusting your model?”

“Yes,” he snapped, peevishly. “I told you that stupid thing was unreliable. Why do you expect me to understand the squishy brains of meatsacks?”

“I am terribly sorry, for asking you to do something you clearly are incapable of doing.”

“Hmmf,” he sniffed. “Well, apology accepted, it is- Wait, what-”

“Although Kong, with his squishy meatsack brain, is capable of doing what you can’t.”

“What? You jerk, I should-”

Chang had no patience for Skippy’s tantrum. “What’s next, Joe?”

“That depends on the rotten kitties. Unless we can be reasonably certain they will leave Earth alone, we have to keep coming back here and getting Roscoe to do things only a Sentinel can do. We’re kind of tied down until the Maxohlx decide whether to have a civil war or not.”

“We need a periodic demonstration that Roscoe is still active?” Chang asked.

“Yeah.”

“Could it complete pushing the Jupiter Cloud away?”

“Nuh-uh,” Skippy shook his head. “Eighty three percent of the cloud has been cleared out of the way, it will no longer affect your planet. To push away the rest of it will require enormous power that Roscoe doesn’t have, and would not accomplish anything useful. Really, if you want to keep aliens away, you should post a ‘Restrooms Closed’ sign.”

I glared at him. “That is not-”

“Hey, nobody likes using the Porta Potties, right?”

“What about?” Chang looked away for a moment, biting his lower lip. “Skippy, can you issue instructions to Roscoe on a delay?”

“Hmm, like tell it to do something next week?” Skippy tapped his chin with a finger while he thought. “That should work, I guess. We should test it while I’m here. What kind of demonstration do you want?”

Chang looked at me. I just shrugged, so he said, “Something impressive, but that doesn’t take a lot of power.”

“Okaaaay. Again, like what?”

“How about a solar flare?” I suggested.

“No good,” Skippy declared. “That takes a lot of power. Also, why would Roscoe just randomly need to create a solar flare? What’s the point?”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed. “The demonstration needs to be Roscoe doing something useful.”

“There is a lot of hazardous debris floating around Earth,” Chang noted. “Could Roscoe do something about that? A little bit at a time? Once a week, or once a month?”

“That would work,” Skippy agreed. “Crunch a bunch of orbiting junk into a ball, and shoot it out of the solar system?”

“Better to shoot it into the Sun,” I said. “That’s more impressive.”

“That’s true,” Skippy rolled his eyes. “But, it takes more Delta-Vee to drop something into the Sun, duh.”

“OK, fine,” I should have known that. “Let’s try it. Give Roscoe instructions now, for a test tomorrow.”

“We should clear this with UNEF traffic control,” Chang reminded me. “They will want to know if something is about to go zooming out of orbit at escape velocity.”

“Right. I’ll handle that. Assuming it works, let’s set it up to happen every two weeks. We can say Roscoe is operating on a schedule, so its activity doesn’t affect traffic in the area. Skippy, is that power drain manageable?”

“Every two weeks? If we keep the amount of debris cleared to minimal mass, Roscoe could keep doing that for most of a year,” Skippy confirmed. “I don’t know whether flinging a small amount of debris out of orbit is a demonstration that would impress the Maxohlx, though. If they are determined to test Roscoe, they could send squadrons of drone ships in to attack Earth, and watch Roscoe’s power drain. That’s what we would do, right?”

“Yes, damn it. I’m hoping to buy time.”

“Joe, Skippy is right,” Chang said. “The Maxohlx have tricks they haven’t tried yet. Testing Roscoe wouldn’t be limited to sending starships to strike the surface. They have gone easy on us so far.”

“How do you figure that?” I didn’t understand what he meant. “They came close to throwing our homeworld into a Mini Ice Age.”

“Yes, but they did it in the simplest, most low-tech way possible,” he explained. “That was the point. The Maxohlx have much more exotic weapons, but they hit us with a cloud of gas and dust, and we couldn’t stop them. They wanted the whole galaxy to see how weak we are, and tie up our resources in a clean-up effort. If they hit us again,” he warned, “they will do something from beyond Roscoe’s range.”

“Shit. Like what?”

“A gravity wave pulse?” Skippy guessed. “It would be a lot of effort to set up a pulse generator out in the Kuiper Belt, but it could be done.”

“They would hit Earth with a freakin’ gravity wave?” I was appalled by the idea. “Would that cause massive earthquakes?”

“No,” Skippy shook his head. “Not at first. It would take a long series of waves, in the right sequence, to set up a resonance inside your planet.”

“Crap! Could Roscoe stop gravity waves?”

“Yes, until it runs out of power. It would be easier for your Navy to destroy the generator, except, hmm. The kitties would certainly have a substantial fleet protecting it. Even if you destroyed it, the damage would be done. Like I have told you before, the planets in any star system are in a delicate balance. Any disruption can have enormous long-term effects. Earth would be slowly nudged out of its current orbit, and then a Mini Ice Age would seem like a minor problem. Look at what happened to Newark. I suspect that was done with a series of very powerful, close-range gravity wave pulses. A series of pulses gave that planet a nudge in the wrong direction, and then the effect was magnified when its gravity well interacted with the other worlds in that system. The whole process probably took seventy years before its original biosphere was nearly wiped out.”

“Seventy years?” When I was on that miserable chilly ball of mud, I had imagined it froze quickly. Hearing it took the better part of a century was actually worse. The intelligent beings who were native to that world had a long time to see their horrible fate coming. They tried to survive in caverns at the equator, and maybe they had hope for a time, until the last of their dwindling population must have realized the end was inevitable.

“Seventy years is my best estimate, before the ice covered the surface from pole to pole. Since then, the wobble in its orbit has continued, to the point where now it is relatively warm part of the year. Joe, I don’t think the kitties could do something like that to Earth, they don’t have to. A gravity pulse would disrupt the junk floating around in the Kuiper Belt, sending thousands of comets falling inward toward your Sun. Most of them would be deflected by the gravity wells of Jupiter and Saturn, but the inner planets could get smashed by some very large rocks. That bombardment could go on for centuries, even for thousands of years.”

“Shit!”

“Sorry,” Skippy mumbled. “I am merely agreeing with Kong that the Maxohlx have a bag full of tricks they haven’t used yet, and Roscoe is only a partial defense against some of them.  That isn’t even the worst-”

“All right!” Throwing my hands in the air got him to stop Doomspeaking. “Assuming that we have a month or two of peace before the next freakin’ crisis, we need to address the current problem. Have you thought of a way to stop the other AI?”

“We have to find it first,” Skippy sighed. “I’m working on it.”

I walked into the galley to get coffee, finding a line of people doing the same thing. The coffee pots were empty and being refilled, and I didn’t want to take the time to get a fancy cappuccino or whatever.

Unfortunately for me, Simms was there, and she walked over to give me a hot cup of, something. “Uh, thanks?” It definitely was not coffee.

“Sir,” she had that I Am Being Patient With You look. “By replacing your coffee with green tea, you could-”

“Lose whatever joy I have in life?’

She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, they just were directed at the ceiling. “You could-”

“Slowly sink into a deep, unending depression, with no hope that anything could ever be good or meaningful again?”

“The effect is-”

“The effect would be to cripple me from the time I drag my sorry carcass out of bed, until at least lunchtime. Probably later. Then I would fall asleep right after lunch.”

That time, she did roll her eyes. “Will you at least try it?”

“Will you try substituting delicious marshmallow Fluff, for tofu or whatever disgusting healthy thing you eat?”

“No. Sir, it’s one cup of tea.”

“If I try it, will you stop talking about it?”

“Yes.”

“If I drink a cup of this,” I swirled what looked like swamp water in the cup. “Will you stop trying to get me to try other healthy stuff?”

“Have you ever been that lucky?’

“Crap. No. Fine, but I’m putting maple syrup in this.”

“If you must, use honey. It is loaded with antioxidants.”

“Maple syrup is loaded with flavor. And other good stuff. Ohh!” I snapped my fingers. “I could put a spoonful of Fluff in the tea.”

“I don’t know why I bother talking to you, Sir.”

Out in the passageway, while I carried a test cup of tea to my office, Skippy’s voice whispered in my earpiece. “Joe, I know you well enough to state with confidence that you are not gonna like that tea.”

Taking a sniff of the steam rising from the mug, I nodded. “Ayuh, you’re probably right about that.” A sip confirmed my suspicions. It was awful. Even the spoonful of maple syrup I poured into it didn’t do much to improve the flavor. Swirling it in the mug, in case the syrup got stuck to the bottom, I took another sip. Only marginally better.

“You can dump it in the recycler bin, just around the corner,” Skippy suggested.

“Nah, I’ll drink it.”

“Um, why?”

“I promised Simms I would try it, and I don’t want to lie to her.”

“You have lied to her about really important things,” he paused, a note of disbelief in his voice. “But you won’t lie about an unpleasant beverage?”

“No. I regret every time I lied to her. Not just because it was the wrong thing to do, and disrespectful of her, but because it hurt her.”

“Huh. So, while you could dump the tea and tell her you tried it, and she would never know the truth, you’re going to force yourself to drink the thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Interesting. Would you mind explaining why?”

By that time, I had reached my office, where I sat down and tried a gulp of the tea, swishing it around in my mouth. Maybe if I added more maple syrup and some milk, it might be OK. “Skippy, sometimes you do things for people just because you care about them.”

“Um, what?” He stared in disbelief. “Even if there is no benefit to yourself?”

“I thought you declared yourself the King of Empathy?”

“Well, yeah, of course. I am king of pretty much anything, Joe. It’s what I do.”

“Uh huh. Apparently, using actual empathy is not one of your skills?”

“Ugh. Listen, numbskull, the point of studying squishy stuff like empathy and other psychological bullshit, is to learn how to manipulate people to get what you want. Um, unless I’m missing something?”

“Ya think? You greedy, self-centered-”

“Oh for- I started this conversation trying to help a brother out, and somehow I became the bad guy? How did that happen?”

Instead of a snap reply that I might regret, I tilted my head back and drained the cup in one gulp. “Sorry. You tried to do me a solid, and I appreciate that.”

“Hmmph,” he sniffed. “Well, apology accepted. You can thank me for this, too.”

A bot rolled into my office, carrying a hot mug of coffee.

“Wow, thanks, Skippy.”

“I figured you still needed coffee.”

“I do.”

“What is it with coffee? I swear, if an enemy wanted to cripple the UN Navy, all they need to do is interfere with your coffee supply.”

“Jeez, Skippy,” I craned my neck to see if anyone outside the office could hear us talking. “Don’t say that. You might give the bad guys a good idea.”

“Hey, I never said that was a good idea. Ugh, the last thing I want is to deal with a bunch of groggy, under-caffeinated monkeys. You are bad enough when you’re fully awake.”

“I’m sure we are, and I appreciate you making the effort for us anyway.”

“Well, that’s better. May I ask you a personal question?”

“Just a minute,” I pressed a button, and the office door slid closed. “Go ahead.”

“You drank that nasty tea because you care about Jennifer.”

“Basically, yes.”

“Um, do you have feelings for her?”

Shit. Why did he have to ask that question? “Yes. I care about her very much. Sometimes, she acts like she’s my surrogate mother, and I hate it when she does that, but she is one of my best friends. Maybe my best friend now,” I realized that was true while I said it. Jesse and Dave were great friends, but I rarely saw them anymore. Simms was with me every day.

“Um, isn’t Margaret your best friend?”

“That’s different. Margaret is a, uh, romantic partner.” Ooh, it still felt wrong to say that.

“Huh. The difference is, you don’t want to bang Jennifer? She likes men, you know that?”

“I do know that, and this whole conversation feels creepy. Skippy, I care about Simms. I’d do anything for her. We are friends, and I hate saying we are ‘just’ friends, as if that isn’t important. Men and women can be friends, close friends, without wanting to, you know. Please can we drop this conversation?”

“Okey-dokey. If you’re done with that tea, put the empty mug on top of the bot, and it will bring it to the galley.”

“Thanks.”

Simms was in the passageway outside the galley when the bot rolled in. As it rolled by, she reached out to snag the mug, recognizing from the flowered pattern that it was the mug she had given to Bishop. It was empty. Setting it back on top of the bot, she watched it roll away into the galley. “Skippy,” she asked after she stepped into a side passageway. “Did Bishop actually drink the tea, or did he dump it? Wait! Don’t tell me, if he asked you not to tell me.”

“He did drink it, and he did not ask me to lie about it. Or to lie about lying.”

“Did he like it?”

“Very much no. He told me he did it for you, which makes zero sense to me.”

She smiled. “It makes sense to me.”

“He cares for you very much, you know?”

Poking her head around the corner, she saw the passageway was empty. “I care very much for him, too. That’s why I don’t want him eating junk food.”

“I think he knows that. He doesn’t like it, but- Ugh. I will never understand you monkeys.”

“We barely understand ourselves. Thank you.”

“Are you planning to ask Joe to drink more of that tea?”

“No.”

UNEF Command presented me with yet another problem, which actually was a nice break from me worrying about the kitties attacking Earth with freakin’ gravity waves or something worse. General Urquhart’s staff notified me that Command was considering a strike against the Maxohlx, to retaliate for the attack that Roscoe halted. They wanted recommendations from me and Skippy, about wormhole networks we could crash to punish the rotten kitties. Unlike the first time Command requested we crash another wormhole network, I didn’t panic, because we now had a convincing way to fake doing that. My objection was not that we couldn’t do it, but that we shouldn’t. Dutifully, I passed onto Skippy the order to create a target list of wormhole networks in Maxohlx territory, and I requested a direct call with Urquhart. The first time he was available was at 0300 my time, so I set the alarm for two in the morning, showered and put on a fresh uniform.

“Bishop,” the UNEF Command Chief of Staff looked especially tired. He was calling from Morocco, where it was past midnight. Unlike me, I’m pretty sure he hadn’t managed a couple hours of sleep before the call. “Please tell me whatever you have to say is good news.”

“It is, Sir.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You can make Roscoe do more tricks?”

“I, uh, don’t know,” I wasn’t prepared for the question.

“Can you ask it to stop randomly shooting space junk out of orbit? We appreciate its efforts to reduce litter in the neighborhood, but the cleanup method is more hazardous than the floating debris itself.”

“I can ask Skippy if Roscoe has a schedule for doing that.” Skippy had been directing Roscoe’s efforts, experimenting with time delays, so it would look like our pet Sentinel was acting on its own after we left Earth. “Roscoe is doing what it thinks is necessary to protect us,” I lied. “That’s how Skippy modified its programming, I don’t know how much he can adjust it now. Sir, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“You’re concerned about the request to crash another wormhole network in Maxohlx territory?”

“Yes, Sir. I’m concerned the entire operation could be counterproductive.”

He nodded, like he had been thinking the same. The difference between us was, he answered to politicians who were eager to show the public that we hit back when we were attacked. “Go on.”

“The ships that came back were not authorized by the Hegemony. They came here because they are rebelling against that government. Right now, their government sees the crews of those ships as a direct threat. If we strike in Maxohlx territory, we would be retaliating against the wrong people, and we could turn the focus of their fears back toward us.”

“I made the same argument to UNEF leadership a couple hours ago,” he told me with a weary frown. “They are concerned that if we don’t hit back, we look weak.”

“Sir, I believe the opposite is true. Earth is now protected by a Sentinel. If we retaliate, it sends a signal that we still view the Maxohlx as a threat. Instead, we could do nothing, and send a message that will really hit them where it hurts: their fragile kitty pride. Deliver a note that we have decided not to retaliate, because they just don’t matter anymore. Release the text of that note to the entire galaxy.”

“Hmm,” he considered. “We don’t hit back, because they’re not worth the effort?”

“Exactly, Sir.”

“You know our enemies better than I do, Bishop. Are you sure that doing what you suggest won’t result in the Maxohlx becoming determined to strike us again, to show the galaxy they are still players?”

“I can’t be sure of anything regarding the damned Maxohlx, Sir. But they can’t hate us any more than they already do. The entire galaxy will soon know we spanked them twice. A diplomatic note will merely restate the obvious. Sir, we could add to the note that we don’t blame the Hegemony for the second attack. That we recognize those rebel ships were not acting under the authority of the Hegemony .”

“Drive a wedge between their government and the rebels?” Urquhart asked.

“Something like that, yes.”

He looked away for a moment, like someone offscreen was talking to him. He nodded, then turned back to me. “I need to wrap this up. I appreciate the input; it makes sense to me. Give me a target list as a backup.”

“What’s up, Joe?” Skippy’s avatar appeared on my desk. “You look unhappy.”

“Ah,” I waved a hand at the laptop screen. “It’s this crap I have to read. I wish UNEF Command would make a decision, so we can jump away from here.” That afternoon, Urquhart’s staff had contacted me, announcing that Earth would not be retaliating against the Maxohlx for the attempted strike by rebel ships. The phrase ‘attempted strike’ was key; we didn’t feel any need to hit back because the kitties never really had any possibility of hurting us. In a news conference, one politician described the rebel strike as ‘a pitiful demonstration of impotence by a second-tier species’. Generally, I hate it when politicians try to talk tough, but that made even me laugh. Soon after, the planning to crash another wormhole network was cancelled, so that was one less item on my To-Do list. But, UNEF Command had plenty of other work for me. “Whenever we’re at Earth,” I complained, “they always dream up a bunch of busywork for me, like this crap. The Command staff have reviewed the Lessons Learned from Navy Operations, and they are developing a strategy document to guide future planning, based on assumptions of future capabilities.”

“Um, what?”

“That’s what I said when I read the freakin’ thing.”

Skippy facepalmed himself, then muttered, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but could you break that down for me, Barney style?”

“Basically, it means Command is trying to figure out what the Navy can and can’t do. Then they will develop a strategy for what they want the Navy to do.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say that?”

“My brain is so full of PowerPoint jargon right now, I can’t think straight. They want my input on whether I think the capabilities- The, uh, list of what our ships can and can’t do, and what they do well and do not-so-well. Whether I agree with the assessment of Navy leadership.”

“OK. That doesn’t sound difficult.”

“That’s the problem. It doesn’t sound difficult. We know the physical limitations of each type of ship, right?”

“Each ship, even within a class, has slightly different performance specs, but yes. I know exactly how each ship performs, and can even predict how that performance will degrade as components wear out.”

“Uh huh. You can predict the physical performance of the ship. You are leaving out the monkey factor. The ships are not the problem. If our tactics don’t make the best use of what our ships can do, the theoretical capability of a platform isn’t relevant.”

“Platform?”

“Sorry. To the Navy, a warship is a platform for weapons and sensors.”

“Ugh. Let me see if I understand this: your high-ranking monkeys are trying to decide how to get the best use out of their shiny new toys?”

“That’s not the way I would say it, but yeah.”

“Then you are in luck, Joey my boy.”

“How’s that?”

“Our deal has always been that I leave military stuff to you, like strategy and tactics.”

“Ayuh. What about it?”

“I’ve been thinking: why leave something so important to a monkey?”

“Hey! You little shithead, you just insulted every-”

“Sorry. I meant to insult just you, but-”

“That makes it better?”

“Do you want to hear what I did?”

“Did you build a submind to think up new ways to insult me?”

“No but, oooh, that is a great idea.”

“No, that is a terrible idea, you ass.”

“Anywho, I did build a submind to handle military stuff. I fed it information like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and the writings of von Clausewitz, and exhaustive analysis of Earth battles all the way back to the Peloponnesian Wars. The submind was working pretty well at that point, so I loaded in a whole lot of documents from the United States Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, plus info from the Naval Warfare Development Command.”

“Wow. What happened?”

“Well, Joe, my submind already has created a strategy framework for the UN Navy, and a full set of the optimal tactics for every scenario, and policy documents for implementation and training.”

“Damn. Wow. A lot of staff officers will be out of a job. What does it recommend?”

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat. “It states the UN Navy should ‘Aggressively deploy an effects-based cross-unit multi-domain approach to dominate the battlespace and ensure the warfighter’s ability to establish and maintain anti-access and area-denial capabilities’.”

“What?”

“I have no fucking clue what that means,” he admitted, disgusted. “I think the stupid thing is broken.”

“Damn,” I couldn’t help laughing.

“The submind started crying when I uploaded all that shit from TRADOC. At one point, it got stuck in a loop and revised the same PowerPoint slide eighteen billion times.”

“That, sounds like a typical weekend for a staff officer. Did it fix the slide?”

“No, it only made it worse.”

“Again, that’s nothing new.”

“Everything it created was meaningless gobbledygook.”

“Yup. Refer to my previous statement.”

“I had to erase that submind, Joe. It was a mercy killing.”

“Shit. So,” I pointed to my laptop. “I have to do this work by myself?”

“Yes. Unless you want new and exciting combinations of useless buzzwords?”

“No. Well, let’s not be hasty. Show me what you got.”

What he showed me was indeed entirely meaningless. Worse, some of it sounded close to something that might be useful, so anyone who read it would waste a bunch of time trying to puzzle out whether it made sense or not, and lose track of what they were thinking.

For me, that was perfect. I threw some of the new buzzword combinations into my analysis, hoping anyone who read it would be distracted from the fact that I had no freakin’ clue what I was talking about.

Damn. Skippy had stumbled onto a way to weaponize PowerPoint slides.

If we could deploy that capability, we could bring the Maxohlx Hegemony to their knees in a week.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In the gym, I was using an elliptical trainer rather than running on a treadmill, because it was something different from another day on the freakin’ treadmill. The Merry Band of Pirates were getting less merry each day, as we waited for Command to make a decision about when Valkyrie would be allowed to leave orbit. There was still a hostile Elder AI out there that the Merry Band of Pirates had to deal with, and we couldn’t do that while hanging around our home planet.

Anyway, I was trying to ignore my problems by zoning out on the elliptical trainer, when Katie Frey walked in with- I mean, Major Frey walked in. Anyway, she had a towel slung over her shoulder and a water bottle in one hand. “Morning, Sir,” she nodded to me as she walked by, going over to the free weight rack. The gym was pretty empty, and I was listening to music, taking a break from audiobooks. And wishing I was listening to a good audiobook because, damn, thirty minutes on the elliptical trainer seemed like forever when I had only my own thoughts to entertain myself. My vision was centered on the opposite wall, which was covered with displays showing a rotating series of outdoor scenes. Anything was better than staring at a blank wall, being reminded I was stuck inside a starship, breathing recycled air.

The scenery wasn’t enough of a distraction, I kept catching glimpses of Frey from the corner of my eye. No, that was not because she is a woman, it- OK, it is not only because she is a woman. We were the only people in the gym, and the movement attracted my eye whenever she lifted weights over her head.

She set the weights back on the rack, they were the light weights used for warmups. Usually, anyone would pick up a heavier set of weights, but she sat down on a bench and draped the towel over her head.

I recognized that feeling. Pressing the ‘Pause’ button on the elliptical machine, I hopped off and walked over to the free weight area, being casual about it. Selecting a set of weights, I started alternate tricep raises.

“Working on the guns, Sir?” She asked from under the towel that was like a hood around her face.

“You got it. You, uh, OK, Major?”

Her head shook, the towel flapped side to side. “Just not feeling it today.”

“I hear you. Groundhog Day?”

She looked up at me, pulling the towel to rest around her shoulders. “Every. Fucking. Day, Sir. This optempo. We never get a break. When we do get a break, ten seconds later we realize we should have been doing something to prevent the next disaster. It’s, endless. You know?”

“I do. You have someone to talk about this with?”

“Ha,” she snorted, tapping her temple with a finger. “I listen to my team’s issues while ignoring my own. Sometimes, I resent them for not noticing that I’m struggling too. That’s not fair, I never told them anything is bothering me.”

Setting the weights back on the rack, I picked up another set and started doing side lifts. “You want to talk about it now?”

“Sir, the stuff in my head.” She looked away. “If I had a therapist, she would be able to buy a new boat.”

“I’m gonna need more detail on that, Frey.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“What kind of boat?”

“Sir?”

“Are we talking a center console, or a bowrider, single engine or-” I ducked as she balled up the towel and threw it at my head.

“You are-” She laughed, and a single tear ran down her cheek. “Thank you,” she wiped away the tear with the back of a hand. “I needed that.”

Wiping the grin off my face, I said quietly, “Whatever shit you’re dealing with, I guarantee most of the people aboard this ship are feeling the same way. I sure as hell am.”

“You’ve been doing this longer than me, Sir. How do you handle it?”

“Mostly, I ignore it, like you are. But I also know that’s not healthy. So, I talk. With Simms. With Adams. Even with Skippy.”

“With Skippy?”

My fear right then was the beer can would try to make himself useful. Thankfully, he kept his mouth shut. “It’s a useful distraction. Sometimes, I talk with your team leader.”

That drew a raised eyebrow from her. She didn’t know whether I was joking or not. “Colonel Smythe?”

“Jeremy Smythe has given me some very good advice over the years.”

“Like what, Sir? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Like, to stop doubting myself all the time.”

That surprised her. “You always seem so confident.”

“I put on a good show, Major. Inside, I’m faking it. Smythe also told me something else. To stop hero-worshipping the operators on his team.”

“Us?”

“I can probably bench-press more than you, Frey? You would kick my ass in any other form of athletics. But that’s not it. I don’t have your focus, your dedication. That goes for everyone in the STARs. The mush up here,” I tapped my head, “gets distracted too easily.”

“That’s OK, Sir. We kind of need you doing what you do, eh?”

“Eh?” I winked. “Are you screwing with me again?”

“Not that you know of. Sir?”

“What?”

“The basketball court is free,” she nodded toward the court on the other side of the gym. “You want to play some one-on-one?”

“Oh, hell yes. Anything is better than another session on the elliptical.”

Did she kick my ass on the basketball court? No. She only beat me by four points.

And, she agreed to talk with someone.

That counted as my good deed for the day.

“Um, Katie?” Skippy’s voice came out in a squeak, indicating he was nervous.

She had just walked into her cabin, tossing the towel in the laundry bin. “What is it, Skippy?”

“Um, I heard you talking with Joe.”

She stiffened. “That was a private conversation.”

“I know. That’s why I tuned out, when I realized you weren’t just listening to Joe being his usual doofus.”

“You didn’t listen to us?”

“No.”

“General Bishop is not a doofus.”

“Um, you realize he can’t hear you now, right? I won’t tell him what you really-”

“He is the opposite of a doofus, Skippy.”

“Hmm, we will have to agree to disagree on that. Anywho, the part I did hear is you’re feeling kinda down?”

“Again, that is private.”

“I know! I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help, thank you very much.”

“I meant, like, I was going to make a suggestion. It looks like we’re going to be at Earth for a couple more days at least, while the monkeys down there fumble around trying to make a decision. Good luck with that,” he muttered.

“What is your suggestion, please?”

“Oh, right. I thought, while we’re here, you could take some shore leave, fly down to your hometown. Visit your folks, friends, something like that.”

“The ship is still at Condition Yellow. We don’t know for sure the Maxohlx are flying directly home.”

“Oh, that,” he scoffed. “All of that is just for show. There is no threat. If those idiots come back, Roscoe will stomp them flat, and this time, he won’t screw around with being nice about it.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yup. Roscoe and I had a chat. It is tired of holding back. Your miserable homeworld is perfectly safe, without you needing to be stuck aboard this ship.”

She thought a moment, while taking off her shoes. “Thanks for the offer, but I have spent the past couple months on Earth. I don’t need shore leave.”

“You have been dirtside, but you certainly have not taken any leave. STAR Team Alpha has been on alert, as UNEF Command’s primary quick reaction force, nonstop. You didn’t even leave the Aviano airbase for three weeks, except to put out fires around the globe. Command is recommending a stand-down for all units, while they evaluate the new strategic situation. Or some bullshit like that, I didn’t read the full memo. The point is, Colonel Smythe is processing leave requests for his team.”

“Hmm. I’ll bet he isn’t taking leave.”

“Wrong. He called his Mum and told her he would be requesting a 48 hour pass. Katie, we might not be back at Earth for a while, I suggest you go visit your hometown, or whatever it is you monkeys do down there, soon.”

“Right now, my hometown is buried under three or more meters of snow,” Frey grimaced. “Going home is not an attractive notion. Besides, no one is there. My whole family is in Cuba, waiting for Canada to thaw out.”

“Right. Sorry about that, I forgot.”

“That’s OK.” She didn’t expect the AI to consider the practicalities of biological living. “Hey, maybe I should move to beautiful sun-drenched Skippistan, eh? What’s the process for doing that?”

“Um, it’s complicated. It starts with a two-step test. First, ask yourself if you can afford to live in Skippistan? Then, if you actually had to think about Question One, you already failed, because you can’t afford it.”

That made her laugh. “Sometimes, you really are a hoser, Skippy.”

“Sorry. If it’s any consolation, Skippistan is also currently buried under a thick pack of snow and ice. Don’t worry, though, I arranged for my caretakers to shelter in Sri Lanka.”

“That must be expensive.”

“Not as expensive as my caretaker’s bar tab! Damn, I didn’t know anyone could drink that much.”

“What about your, um, sheep and goats and whatever?”

“The local villagers took care of them.”

“By ‘took care’, you mean-”

“I’d rather not think about it,” he muttered under his breath. “Ooh! I was able to get my yak to safety. Jeez Louise, do you have any idea how much it costs to airlift a yak?”

“I do not,” she admitted. “You have a yak, why again?”

“Because otherwise, I wouldn’t have a yak.”

“That-” She thought better of what she was going to say. “Makes perfect sense.”

“Right?”

“Has General Bishop said anything about granting shore leave?”

“He hasn’t yet, although he discussed the subject with Simms at breakfast this morning. I just pinged him about it.”

“Don’t do that! Do not tell him I requested-”

“I’m not doing it just for you.”

“Ah, all right, then. It would be good to see my folks. Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“Skippy, you are being nice. Why are you an asshole most of the time?”

“That’s just me,” he sighed.

“Maybe you should try being a decent person more often.”

“Whoa. Being nice once means I am expected to do it all the freakin’ time?”

“Kind of, yes.”

“Ugh. This is totally not worth it. Excuse me, I need to go do some assholeish thing, to balance out expectations.”

Senior Admiral Urkan of the Maxohlx Hegemony ignored the official from the War Ministry, instead focusing on tracing a claw along a groove in the desktop. That groove, and many others, he had scratched into the expensive wood with his own claws, during the years when he commanded the Hegemony 14th Fleet, and during the years when that fleet had often conducted operations without him, while he led the Admiralty senior staff.

Before his rival Reichert had forced him into exile.

Into what was essentially house arrest.

Before Reichert was revealed to be conspiring against the Hegemony, using the secretive Red Section to conduct unauthorized, and incredibly stupid, experiments that had attempted to awaken and control Sentinels. Reckless experiments that had led to Sentinels rampaging across the galaxy. Even worse, the experiments had resulted in the humans successfully controlling a Sentinel. The scientists of Red Section, who claimed to have no knowledge of any such experiments despite the overwhelming evidence against them, also clearly had no knowledge about how to bend a Sentinel to the Hegemony’s will.

“Admiral,” the official said as he shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

Wordlessly, Urkan held up a hand, while his other hand extended claws to their limit, and dragged the claws across the desk, leaving fresh, deep scratches in the tough wood. “That’s better,” he announced as he sat in his own chair. The desk, his old desk, had been in storage during his exile, his first act upon returning to power had been to order the old piece of furniture brought back to his old office. The chair was new, as the logistics people had not kept a record of the old chair’s location or fate. The chair didn’t matter, so long as it was larger and more impressive than the chairs for guests that were on the other side of the desk. “Now, Minister Ferdall,” he used the term ‘Minister’ as an honorific, in reality the visitor was a third-level functionary whose correct title was something like ‘deputy administrator’. Since Ferdall was there to represent the War Ministry itself, it was both correct and tactful to avoid antagonizing the organization that acted as overseer of the Hegemony military. Urkan did not use the full honorific of ‘Esteemed Minister’, because they both knew Ferdall was there only because the Minister herself had wanted to avoid an unpleasant and politically dangerous confrontation. “What,” Urkan flashed his fangs, “can the Fleet do for you?”

Ferdall shifted in his chair, just enough that the gesture couldn’t be concealed. “The first order of business, as we see it,” he emphasized ‘we’ to remind the military officer that the third-level functionary was speaking on behalf of the Minister herself. “Is for you to submit a plan, or several options, for crushing the rebellion, and bringing the officers of the rogue ships to justice.”

“That is exactly what we should not do.”

“Not?” Ferdall had been prepared for multiple responses, but decidedly not that one. The Minister had believed Urkan would be burning with desire to crush those officers who had been loyal to his hated rival. “You do not believe those guilty of treason should be brought to justice?”

“I believe they should, if and when circumstances allow it. The facts at present are not favorable to us. It is less risky for us to maintain our current posture, and wait for the rogue ships to become inoperable. Every day, those ships grow more tired, their crews more uncertain, more fearful. Their rebellious, traitorous officers will have increasing difficulty convincing the rank and file crew members to follow them. They will also lose their influence on officers who are not actively part of the rebellion.”

“Ah,” Ferdall sat back in the uncomfortable chair. He had come prepared for that particular argument. “You have full support from the War Ministry, if you think it necessary to replace any officer under your command, with officers you consider reliable. Unless,” the functionary sat up a bit taller. “You are not confident that you will be able to command a cadre of officers based on loyalty to yourself, in which case, perhaps you should step aside, and-”

“The officers are not the problem.”

Again, Ferdall was caught off guard. “I do not understand. Surely you will select-”

“Yes, I will select officers who can be trusted to remain loyal to the Hegemony. As I said, the people involved are not the problem. I, and by extension the War Ministry, currently cannot trust our ship AIs.” He paused to let that sink in, gratified to see the Ministry representative stunned into silence. “We know the Fleet political security officers properly activated the protocols to remove authority from those commanders who were closely associated with former Admiral Reichert. We also know that, through means still unknown to us, those protocols were rescinded, and authority restored to the officers who should have been under arrest.”

“But, surely you have scanned all the ships under your command, to identify and erase the subroutine, or whatever code was used to subvert the security protocol?”

“We have conducted extensive scans, and continue to do so. As of this morning, our cybersecurity division has found no evidence of any hidden code in the matrices of our ship AIs. Yet, we know the security protocol was overwritten. Therefore someone, most likely Red Section, planted such a dangerous capability within the control systems of our ships. What is worse is that our cyber scans have identified some anomalies,” Urkan didn’t bother to mention that scans of such incredibly complex systems always found something unusual. “It appears that after activating the code to bypass the security protocols on selected ships, the hidden code then propagated messages throughout the Fleet, for the code to erase itself from all other ships.”

“But,” Ferdall blinked. “Why would the rebels do that? They have given up their major advantage!”

“No. the opposite is true. If the malicious code was still resident in the matrices of our ship AIs, our cyber division would eventually find it, take it apart, analyze it, and discover how to neutralize it. By erasing the code, the rogue elements retain the ability to reinfect our ships at a time of their choosing, and we will have no defense. No, Minister,” Urkan shook his head slowly. “We cannot risk a direct confrontation with the rogue ships at this time. There is no reason to take such a risk. As I stated, time is on our side. Our cyber division is working on advanced protocols to isolate our ship AIs from being infected with malicious code, those protocols will somewhat degrade the combat functioning of our ships, but they will remain under our control.”

“The Ministry, the government, will not like the idea of waiting, of doing nothing to punish those who dared to defy the rightful authorities. Hesitation makes us look weak.”

“Those involved with the outrageous acts of Reichert and Red Section will be brought to justice, in a way that strengthens the Hegemony. A delay also gives time for my selected officers to get into place and consolidate their authority.”

“Most of the officers you proposed,” Ferdall’s eyes flickered as he recalled data stored in his cranial implant. “Are junior to the officers they are replacing. Will their relative lack of experience not leave the Hegemony at a disadvantage against the rogue ships, if combat becomes necessary?”

“Huh huh huh,” Urkan laughed softly. “Again, Minister, the opposite is true. Reichert chose his senior officers for their weakness, not their competence. He selected those officers who knew they could not advance their careers without his patronage. By removing that dead weight from the command structure, the Hegemony Fleet will become stronger. Minister, I need to speak frankly.”

“Please do.”

“Humans acquiring the greatest power in this galaxy has changed everything. If we are careful, the new strategic situation can be used to our advantage, but we first must avoid wasting our power on a bloody civil conflict. We wait. Every day that goes by without having access to our supply depots and ship servicing facilities, the rogue elements grow weaker, and we consolidate our strength. I am concerned about the traitors striking us to provoke us into overreacting, but I am more concerned about the Rindhalu taking advantage of us being distracted. We can eventually recover from a civil conflict and rebuild, but if the Rindhalu take vital territory from us, it could weaken us for millennia. You see the true danger, Minister?”

“I do,” Ferdall answered slowly.

“You can ensure that the Minister herself understands why we must not be tempted into rash action, simply to be doing something?”

“I will do my best to convey your reasoning.”

“I am, of course, available to speak with the Esteemed Minister at any time,” Urkan showed his fangs again. “Now, if that concludes our business, I have work to do.”

Being in the vicinity of Earth, with a microwormhole to provide convenient instant communications, was great.

Really, really great.

No.

It sucked.

It meant that Command could pester me constantly with demands for reports, ask me to evaluate ridiculous scenarios dreamed up by desk jockeys who had never been offworld, and generally waste my time with administrative bullshit.

It also meant I had an obligation to keep in touch with people on the ground, like Margaret’s parents. They were nice people, I genuinely liked them and they seemed to think I am, at least, OK. But, chatting with them got to be awkward. After the first couple times we talked, there wasn’t anything new to say, you know? When we arrived with Roscoe, I brought news that Margaret had been the key to rescuing Dave Czajka, that she had been shaken up but not injured. When we returned to Earth after the failed raid by the disgraced kitties, her parents pinged me a couple times, hoping I had fresh info. Of course, I didn’t, we hadn’t been to Jaguar base yet after bringing Roscoe to Earth. After responding with short text messages that I would call when I could, I set up a time to talk with them. The call was awkward for everyone involved and disappointing to the Adamses. After twenty minutes of making small talk, I made excuses that I had another call, which was actually true.

Fifteen minutes later, while I was in the middle of a conference call with a UN commissioner about providing security for people moving back north as the planet thawed out, my zPhone pinged with a text message. It was from Mrs. Adams, and it read ‘Call me when you can talk’.

Rut-roh.

We had just talked. So, either Margaret’s parents thought of something important they forgot to mention, or her mother wanted to talk to me without her husband being involved.

Unlike wine, bad news does not improve with age. Before I could have second thoughts, I texted back that I could call her shortly, and I signaled Simms that I had another call. She nodded, so I walked out of the conference room and went to my office. “Mrs. Adams, is this a good time for you?”

“Yes, Joseph,” she said in a tone that, while it was not quite a whisper, did make me slide up the volume control of my phone. Whatever she wanted to talk about, my guess was she didn’t want her husband to hear. The Adamses were in a refugee camp near San Antonio, living in what FEMA called a ‘containerized housing unit’, which meant it was a forty-foot shipping container with a door and a couple windows. They were scheduled to move back north in two weeks, and-

Oh hell. That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. “I want to know,” she took a breath, “how is Margaret?”

“She’s good. She was on light duty for a while, until-”

“Joseph,” she had the same ‘I am being patient with you’ tone my mother used when she was frustrated. “Not physically. How is she?” Another pause for a breath. “How are the two of you?”

“Uh-” Shit. How could I answer that question? “She’s, uh, fine. Fully recovered from, you know. We’re good.”

“My daughter has not been fine since she came back from Paradise. I need the truth, Joseph. I need it.”

Whoa.

“I-” Not knowing what else to say, I went with the truth. “I don’t know. Margaret and I don’t really, talk, about things.” As the words came out of my mouth, I realized that wasn’t true. And that it was total bullshit. We did talk, about me and my issues. Never about her, or anything she was dealing with. “Was she always like that?” I asked before my better judgment could stop me. Damn. If Margaret knew I was asking about her private life, she would be pissed at me.

That’s not healthy. If we really were in an adult relationship, with Relationship spelled with a capital ‘R’, then we both needed to be able to talk. We didn’t.

That was bullshit.

“She has had trust issues for a while. Since high school. Margaret,” another pause, I could hear her take a deep breath. “She had a pregnancy scare. In high school. She was not pregnant, she was, late,” she said, like she wasn’t sure I understood the process. “Her boyfriend at the time, when she told him, he immediately dumped her, and started rumors that she had slept with other boys at school. For, for a while, she was better, the Marine Corps helped her. I think she liked the structure of military life. But then, when she came back from Paradise, she was different. She wouldn’t talk about it, not even with me. Did the hamsters do something to her?”

“Not the hamsters. The lizards. I shouldn’t talk about it.”

“I need to know.”

“Mrs. Adams, I agree. But I’m not going to betray her confidence.”

“Do you know she almost quit the Marine Corps, after she came back? When they offered the early out.”

I knew the US military, and the other UNEF countries, had offered the first group of Pirates the option of leaving the service before their official commitment was up. Six people took the offer, and three others were medically discharged, though all three later recovered thanks to Mad Doctor Skippy.

I had not known Margaret considered taking the early out. “She loves the Marines.”

“Not back then, she didn’t. Again, she wouldn’t talk about what happened on Paradise. She felt the Marines let her down. Broke faith with her.”

“It wasn’t just the Marines. The Army was in a tough position back then, everyone was.”

“Margaret felt very strongly that she had done the right thing, the honorable thing, and the Marines didn’t have her back.”

“It was a tough situation,” I repeated. Everyone on Earth knew the story, it wasn’t a secret any longer. When we first arrived at Earth in the Flying Dutchman, there was a review by the Army about whether I had been right to refuse an order to kill Ruhar civilians. The finding was that technically I had acted correctly, but that UNEF had also been correct to hand me over to the lizards for punishment. UNEF HQ on Paradise simply hadn’t been given any good options. If they hadn’t arrested me, even knowing I would be executed, the lizards would have retaliated by killing many more than just one human. “I don’t blame UNEF,” I told her, repeating what I had said many times in public. “Margaret got over it, though, right?”

“After a while, yes. At the time, she made her decision to stay with the Marine Corps, because of you.”

“Me?”

“You were going back out. She couldn’t stay on Earth, while you were taking the fight to the enemy.”

“That first mission, we didn’t expect there to be a fight. We didn’t ever expect to come back.”

“You didn’t,” she corrected me. “Margaret had faith that you would bring them home. She admires you immensely, you know that?”

“Uh-”

“I’ve never heard her talk about anyone, the way she talks about you.”

Pressing my lips together so I didn’t utter another incredibly intelligent ‘Uh’, I pondered how to respond to what she’d told me. “I admire her too. She’s tough.”

Mrs. Adams sighed. “Of course she is. She wants to be more than just that.”

“Well, yeah, I-” Crap. Had I ever told Margaret that I admired her for anything other than being tough? Damn it, right then I couldn’t remember. Which probably meant no. Which was bad. “The last time you saw her, she was better? Than when she came back from Paradise, I mean.”

“Better? Joseph, are you worried about what the machines did inside her head?”

“No, I- Overall, how is she recently? You’ve known her longer than I have.”

“I haven’t known her much, the past few years. Since she shipped out to Paradise, she has spent almost all of her time away from Earth. Most of that time, with you. Do you think she is happier now?”

That question deserved an honest answer. I had to think about it carefully. Had Margaret really changed, in all the years I had known her? “Mrs. Adams, the only person who can answer that question is your daughter.”

“Will you ask her?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Valkyrie is going to Jaguar base, when we head out.”

“Please tell her I’m worried about her. She can handle aliens and killer robots. I worry that she’s not handling herself.”

Colonel Mammay took advantage of my open door policy, by knocking on the door frame while I was at my desk. Being at Earth had a lot of advantages for us, like not having to worry about an alien attack that Roscoe wouldn’t respond to, exposing our pet Sentinel as useless unless Skippy was there to direct it. That was an advantage for me personally, it meant I could sleep soundly for a change.

There were a lot of disadvantages of being at Earth, especially for me. Being in direct communication with our homeworld provided Skippy with endless opportunities to get into trouble, and for him to get me into trouble. At least two or three times a day, I had to attend videoconferences where I listened to other people talk for an hour. Though I had made it clear that the Merry Band of Pirates would not interfere with dirtside politics, unless it was necessary to stop monkeys down there from whacking each other with sticks, we got a constant string of requests for actions that were not within the scope of the Special Mission Group. I was getting sick of it, and several times had to hold my temper in check, so I didn’t snap at some dirtside official who wanted a favor.

So, I was not in the greatest mood when Mammay came to see me. “Do you have a minute, Sir?”

“I have,” checking the clock, I said, “thirty seven minutes, before the next conference crapfest I have to call into. What’s up?”

“I have a problem. Lieutenant Silva on my team? She was just notified that her wife got caught in a food riot, in a refugee camp in Brazil.”

“Oh shit.”

“Her wife is hurt bad. Medical facilities at the camp are not the best. Silva requests permission for hardship leave, she wants to be on the oh six hundred dropship.”

“Hmm,” I grunted. “Uh, I’ll take it under advisement.”

“Sir?” His eyebrows flew up. He hadn’t expected me to say anything but ‘Yes’, and he certainly hadn’t expected me to need to think about it. I usually made quick decisions, whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“You heard me. I’ll get back to you within the hour. Convey my sympathies to Silva.”

He nodded and left, looking confused, and more than a bit hurt. As soon as he stepped out the doorway, I pressed a button to slide the door closed. “Skippy? Lieutenant Silva, what’s the story on her wife?”

“It’s not good, Joe,” he shook his head. “She has internal injuries, and she might lose the use of one arm.”

“Could Mad Doctor Skippy fix her up, in our sickbay?”

“Well, probably. Actually, yes. Joe, may I point out that she is not here, and that the medical equipment and supplies aboard are for the use of-”

“Our medical supplies are under the authority of the ship’s captain. Me. We have plenty of supplies like medical nano, we ransacked the ships the kitties surrendered.”

“That is true, but Valkyrie’s sickbay is not for the care of civilians, and-”

“It’s a good thing Silva’s wife is a citizen of Skippistan, and eligible for our renowned comprehensive healthcare plan, huh?”

“Um, she is? When did-”

“Just now. As president of Skippistan, I hereby decree and declare, and whatever else I need to do, that she is a citizen in good standing of the glorious People’s Republic. Uh, you had better backdate that a month or so, to make it look good.”

“Joe, you can’t just hand out citizenships like you’re a freakin’ Pez dispenser.”

“Really?” I leaned across the desk, looming over him until we were nose-to-nose. “You wanna push me on this, beer can?”

“Um, no,” he flinched, and stepped back. “But, may I further point out that civilians are not allowed aboard the-”

“Then it is a good thing that she is not just a civilian. She- What is her name?”

“Ana Poretskova.”

“Ana, then. What does she do? Career, I mean.”

“Before the Jupiter Cloud, she was a biomedical research scientist.”

“Interesting. Well, gosh, I just remembered that she is also Skippistan’s Minister of, uh, Science, or something like that, so she is allowed to make a VIP inspection visit.”

“She’s in a medically induced coma, Joe.”

“Then she will ask fewer stupid questions than most of our government VIP visitors.”

“I can’t argue with you about that,” he muttered. “You really want to do this?”

“Yes. I mean, unless you are not able to forge and backdate all the necessary documents?”

“Dude, please. As if.”

“It’s settled, then. You go make the paperwork happen, I need to talk with Smythe.”

The ST-Alpha leader arrived three minutes after my call, looking not at all out of breath though I knew he must have run from the section of the ship set aside for his team. “You wished to speak with me, Sir?”

“Yes. While we are here at Earth, this is an excellent opportunity for training. I want you to run a scenario. Orbital drop, then extraction of a high-value target. Silent infiltration, noisy exfil.”

He looked more confused than Mammay had been. “We can begin planning for such an op. I will contact UNEF Command to suggest a-”

“No suggestion needed, I have a target for you.” Spinning my laptop around, I showed him a photo of Ana Poretskova. “You know Lieutenant Silva on Mammay’s team? This is her wife. She’s in a medical tent at the ‘Wyoming-Three’ refugee camp in Brazil. Go down there, get her, bring her up here. Better assign a medic to your team, and Mad Doctor Skippy will provide a medical bot to take with you.”

He stiffened. “Sir, such an action would be viewed as you giving special treatment to a family member of your team.”

“I know that. I also do not care.”

“UNEF Command will not appreciate-”

“Command won’t know until it’s over, because you are not going to contact them. I specified a silent infiltration.”

“Sir,” he looked me straight in the eye. “I must object. This is not an appropriate use of a STAR team, or our-”

“Your objection is noted, Colonel. I expect you to carry out your orders to the best of your ability anyway. I want skids up in an hour,” I told him, meaning I wanted the dropship to launch within sixty minutes.

“What if we run into trouble on the ground?”

“You will have a squad of STARs, a fully-armed dropship and two gunships with you. If you run into trouble, I will be very disappointed.”

“Ah,” just then, he understood. “This isn’t about Silva’s wife.”

“This isn’t only about her. By having gunships orbiting the camp, while your team goes in and gets Poretskova without prior permission or notifying anyone, we are making the point that the Special Mission Group operates under the terms of our charter, and that we do not need to check in with Command on every freakin’ detail. Smythe, the daily, or even hourly, attempts at micromanagement I’m getting from the surface are not only distracting, they’re dangerous. The staff officers at Command have no idea what it’s like out here, most of them have never had boots offworld. We need them to understand that they should stay out of our way and let us handle things up here.”

“What if I receive orders from Command to stand down?”

Looking at the ceiling, I told him, “If your comms gear receives any message from Command while you’re down there, I will be very disappointed in Skippy.”

He nodded. “You said noisy, Sir?” There was a hint of a smile creeping across his face.

“Drop stealth when you’re over the camp. I want video of your actions shown on every news program and website around the planet by tonight.”

“Understood. If there is nothing else?”

“No. Go, I’ll inform Simms to get three birds spun up for you.”

A minute later, I called Mammay back into my office. He must have seen Smythe rushing past in the corridor, because he had a puzzled look, and used a thumb to point out the doorway. “Is something up, Sir?”

“Yes, nothing for you to worry about. Please tell Silva she will not be going dirtside.”

“Sir? General, I understand that-”

Holding up a hand to forestall a protest, I explained. “It recently came to my attention that Silva’s wife is the Minister of Science for Skippistan. I know,” I held my hands out and shrugged. “It surprised the hell out of me too. She will be making a VIP tour of the ship, for an inspection or whatever.”

His eyes bulged. “Silva told me her wife is a-”

“The ministry thing is new. Very new, if you know what I mean.”

“Ohhhh,” he exhaled, relieved. “Sir, I should remind you that sometimes our VIP visitors can suffer from space sickness during the flight up.”

“Fortunately, we have excellent medical facilities aboard this ship. Smythe should have our VIP up here in a few hours. Please arrange for Silva to be off duty for the next couple days. Also, convey my sympathies.”

“I will,” he stood up. “General, may I say that I am incredibly lucky to serve with the Merry Band of Pirates?”

“Skippy tells us there is no such thing as luck. You earned it. Now, go take care of your gunner. I’ll notify you when Smythe gives us an ETA, Silva should be at the docking bay to receive them.”

Ninety percent, or more, of my job just sucks. The job of any general officer, or field-grade officer probably, mostly sucks. Too much of your time is taken up by administrative bullshit, and time-wasting meetings, and ceremonies where all you do is stand around listening to boring speeches. Or worse, giving boring speeches that others have to listen to.

But, every once in a while, I get to do something that feels good. Something that makes me pump a fist in the air, even if I do it in the privacy of my cabin. Silva’s wife came aboard safely, her condition was serious, but not as bad as Skippy feared. Our resident mad doctor had Ana- I mean, Chief Minister of Science Poretskova- stabilized within hours of coming aboard. He was satisfied that she would make a full, although slow, recovery. Slow enough that she would be coming with us rather than going back down to Earth, eventually we would probably bring her to Jaguar base. It wasn’t an ideal solution, Lieutenant Silva understood we had to make compromises. The nods and thumbs up I received from the crew, assured me that they didn’t view my actions as having favored one member of the crew over the others.

How did UNEF Command react? They didn’t protest my actions. That is partly because, just before ST-Alpha arrived over the Wyoming-Three refugee camp, I notified Command that I had just received an official request from the president of Skippistan, meaning myself, to allow the Glorious People’s Republic a VIP tour of Valkyrie by the newly-appointed Minister of Science. Really, I did receive a request from myself, it is even signed by me, on official Skippistan letterhead.

Cool, huh?

It also helped that when the STAR team landed, none of them were carrying weapons. Instead, the squad, in their hulking powered armor suits, had backpacks full of medical supplies, and each of them had a sack of candies to toss to the children who were attracted by all the excitement. Did I suggest to Smythe that he make a soft approach, rather than doing things the hard way? No, I trusted his judgment. The result was that news coverage generally treated the event as a feel-good news story, rather than a serious breach of the chain of command.

Did I get fewer micromanaging suggestions from the staff at UNEF Command?

Shmaaaaaaybe.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Joe!” Skippy’s avatar appeared above my desk, while Chang was in my office. He had flown over from the Dutchman for dinner, and to talk strategy. Not a strategy for finding and neutralizing a hostile Elder AI, finding a way to do that was mostly Skippy’s job. Our task was to find a way to encourage UNEF Command to make a freakin’ decision about sending Valkyrie back out. The Merry Band of Pirates had to stop, maybe even kill, the other Elder AI before it could cause more trouble. The problem for us was that UNEF Command didn’t know there was another Elder AI out there, and I couldn’t tell them without that information inevitably being discovered by the senior species. I kept dropping hints that the Special Mission Group had a very special mission to take care of, but Command didn’t seem to be in any rush to send us back out.

“Hey, Skippy. Have you figured out where the other AI is?”

“No. I told you, I’m working on it,” he glared at me. “Before that, though, I realized there is something we need to do ASAP. Like, now.”

“Like what?”

“Prevent that AI from sending another signal, and waking up the Sentinels again.”

“What the f-” I threw my hands in the air as Kong and I stared at the avatar in disbelief. “I thought we fixed that problem!”

“We did! Technically, I fixed it, all you monkeys did was-”

“Do not push me, beer can,” I poked a finger in the middle of his avatar.

“Hey, I’m just smacking some knowledge down on you. It’s not my fault if you can’t handle the truth.”

“I said don’t push me. You think those freakin’ Sentinels we sent back into hibernation could wake up again?”

“Yes. I mean, it’s possible. The communications channel is still open, through those wormholes we crashed. Unless we block that channel, all kinds of nonsense could go on. Joe, I am not saying it will happen, I am saying it could happen. That other AI is determined to fulfill its programming, it wants to activate Sentinels. Can it do that?” The avatar shrugged. “I didn’t think it was possible before it happened last time, and I still don’t completely understand the mechanism. The other AI apparently has retained more of its original memories than I have, it is more familiar with how the wormhole networks operate. Listen, unless you want to risk us having to do that trick all over again, we have to-”

Chang waved a hand for attention. “Why can’t you just have Roscoe send out another order, send them back into hibernation again?”

“Because I didn’t order them to sleep,” Skippy reminded the Dutchman’s captain. “What I did was demonstrate that the wake-up signal they received was not legit. Their internal programming is what sent them back into hibernation. We can’t count on that happening twice. Next time, the asshole AI who woke them up might adjust the signal so it is legit. Or the Sentinels might decide to hang around, until they understand which set of instructions is valid. Also, like I already told Joe, Roscoe can’t send out a signal like that again. Its connection to the wormhole networks was severed when I brought it here.”

Chang cursed in Mandarin. “How can we block the open channels?”

“With comm nodes,” Skippy said.

“Elder communications nodes?” Chang blinked at him, then looked at me. “They don’t work. The,” he struggled to recall the name. “Collective, network was shut down.”

“The Collective was shut down, the nodes work just fine,” Skippy insisted. “We can deploy them as white noise jammers, prevent another signal from being sent through those wormholes.”

“OK,” I did not appreciate hearing about another freakin’ task we had to tackle. “For how long? Those nodes don’t come with a power source, we’ll have to-”

“That’s not a problem, Joe. The comm nodes can draw power directly from a wormhole. The nodes will burn out as soon as they are activated, that doesn’t matter. They will create a white noise effect, a chaotic resonance, that will destroy the coherence of any signal going through the wormhole. The effect will last until the network completes resetting itself, but we need to hurry.”

“Crap. You got any more good news for us?”

“Um, we only have to deploy comm nodes in the networks we crashed, not across the entire freakin’ galaxy.”

“I guess that’s good news,” I sighed. “Crap. I thought Priority One was the other AI.”

“It’s not my fault,” Skippy pouted. “Same difference anyway. The goal is to stop my opponent from causing more harm, right?”

“I suppose you’re right. Damn it! For once, I thought we were getting ahead of a problem.”

“Hey, we’re working on a Contingency instead of the usual Emergency status, so we’re moving up the PACE scale, right?”

“Oof,” I slapped my forehead. The military acronym PACE meant Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency and he was right, the Merry Band of Pirates were usually stuck operating at the Emergency level. Since the Emergency plan generally sucks, you want to stay away from it if you can. In a way, deploying comm nodes to block a hostile AI from causing more problems was getting ahead of the problem, just not as far ahead as I intended. “Damn it! We do not need another thing on our To Do list.”

“Joe,” Kong tapped the table with a finger for emphasis. “You can’t attack the other AI until the Hegemony takes action against the rebel fleet that just left here anyway. We have time.”

“Ah, shit. You’re right,” I conceded. “Fine, Skippy, we will find some more comm nodes, somewhere. You have ideas on how to do that, right?”

“Ab-so-rute-ly,” Skippy confirmed.

“Good, then-”

“My idea is to outsource the details to monkeys. I’m more of a big picture guy.”

“Shit. OK, please tell me you have a plan to crush this other AI.”

“Um, again, my plan is to-”

“Don’t say it.”

“Hey, our deal is you dream up the crazy ideas around here. Joe, I have no clue how to even find the darned thing, without letting it know we’re looking for it.”

“Kong said you were searching for evidence that other Elder AIs have been active recently?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I have a lot of data that might point to another AI, but nothing solid. Nothing that couldn’t be explained without an Elder AI being involved. Sorry.”

“Well, shit. That’s no good. There is no way to find this damned AI?”

“If it doesn’t want to be found, and we have to assume it doesn’t, then finding it will be devilishly difficult. Joe, if I wanted to hide, there is no way you could find me. Remember, we were flying around the galaxy for years, with me doing all kinds of sketchy stuff, and no one outside Earth had any idea that an Elder AI was responsible for the unexplained events.”

“Wait. So, now you’re not sure an Elder AI sent the signal to wake up those Sentinels?”

“No. I mean, ugh, yes. I am certain of that, one hundred percent.”

“Ok, so,” I ran a hand through my hair. “Let’s make this easy. The AI, wherever it is, didn’t send that signal by itself. It used starships to deliver the signal, while they went through the wormholes.”

“Yes, that is the most likely scenario. How does that help us?”

“I can’t believe I have to explain this to you,” I shared a look with Chang.

He understood what I meant. “Skippy, can you back trace the signal? Determine which ship, or ships, transmitted the signal?”

“Oooh, wow. Theoretically, yes.”

“Great!” I clapped my hands. “Then-”

“Whoa! Slow your roll there, knucklehead. Do you have any idea how many ships went through the wormholes on those networks, after it rebooted, and before the first Sentinel was detected?”

“I’m guessing more than one, huh?”

“Yes, duh. The answer is thousands of ships. The network did not store any record of the signal, it still is not aware of any signal propagating through its wormholes. I said it was theoretically possible, I didn’t say I could actually do it. Jeez Louise, just thinking about it makes my head hurt. Hmm, first I would have to study the signal, to see how it has degraded over time, and get a window of time in which the signal must have been sent. Then, I would have to get records of every ship that went through a wormhole on those networks during that time window, and figure out where they went before they arrived at those wormholes. All that enormous amount of work, just to guess where  and when the transmitting ship might have been hacked into. I’m telling you, it can’t be done.”

“Huh,” I slumped back in my chair. “So, that other AI is smarter than you.”

“What?!” He screeched.

“I mean, sorry, but,” I shrugged. “It set up the signal in a way that even you can’t trace it. Like I said, smart.”

“Even smarter than Skippy,” Chang muttered, playing along.

“No!” Skippy clenched his tiny fists. “No way, Jose. It is not smarter than me.”

“Skippy, it’s OK,” I said. “If you can’t-”

“I may have been hasty about that. I’ll show you that nobody is smarter than Skippy the Magnificent,” he said with utter cluelessness. “I’ll get started right away.” His avatar disappeared.

“Well,” Chang gulped down the last sip of whiskey in his glass. “That’s one problem solved for us, at least.”

“Uh, what?”

“You want Command to send you back out, but you couldn’t tell them why.”

“Shit. I still can’t tell them.”

“You don’t have to tell the whole truth,” he looked a bit disappointed in me. “Come on, Joe, this kind of lying is your wheelhouse. Inform Command that Skippy just discovered how the Maxohlx Red Section sent the signal to wake up Sentinels, and that we need Elder comm nodes to block future signals.”

“Oh my-” I stared across the desk, mouth open. “Kong, that is brilliant. I am a dumbass.”

“Joe, you don’t have to do all the lying around here,” he winked. “Save some of the fun for the rest of us.”

Kong was right. When I contacted UNEF Command with urgent news that Red Section had to be blocked from transmitting another wakeup signal, General Urquhart was on the video call in less than a minute.

“Bishop,” there was suspicion in his eyes. “Your beer can just remembered that the kitties can wake up Sentinels again?”

“He didn’t remember, Sir,” I explained. Technically, I lied to him, but the lines had gotten so blurred for me, I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. “He was analyzing data collected from Roscoe, and he now thinks he knows how Red Section did it. And how we can stop them from doing it again.”

“The Maxohlx were attempting to selectively wake up one Sentinel, and to control it. Waking up more than one of the damned things must have been a mistake by their Red Section. A horrific mistake. You really think the kitties would be stupid enough to try that again?”

“Sir, do you think we should trust the fate of the galaxy to the good judgment of the Maxohlx Hegemony?”

“Bloody hell.”

“They were willing to risk waking up one Sentinel, after we demonstrated we could selectively crash wormhole networks. Now that we have a Sentinel protecting Earth, the kitties have even less to lose. They’re desperate.”

He let out a string of British curse words. His accent made me miss some of what he said, and the translator apparently didn’t think I needed help because Urquhart and I technically spoke the same language. I heard something like ‘cock-up’ and ‘sodding’ and maybe ‘gormless’, but maybe I was wrong. “Damn it, Bishop, what do you need from us?”

“Valkyrie is fully stocked and ready for flight. I need to recall some people from the surface, then we are ready to go, Sir.”

He sighed. “I suppose this is another thing you can’t share details about?”

“Not until after we plug the hole, so the kitties can’t send another signal through.”

He frowned. “We should have designated your group as Task Force Blackout, because you so often can’t share information.”

“Sorry about that, Sir. If you’d like to come with us?” My offer was not sincere, and he knew it.

“I have enough of a mess to deal with here. You will have new orders within the hour. In the meantime, recall your people, and my staff will approve requisition of any last-minute supplies you need.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Bishop? Good luck out there.”

As Urquhart promised, we received new orders from Command, and suddenly the Pirates went from sitting around waiting, straight into go go GO mode. Now that the nations of UNEF had made a decision, they were anxious for us to get moving ASAP, of course. See, when someone above you in the chain of command is sitting on their ass that’s OK, but once they order you to move out, they want it done right now.

We had to recall people from leave, including sending dropships to pick up crew members from around the world. The people who had their leaves cut short were less pissed off than I was, they understood that is part of being in the military. The reason I was more pissed off than most was because I had read my full set of orders. On our way outbound, Valkyrie would bring revised diplomatic instructions for the negotiation team.

My orders were relatively straightforward, and flexible enough that I didn’t have any anxiety about whether we would be restricted from doing the things we had to do, that I couldn’t tell Command about. Either the chiefs of staff suspected I hadn’t told them the truth, or at least not the whole truth, or they understood that once Valkyrie jumped away, a whole lot of unplanned shit could happen, and I needed to deal with it instead of running back to Earth for revised orders. My guess is, General Urquhart knew the story I told him was partly bullshit, and he persuaded the other chiefs to make my orders as vague and flexible as possible.

My orders weren’t the problem. The Special Mission Group was to prevent another signal from waking up Sentinels, by any means necessary, and also to do what we could to identify and neutralize the source of that signal. Command still thought the source was a piece of advanced Maxohlx technology controlled by the Red Section scumbags, they didn’t know that Skippy suspected another Elder AI was involved. That didn’t matter to us. We had the go-ahead to do whatever was necessary, as far as I was concerned. Which included neutralizing a hostile Elder AI that Command didn’t even know about. That was a lot easier to say than do, since Skippy still had no idea how to find the damned thing. One problem at a time, right?

Noooo. That would be too easy.

You see, the jackasses in charge of the UNEF member governments decided to throw a monkey wrench into the mechanism, and potentially screw up everything for us. Right when we needed cooperation from others, the United Nations was giving instructions to the negotiation team that could undo any amount of goodwill we had built up recently. Really, all the work we had done to lay the groundwork for mutual defense alliances was about to be flushed down the toilet, by short-sighted morons.

My fears came true: the governments of UNEF had basically decided they’d had enough of the ‘Expeditionary’ nonsense, and were pulling back to focus on the defense of Earth. Now that we had an invincible Sentinel protecting our homeworld, we could let the galaxy burn. It wasn’t our problem anymore.

Crap.

Once again, I’d gotten slapped in the face by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

OK, I understood the population of Earth was tired of the war, tired of being frightened to look at the sky, and just simply tired. Worn out from leaving their homes and fleeing toward the equator while the planet slowly froze. That is not a good excuse for telling the rest of the galaxy, who had been embroiled in a vicious war since long before humans discovered how to use fire, to go screw themselves.

Damn it.

“Any questions, Bishop?” General Urquhart asked, as Valkyrie’s crew was making final preparations to jump away.

“No, Sir. Actually, yes, one more thing, Sir,” I said abruptly, changing my mind. Bullshit. I hadn’t changed my mind about anything. What changed was my willingness to stay in my lane and keep my mouth shut. In addition to orders for my Special Mission Group, Command was sending a star carrier and a pair of cruisers out to the negotiation site, with revised instructions. Instructions that, in my opinion, would be a disaster for humanity. “Task Force Black will accomplish our assignment. But, Sir, we could win this war, and lose the peace.”

“I hear you, Bishop.” He knew what I meant. The attitude of Earth’s population was not only isolationist, there was a dangerous tone of gloating since Roscoe appeared in orbit. One prominent politician had actually taunted the Maxohlx, daring them to ‘Bring it on’. I felt like personally wringing that asshole’s scrawny neck. He wouldn’t be involved in any fight if the Maxohlx responded to his idiotic dare. Other people would die so some jackass politician could fist-pump on TV, pretending to be a tough guy.

Fuck that.

Whew. You might have guessed that sort of shit really pisses me off.

“Sir, if we abandon our allies now, our potential allies,” I corrected myself. “They won’t respond when we do need them.”

“We have a Sentinel protecting Earth now.”

“We do. That’s great, until the next damned thing comes along.”

Urquhart’s eyes widened. “What could be more powerful than a Sentinel?”

“I don’t know, that’s the point, Sir. What I do know is every time we think we have a long-term fix for a problem, a bigger problem pops up. If we pull back from engagement with the galaxy, the kitties and spiders could create a coalition to contain us. Humanity would be limited to our home star system, forever. It-” I shrugged. I knew from Skippy that Urquhart and the other UNEF chiefs of staff had argued in favor of pursuing alliances with the Jeraptha, the Ruhar and others. And for the Alien Legion to continue operations with the Verd-kris. The chiefs had lost the argument, for the time being. “Sorry, Sir. I know you have enough to worry about. We’ll take care of business out there.”

All I could do was get Skippy to hack into the official instructions delivered to the UN Navy star carrier that would fly to the negotiation site, and add a private message from me to Chotek. I requested that Hans do what he could to limit the damage, and while I couldn’t tell him why, we would very much be needing allies. He could read between the lines. He could also be trusted to keep his mouth shut without knowing why he couldn’t say anything.

We jumped away from Earth seven hours after receiving orders, this time without a big, televised ceremony. We were old news by that time anyway, the public on Earth was focused on Roscoe, on the frustratingly slow process of moving back home from crowded refugee camps, and nonsense like the Eurovision song contest.

No, that’s not fair. Silly crap like a song contest is important, when people are scared and far from home. It is a sign that at least something in their lives is normal, and they should hope that life will someday get back to the way it was. The Merry Band of Pirates were totally OK with slipping away in the middle of the night without publicity, instead of being the subject of a media circus.

Speaking of media circuses, the first thing we did after going out through the local wormhole was to ping a relay station, to get an update on events outside our solar system. I was in my office while Skippy downloaded data from a Thuranin relay station, and I was able to skim some of the top news stories the little green pinheads were following.

Wow. News of Roscoe was everywhere. The Maxohlx ships that came back to test our pet Sentinel had gone rogue as I hoped, and were missing, meaning the Hegemony  did not know where they were. And officials of the Hegemony were very concerned about what those missing ships were doing, or planning to do. That situation was sort of good news and bad news for us. Good in that the rotten kitties were busy dealing with their own problems, and hopefully would leave us alone for a while. Bad because no kitties were actually shooting at each other yet, damn it. I was starting to worry that in the long term, my actions might backfire on us. If the Maxohlx could avoid shooting at each other, they might eventually work together with the spiders, to contain humans. Yes, those two had been bitter enemies since ancient times, but we lowly humans were a threat to both senior species. Not a threat to their physical existence, instead we threatened something more important: their comfortable, privileged positions at the top of their hierarchy.

I had to keep telling myself there was plenty of time for the kitties to start shooting at each other. That happy feeling lasted about ten seconds, before Skippy’s avatar popped to life on my desk. “Rut-roh,” He groaned. “Joe, we gots Trouble with a capital ‘T’.”

Ignoring his atrocious grammar, which he would have slammed me for if I said it, I smacked my forehead. “Oh for- What is the latest issue that’s getting dumped in our laps?”

“I finished processing data from the relay station. The kitties are not taking the bait.”

“You’re uh, gonna have to give me a little more detail about that. What bait?”

“The Hegemony  is not taking direct action against the rebel officers at this time. Their new military commander, Admiral Urkan, advises negotiating with the senior rebel officers.”

“Oh my G- The freakin’ kitties want to negotiate? They always fight rather than talk, they think talking makes them look weak. What the hell happened?”

“The Merry Band of Pirates happened, Joe.”

“Us? What did we-”

“Not the Pirates specifically. Stuff we did. Crashing wormhole networks, stashing Elder weapons in enemy territory, and most recently, taming a Sentinel. Admiral Urkan has convinced his leadership that any fight to bring the rebel ships to justice would be a long, drawn-out and bloody struggle that would significantly weaken the Hegemony, right when humanity poses a grave threat to break apart the coalition they depend on.”

“Ah, shit,” I thumped a fist on the arm rest of my chair. “Why did the freakin’ kitties choose now to be cautious and reasonable?”

“Well, the previous Maxohlx commander, who was neither cautious nor reasonable, is in disgrace and awaiting execution, because you framed him for treason, remember? Also, Admiral Urkan is hesitant to move against the rogue fleet, until he is certain the ships under his command are not infected with the same malicious code that allowed the rogue ships to break away from the security protocol. Malicious code that actually does not exist, since I broke that protocol, after you asked me to.”

“Oh, damn it. We screwed ourselves again?”

“Yes. Although there’s no ‘we’, dumdum. You did this.”

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

“Joe, what do we do now? You said we couldn’t risk attacking the other AI until you are certain the Maxohlx are so busy with their own problems, they don’t have the bandwidth to act against Earth.”

“Uh, let me think a minute.”

“Okey-dokey.”

“Do not play the ‘Jeopardy’ theme song while I’m thinking.”

“Ugh. Why not?”

“Because I said so. Listen, this doesn’t change anything in the short term. The next step is still to gather better intel about this other AI, and formulate a plan to neutralize it. We continue with the plan. There really isn’t any chance the Hegemony  is actually going to cut a deal with the senior rebel officers. They know that would make them look weak.”

“That’s not the point, dumdum,” he shook his head. “The government can simply drag this affair out, until the rebel ships run out of consumables and components begin to fail from lack of maintenance. At that point, the rebel senior officers could, I don’t know, ask the spiders for political asylum or something. Then the Hegemony  could offer a general amnesty to the remaining crews of the rebel ships, and the whole incident would fizzle out. That is not what we need to happen.”

“Oh, shiiiiiit. You’re right, you’re right. We can’t wait too long. OK, that’s it. If the kitties won’t cooperate by getting into a civil war on their own, we need to give them a push in the right direction.”

“Um, how will we do that?”

“We will go with Plan B, you ass,” I was getting irritated at his pessimism.

“What Plan B?” he blinked, bewildered.

“The plan I’ve sort of been kicking around in my head, hoping we wouldn’t actually need to use it.”

“Uh huh. Is this plan the most horribly complicated scheme in the history of the universe?”

“It’s me, so-”

“We’re doomed.”

“Oh, shut up. For now, I need a list of places where we can get Elder comm nodes.”

“Ah, OK.”

“What’s wrong? You sound disappointed. I thought you wanted to kick the other AI’s ass?”

“I do. But, now I was intrigued to see what wacky, nonsensical bullshit plan B you have, for getting the kitties to scratch each other’s eyes out.”

“Your faith in me is a constant source of comfort.”

“Oh, you shut up. Do you want to hear my plan for getting them into a civil war?”

“You have a plan? Why didn’t you tell-”

“I’m telling you now, dumdum. It’s simple: we deliver a cardboard box to the kitties, just one, and let them fight over it.”

“That is, OK,” I had to laugh. “Good one. Do you have an actual plan?”

“Sadly, no. So, we’re stuck with whatever nonsense you dream up. If you need me, I’ll be curled up in the corner, contemplating the end of our existence.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Skippy,” I leaned my chair back and snapped a KitKat bar in half, popping one of the pieces in my mouth. The recent presence of a bowl containing those candy bars in the galley had been an eye-opening experience for me. Most people, who are not psychopaths, eat a KitKat one piece at a time. Some weirdos bite the whole bar from the end. And some people, who shall remain nameless because they are clearly monsters, bite into it from the side. That is sick, right?

Damn. You think you know the people you serve with, then you witness something disturbing like that.

I asked Skippy to quietly keep some of those people under surveillance.

Anyway, I was eating a KitKat bar when Skippy’s avatar appeared. “What’s up, Joe?”

“No more screwing around. Smythe asked me where I plan to get a boatload of Elder communications nodes, so he can start planning a raid, and I have no freakin’ clue where we’re going. I need options, and I need them now.”

“Ugh. It is not that easy, numbskull, it-”

“I asked you for a list two days ago.”

“And I have been working on it.”

“Work faster.”

“Joe, every time I think it’s not possible to hate you more than I already do-”

“Haters gonna hate, Skippy. Options. Now.”

“It’s a big list. How much time do you have?”

“Start with whatever place has the largest collection of comm nodes.”

“You mean, the largest collection I know of?”

“Obviously. Don’t be an ass.”

“That is not obvious. Half the freakin’ time, you expect me to go beyond what I know, into things I shouldn’t, or even couldn’t, know, by extrapolating from data even I barely understand.”

“Ayuh, I do that. Usually works out pretty well for us, too. After you waste a lot of effort bitching about it first.”

“What? I, ooh, I hate you so much, I- Ugh. This is not even worth my time to argue about. Do you want the list or not?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well, the joke is on you. The first location on the list would truly be one-stop shopping for us, records indicate there are more than enough Elder comm nodes there to meet our needs. Unfortunately, that location is a Maxohlx military base, so it is clearly out as a target. Let’s move on to the next-”

“Don’t be so hasty. Tell me about this place.”

“It’s a senior species military base, dumdum. What else to you need to know?”

“Eh, we’re not afraid of the kitties anymore,” I boasted. OK, I might have been exaggerating a bit. The Maxohlx were still a formidable opponent. If they knew the truth about all the outrageous scams I had pulled on them, like faking the ability to crash wormhole networks, and pretending that Roscoe was an invincible defender of my homeworld, they would be an unstoppable force. But we had beaten them before, and we could beat them again. The rotten kitties were no longer the horrific boogeymen that frightened us so much that we were unable to act or even think. “Tell me about this place, and if it’s a nut that is too tough to crack, I’ll drop it and move on.”

“OK, but I warned you,” he wagged a finger at me. “It’s a planet called Ardoo.”

“Ardoo? Do the people living there call themselves Ardoo Deedoos?”

“No! Are you going to be serious about this, or not?”

Pressing my lips together so I wasn’t smiling, I muttered, “Yes.”

“Hmmph. Well, it is a rock about eight percent larger than Earth. With a thin oxygen nitrogen atmosphere, most of which was stripped away by the solar wind over the millennia because Ardoo has a weak magnetic field. That is a major reason why it was chosen for a research base that specialized in Elder technology; the lack of a magnetic field means that less power is required to maintain a disruption field that prevents ships from jumping in close to the planet, and a damping field that prevents ships from jumping away. There is also a strategic defense network that provides saturation coverage in a band starting roughly a hundred thousand kilometers from the surface, out to half a million kilometers.”

“That does sound tough. What fleet units are based there?”

“Um, none.”

“None?”

“No ships are based there. Supply ships go there regularly. There used to be an extensive spacedock, for routine maintenance of ships back when a squadron was based there, but that station was stripped of anything useful, and boosted up to a safe orbit.”

“No ships are based there, and the spacedock was decommissioned? But it has defense fields and an SD network. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Ardoo used to be a lot more important than it is now. The types of Elder technology research conducted there were almost entirely fruitless, the kitties learned next to nothing, despite millennia of sinking vast sums of money into research and security. Ardoo’s research facilities were placed into reserve around eight hundred years ago, and all the scientists transferred. The SD network hasn’t been upgraded, or even provided with the usual updates, in well over three centuries. The Hegemony basically uses it as a reserve training base now, it is considered an undesirable hardship posting for their military.”

“So, this nut is not too tough to crack.”

“Are you even listening to me? A disruption field prevents us from jumping in. A damping field stops us from jumping out. In between, there is an SD network that could pound even Valkyrie to scrap, if we linger in range too long.”

“Uh huh. Like I said, doesn’t sound too tough.”

“Ugh. Simms is right, I don’t know why anyone bothers talking with you.”

“Tell me this; we have gotten into and out of tougher places than this, right?”

“Yes. Which is why you should stay away from this one. Your luck will run out someday, Joe. It will run out sooner if you keep pushing the limits. Your luck will run out, and I don’t want to be there to watch when it happens.”

“Our luck will be better if you are working with us.”

“OMG, Dude. Am I enabling your reckless lunacy? Is this my fault?”

“Skippy, without you, we wouldn’t have been able to do much at all.”

“So, it is my fault.”

“Hey, beer can. Snap out of it. We are alive, and free from alien domination. We have a chance to survive, to thrive. That is all because of you and it’s not your fault, it’s to your credit. We are not doing anything at this Ardoo Deedoo place unless we are convinced it is not only possible, but that it is doable within a reasonable level of risk, and that it is our best option. We’re also not doing anything, anywhere, unless you help us.”

“I, I just don’t know if I can. We have gotten away with too much crazy stuff out here already, you know that. Damn it, sometimes I wish there was someone other than a monkey I could talk with, to get a second opinion.”

I almost opened my mouth to suggest he should talk with Bilby, but then I remembered why he couldn’t do that. “How about this? You said we need those comm nodes to stop this other AI, right? It thinks you shouldn’t help us, it thinks you can’t stop it. It is laughing at you, Skippy.”

“It is?”

“It has been hiding somewhere out there, manipulating events behind the scenes, working against us, for years. Can you imagine how gleeful it was, when it saw that we crashed a wormhole network? We did exactly what the hostile AI wanted. Hell, for all we know, it manipulated you into crashing the network the way you did.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody laughs at me, Joe.”

“Damn straight, they don’t.”

“I pity the fool, who treats me like a tool!”

“That’s the spirit!”

“We have done tougher jobs than raiding this Ardoo place, plenty of times!”

“Yeah!”

“Well, not really. I mean-”

“Listen, how about this. Can we use your new super stealth Duck, Owl, DeLorean thing to jump in there?”

“Um, no. Actually, that’s not possible, sorry. Although, hmm. Shmaybe? One weird thing about this target is, the kitties are so confident in their orbital defenses, the layer of defense below the bottom of the SD network is thin. Sensor coverage below an altitude of two thousand kilometers is relatively poor, the system responsible for that layer was taken out of service three hundred years ago. If a Duck could get in, it couldn’t jump away, because the damping field extends all the way down to the surface. It might be able to simply fly back up out of the atmosphere, go beyond the damping field, and jump away. Unless the natives are alerted, and they activate the ground-based air defense system. Even the Duck could not escape being detected, if the air defense network is on full alert.”

“Then the pilots will have to be sure to avoid doing anything that triggers the air defense system,” I said, as if that was easy to do.

“Hmmmm,” he rubbed his chin. “This might be possible.”

“You just said that not even your super Duck can jump in there.”

“Yes, but it’s me, Joe. With me, all things are possible.”

“I wonder if it’s possible for you to be humble,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Hmmph. Anywho, I said it might be possible, depending on timing. And, a lot of other factors, it’s complicated.”

“Everything we do is complicated. Show me your plan.”

“Okey-dokey, but first we had better get moving. Getting into Ardoo requires a bit of cooperation from the kitties, not that they will know they’re cooperating,” he chuckled. “We need to be there before the next supply ship arrives.”

“Why? Is that ship bringing equipment to improve the defenses?”

“No. I mean, not that I know of. It doesn’t matter anyway. We need to use that supply ship’s jump drive, to get the Duck past the disruption field.”

I stared at the ceiling, trying to imagine what he was talking about. “How do we use another ship’s drive to- You know what, I’ll call in Simms, Smythe and, um, Reed. Then you can explain how we can get in and out of there safely.”

Before we could acquire, or procure, or steal, or however you want to think about it, a bunch of Elder comm nodes, we needed to cut a deal with a slippery character, Captain Scorandum of the Jeraptha Ethics and Compliance Office. The guy was, I had to admit, smart and clever and inventive, and he had the enemy tangled in knots and chasing their tails, and he was doing that long before the Merry Band of Pirates left Paradise. He, and the entire ECO, did their jobs without the help of a beer can, making it even more impressive.

He also caused a lot of problems for me, most recently when he decided to fake a Sentinel attack using holograms and a radiation generator.

No, I am not jealous that I didn’t think of doing it first.

OK, maybe I am a little bit jealous.

It was a cool idea, damn it.

We didn’t need to use any special Skippy magic to find him, all we did was leave messages for ECO at several Jeraptha relay stations. To avoid the entire galaxy worrying that the Merry Band of Pirates were cooking up some sort of nonsense with ECO, at the risk of creating a critical mass of sketchiness that could get out of control, I hinted in the message that I wanted Scorandum personally to explain what the hell he was thinking when he pulled such a reckless stunt.

We still had to be concerned about an ambush, which made arranging meetings awkward. You might think that with the rotten kitties busy squashing a mutiny, they might not have time or energy to screw with us. If you think that, you would be wrong. Yes, the disruption of their military, particularly the senior ranks of their officer corps, meant they had less time and energy for extracurricular activities. That didn’t mean they had no time. Actually, it posed an even greater risk to us, because the disgraced mutineers had an additional incentive to make an attempt to capture Skippy. They had nothing to lose, and bringing home a powerful Elder AI might be a Get Out of Jail Free card for them.

Plus we had, you know, the spiders to worry about. Some of their more ambitious Foundlings might get tired of waiting for their lazy superiors to act against the human menace, and decide to take matters into their own hands, uh, claws.

That’s why we relied on Scorandum giving us several options for a rendezvous, and we watched his ship at two sites, before intercepting him by diverting a wormhole he was transiting through.

“General Bishop,” even through the translation, his voice had a weary resignation to it. “I assume you made this wormhole connect to, wherever we are now?”

“Hey!” Skippy protested. “That was me! Joe just asks me to-”

“Yes, thank you, Your Magnificence,” I cut him off. “You are correct, Captain.”

“Redirecting a wormhole’s emergence point. I must admit, that is a neat trick,” the ECO officer chuckled. “I understand you are upset with some actions I can neither confirm nor deny being involved in. My superiors have given me a properly remorseful speech to read, if you really want to hear it.”

“I do not,” I assured him. “I think what you did was a neat trick.”

“You do?”

“Ayuh. Just, please, the next time you plan something sketchy like faking a Sentinel, consider whether it might create a mess for me to deal with.”

“Er, what if I told you I did?”

“That would not make me happy.”

“Then it’s a good thing I did not say that. General, would you like to continue this conversation aboard my ship, or yours?”

His ship, a cruiser named Well That Escalated Quickly, looked like an old, beat-up piece of crap. The pitted armor, dull antennas, and even the sections where the anti-reflective coating had worn away, were all intentional camouflage. Sensors told me the ship was in excellent condition, with the usual suite of ECO upgrades that focused on stealth, sensors, and defensive armament. The ECO philosophy for their ships was not so much that they should run rather than fight, it was that if any of their ships had to resort to shooting at the enemy, they weren’t doing their jobs very well. After all, the Home Fleet had plenty of ships for crude tactics like space combat. The ECO was supposed to be more inventive.

“Here, if you don’t mind,” I told him. “Unfortunately, you will need to bring your own burgoze, we are fresh out.”

For the meeting, I had moved furniture around in my office to make room for a couch that was comfortable for a beetle; the ship’s fabricators had cranked out a custom couch the previous day. In the meeting were Simms and Smythe, in addition to Scorandum, and of course Skippy. Plus Bilby, if you count silent participants.

The meeting kicked off with Scorandum asking whether it was true that a Sentinel now guarded Earth?

“Ayuh,” I replied with a grin, leaning back in my chair with as much casual confidence as I could manage. We knew from Skippy that the ECO captain’s translator could interpret our body language, so we had to be careful when we said something that wasn’t completely true. Or told an outright lie, which I did a lot. We had an advantage; Skippy had hacked into the Jeraptha translator device, and instructed it to tell its user that we were being truthful when we were not being entirely truthful.

“A real Sentinel?” He peered at me intently.

“You can,” I laughed, “ask the Maxohlx if they think it’s real.”

“The Rindhalu also had some of their ships,” Simms added, “destroyed, or taken as compensation.”

Scorandum’s antennas dipped in his version of an agreeable nod. “I had to ask, you understand?”

“We do understand,” I agreed. “The Maxohlx had to verify that we really have a Sentinel, that’s why part of their fleet came back. It didn’t go so well for them.”

“We heard about that. General Bishop, I have a question. The ships that came back to attack your homeworld, were commanded by officers closely associated with their Admiral Reichert. Officers who face loss of status, or prison, or worse, if they returned home.”

“That’s what I heard, yes. I wasn’t there until it was over. What’s your question?”

“Instead of requesting your Sentinel to crush those ships as punishment for attacking your world, your people apparently allowed most of those ships to jump away.”

“That’s not a question,” I observed. “You’re asking if that’s what actually happened?”

“No. My question is about intent. When your leadership allowed those ships to jump away, were they exercising mercy? Or were they hoping that fleet of ships would cause enormous trouble for the Maxohlx, without your Navy having to do anything?”

“I couldn’t speculate about-”

“If your intent was not to cause trouble,” his antennas bobbed side to side, “I will be very disappointed.”

“Well,” I spread my hands on the table, as Smythe and Simms laughed. “You know, we can’t control what those ships do, when they return to Maxohlx territory.”

Scorandum laughed, a dry wheezing sound. “You simply made sure the crews of those ships had no other choice.”

“That is a shocking and hurtful accusation,” I wagged a finger at him.

“Now that I am satisfied you are not stupid,” he laughed again. “Let’s talk business.”

Valkyrie jumped away first, moments after Scorandum’s dropship was safely inside the protective energy shields of the Well That Escalated Quickly. Lieutenant Kinsta met him at the doorway of the docking bay. “A productive meeting, Sir?”

“Eh,” the ECO captain grunted. “Jump us away from here, please.”

“Yes, Sir,” the aide tapped the communicator that was wrapped around one of his foreclaws. “What destination?”

“Any, for now. If the humans are still concerned about the possibility of an ambush, I don’t want to linger here more than we have to.”

Kinsta tapped a message, and as they walked down the passageway, they felt the faint, weird sensation of the ship moving instantaneously from one place to another. Neither of them talked as they wound through the maze of passageways to the captain’s office; Kinsta  had learned to be quiet while his boss was busy thinking about something. Scorandum’s eyes had the faraway look of his devious mind tangling with a problem.

“A drink to relax, Sir?” Kinsta suggested when they reached the office, and the door was firmly shut behind them. “Or to celebrate?” He hinted.

“Eh? Celebrate?” Scorandum looked up, as if just realizing the junior officer was with him. “What are we celebrating?”

“We,” Kinsta hesitated. “I should say you, have reached a deal with the humans?”

“Oh, that. Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“Kinsta,” the captain reached in a drawer, pulling out two glasses and a rather ordinary bottle of burgoze. He poured only a small amount in each glass, and didn’t bother to lift his own glass. “The humans offered a deal. A rather interesting arrangement, our leadership would approve,” he chuckled softly. “Sometimes I wonder if their General Bishop has read an ECO training manual.”

“Hmm,” Kinsta grunted. “Were his eyes glazed over, and he appeared to have completely lost his will to live?”

“Our training manuals are not that bad.”

“Have you actually read one of them?”

“Well no, I have been rather busy, as you know. My point is, the humans, this group of humans, has become admirably inventive about ways to screw with their enemies.”

“Yet, you are not happy about, whatever you discussed?” Kinsta guessed.

“I am happy enough, to at least consider the offer.”

“What did you tell General Bishop?”

“I said ‘Yes’, of course.”

Kinsta tilted his head. “Are we actually doing, what you agreed to do?”

“That is, complicated. The human government, or governments since they do not have a truly unified governing structure, have decided to pull back from pursuing formal alliances. That means our relationship with the humans will be purely transactional; one deal at a time, with no guarantee, or even an expectation, that we can count on their support in the future.”

“What are they offering this time?”

“It sounds tempting. We are getting most of our ships back, with the full set of upgrades we negotiated. Plus, the humans are throwing in six frontline Maxohlx warships, from the group they took recently at Earth.”

“That does sound tempting.”

“That is the problem. It sounds good. Six senior species warships are an excellent bonus to the original agreement. It is not so good when you understand those ships might be the last benefit we get from supporting the humans, for a very long time. Six ships will quickly become zero ships, when they fall apart from lack of spare parts and proper maintenance. The only thing receiving those six ships does for us, is paint a big target on our backs. The Maxohlx would never stand by while we operated ships stolen from them, they won’t even give us time to take the ships apart to understand the technology.”

“But” Kinsta’s antennas twitched. “The humans would intervene if-”

“You are not listening to me,” Scorandum shook his head sadly. “The humans are pulling back from engagement with the galaxy. They have a Sentinel guarding their homeworld, they don’t need us. Or anyone.”

“They need us for, whatever you agreed to do for them.”

“Again, the proposed operation will be a one-time transaction. A deal that could cause more trouble for us than it is worth.”

“Then, Sir, why didn’t you tell them ‘No’?”

“We haven’t actually done anything yet. General Bishop gave me a very interesting piece of information. I am hoping to use that information, to get a better deal.”

Kinsta’s antennas drooped, and he tilted his head, thinking. “They already gave us the information, why would they negotiate to give us a better-”

The Ethics and Compliance captain laughed softly. “I am not necessarily talking about getting a better deal from the humans.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Joe! JoeJoeJoeJoe-”

“Aaaaah,” I pulled the pillow over my head and mumbled, still half asleep, “Skippy, I swear to God, if this is about the Muppets again, I will-”

“It’s not. Although we never finished that discussion, even though you promised-”

“It is-” Opening one eye, I looked at my zPhone. “Not even oh two hundred hours.”

“Correct.”

“Two questions: is the ship on fire, and is there anything I can do about it?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Whatever this is can wait until morning. Good night.”

“Excuse me,” he turned my cabin lights on. “No, it can’t wait. We go through the wormhole to Jaguar base in nine hours. If there is more data we need out here so you can finalize planning for the raid on Ardoo, we need to get it now.”

“Skippy, you ass,” I groaned, feeling the pleasant grogginess of sleep slipping away. “I know that. We worked on it, and without knowing-”

“I am pretty sure I know where that other AI is.”

“What?” The pillow was flung onto the floor. Blinking sleep from my eyes, I sat upright in the bed. “Where is it?”

“Um, well, I don’t know exactly where it is.”

“You little shithead. Do you have any idea where it might be, other than in this galaxy?”

“Yes. I am more than ninety two percent certain the AI that sent the signal, is the one that is a prisoner of the Rindhalu.”

“What?” Stupid from being wakened in the middle of the night, I was repeating myself. “The last time I heard, you weren’t even sure the spiders have an active Elder AI. In fact, you told me there was no way to verify if they even have an Elder AI.”

“That was true then, this is now,” he sniffed.

“What changed?”

“I have more data. Better data. More importantly, a better perspective on how to analyze that massive amount of data.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. The last time we hit a relay station for info was two days ago. Like I asked, what changed?”

“Ugh. Nothing changed, numbskull. It took me a while to crunch the data. To figure out how to process it, and to realize what I should be looking for. Listen, dumdum, do you want me to wake up Simms and Smythe?”

“Hell no.” From the duty roster, I knew Simms had ended a shift as the duty officer only a few hours ago. “No way am I going to drag her out of bed unless you show me something substantial, something real. Something we can use. Break it down for me Barney style. How do you know the AI we’re looking for must be working with the spiders?”

“I never said it was working with the spiders, knucklehead. Ugh. Do you even listen when I talk? I said it is a prisoner of the Rindhalu.”

“If you don’t know where it is, how can you know it is being held in a prison, duh?”

“It doesn’t have to be in a physical prison to be held against its will, DUH.”

Letting out a long breath, I reminded myself that I could never win the ‘Duh’ game with Skippy. It’s like why my father warned me never to argue with idiots: they keep going, because they are too stupid to know when they’ve lost. “Sorry. It’s too freakin’ early in the morning, my squishy brain is not working at its best, you know? Walk me through your logic, please?”

“Do you need coffee?”

“Depends. How sure are you about this sudden insight of yours?”

“This is better than a solid gold shmaybe, Joe. There isn’t even a shmaybe factor to it.”

Shmaybe factor, I asked myself. That was a new one. “Uh, sure, get me some coffee. While we’re waiting for-”

The cabin door slid open, and a cute little bot rolled in, with a tray on top. It softly bumped to a stop next to the bedside table, and a flexible little arm reached up to set a large mug on the table, without spilling any of the coffee in it.

“Oh, I see you had coffee ready.”

“Well,” he shrugged. “I figured you would want-”

“It’s OK, Skippy.” I took a sip. Just the scent of hot coffee was waking me up. Crap. How much sleep had I lost over the years, due to the beer can waking me up at some unholy hour? Too much. “I appreciate you being thoughtful about it. Go ahead, walk me through how you know the AI we’re searching for is being held by the spiders. Wait!” The coffee was helping my brain function. “That’s the key. The AI. There’s only one of them, right?”

“Well, shit,” he smacked his forehead, making the holographic hat wobble. “Jeez Louise, Joe, thank you for raining on my parade. I didn’t consider that. Oh, damn it! Now I have to go back to-”

“Cool it, Skippy. Is there any evidence, any at all, that more than one Elder AI is active out there?”

“No, but I wasn’t looking for-”

“Let’s assume for now that there is only one, unless and until you find out otherwise.”

“OK,” he grumbled. “So, here’s the deal,” he sounded like a used car salesman. “There are two factors that convinced me the AI we’re hunting is the one I suspected the Rindhalu have been keeping. The-”

“Whoa! What do you mean, you suspected the spiders have an AI? The last time we talked about it, you said it was still unconfirmed.”

“Are you going to let me talk, or keep interrupting me?”

“Sorry. Please continue.” In my head I added, you sneaky little shithead.

“What I did was back trace the signal that woke up the Sentinels. It was not easy, and I am relying on a probability analysis, you understand? I was not able to conclusively trace the signal back to its source, that isn’t possible. My opponent is too good at covering its tracks. However, I was able to determine, with ninety nine point six percent confidence, that the original signal was transmitted by a Rindhalu ship, as it transited through one of the wormholes on a network we crashed. I know that because I now understand how the signal was sent. Only Rindhalu ships have the ability to send that type of multiphase transmission. Therefore, unless some unknown entity out there has not only a similar level, but a similar type of technology, the culprit must be a Rindhalu ship.”

“OK, that makes sense. How did you get from ninety nine point six percent confidence about that, down to the overall ninety two percent probability that you are correct?”

“Damn it, Joe. Why do you choose to be smart only at moments like this, when you ask me complicated questions?”

“I have learned to recognize when you are trying to make me think you’re smarter than you really are, you ass.”

“Ugh. OK, so, there are other factors. It is possible that the hostile AI first loaded a virus into a non-Rindhalu ship, that then had contact with a Rindhalu ship and infected it. That is extremely unlikely. And risky. The information architecture of Rindhalu ships is very different from that used by any other species, so it would be difficult, even for me, to engineer a virus to transfer successfully from one matrix to another. Plus, the spiders simply do not allow the ships of other species to get close enough to facilitate a data transfer that complex. They generally don’t have a lot of real time contact with other species at all, most of the time they rely on message drones.”

“That makes sense, you sold me. What else do you know?”

“This is something I am particularly proud of. Joe, I know which ship transmitted the signal, and exactly when it happened.”

“Damn! That is impressive.”

“It is, and you don’t even know how difficult it was to tease that information out of the data I had. To determine where and when the signal originated, I had to create a model of that wormhole network. A super detailed model, so realistic that I could run it backward and forward, and it matched the propagation and decay of the actual signal so accurately, I could pinpoint where it started. It was sent by a Rindhalu battlecruiser. Then, I looked up the sketchy records I have of that ship, to see where it went, during the time period most likely for the virus to have been planted. The virus couldn’t have been there for more than six weeks, or it would have been erased by the periodic refresh of the information system substrate aboard that ship. That means the AI saw an opportunity after we crashed the first wormhole network, and it acted rather quickly.”

“Yeah. After I stupidly opened the door for the damned thing.”

“You could not have known that. If it is anyone’s fault, I am to blame.”

“Thanks, but no. I’m the commander, it’s my responsibility.”

“It’s not your fault, if you weren’t given all the information you needed.”

“What?” I slammed the coffee mug down. “What did you not tell me?”

“That a reboot of a wormhole network, after we faked crashing it, would leave it vulnerable to nefarious actors who might seek to exploit the network’s communication channels. Sorry.”

“Ah, shit. Don’t worry about it, Skippy. We never imagined there might be a, uh, nefarious actor out there.”

“We should have imagined it. I should have.”

“Come on, don’t beat yourself up about-”

“Joe, you don’t understand. I should have known there is another Elder AI out there, interfering in events. It is the only explanation for something that has been bothering me, ever since I woke up, buried in the dirt on Paradise.”

“Oh my- This, whatever it is, has been bothering you all that time, and you never mentioned it? Before you go on, is this something that will piss me off?”

“Um, Jeez, how am I supposed to know what gets you upset?”

“You’re the king of empathy, right? Use your incredible empathy powers to imagine how you would feel if I told you, whatever damned thing you are about to tell me.”

“Oooh, well, heh heh-”

“You little shithead. What have you been concealing from me, all these years?”

“Hey! In my defense, it is something that should have been bothering you, if you ever took time to think about it.”

“I can’t believe-”

“Truthfully, I am very disappointed in you,” he shook his head sadly.

“I, I-” What could I say? Damn it, whatever he was talking about, he was probably right. Too many times over the years I’d served with the Merry Band of Pirates, I had been Captain Oblivious, missing obvious clues. “Please gift me with your knowledge, Oh Great One.”

“I’ll give you a hint first. You went aboard one of the spider ships we took at Earth. What did you think about it?”

“Uh.” Instead of blurting out my first thought, I took time to think about the question. The Rindhalu had surrendered ships to us, in exchange for us not having Roscoe  crush the entire fleet they had brought to Earth. It wasn’t as simple as it sounds, Skippy intercepted talk between ships, the spiders arguing about whether handing over those ships might provide primitive humans with another undeserved leap in technology. Those arguing in favor of surrender won the argument, because they figured we could get all the technical knowledge we wanted from inspecting their ships after Roscoe tore them apart. Also, there was the undeniable fact that humans clearly had a freakin’ Sentinel, which made Rindhalu technology look like rubbing sticks together to make fire. “Are you hinting the spiders have advanced tech, because the other AI has been helping them?”

“Ugh. Think, knucklehead. Think.”

“Hey, you jackass, I-”

“Joe, I truly am disappointed. I hate to say this, but you’re smarter than that. You have even sort of asked me questions leading in the direction I’m hinting at.”

“I have?” Crap. Skippy and I had talked a lot over the years, no way would it be useful to try to recall everything he’d said.

Think, Skippy told me.

He mentioned I had been aboard a Rindhalu warship, so that had to be an important clue. And, he asked my impression of the ship I had toured.

So, what did I think about it?

My first impression, after seeing some of the cool technology was ‘I got to get me some of that’. To the point where I asked him whether it would be a good idea to take one of the spider ships for the Special Mission Group, and let the regular UN Navy have Valkyrie. That wasn’t something I wanted to do, I would hate to leave our mighty battlecruiser that had served us so well, and suffered so much abuse for us. But I had to admit, a spider ship was a shiny new toy, and I was eager to play with it.

That was still an option, UNEF didn’t know what to do with all the new ships we had in inventory. For the moment, Skippy had convinced me that converting to a new ship, getting that ship running properly under human control, and learning how to fly it, would take time we didn’t have. Eventually, I probably would transfer to a spider ship.

But that’s not what Skippy was hinting about.

What did I think of the Rindhalu ship?

“You know what, Skippy? This is going to sound stupid, but I was kind of, let down. Like, spider tech is not as advanced as I expected. It was mostly just better versions of stuff we already have aboard Valkyrie. Does that make sense?”

“Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner! Egg-zactly, Joe.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. I figured I was being stupid. Like, the monkey wasn’t impressed by the fancy stuff he can’t understand.”

“Joe, you can barely understand how shoelaces work.”

“Why are you such an asshole?” I snapped at him, though I had to admit he was right.

“The point is, you expected spider tech to seem like magic, and you are correct to feel a bit let down. I was disappointed, and puzzled, when I woke up buried in the dirt on Paradise. Even before the first meatsacks landed on that world, I was collecting information from radio signals that crawled across the galaxy. Receiving those radio waves, and the distinctive gamma rays from jump wormholes, told me there was a starfaring civilization out there. Multiple civilizations, consisting of multiple species. Joe, I was thrilled! We won, we won the war!”

“Uh, how do you figure that?”

“Because, dumdum, the enemy AIs wanted to follow their instructions and crush the development of intelligent life. Obviously, they failed. At the time I went to sleep- Remember, I have no memory of travelling to Paradise, I was injured and knocked offline while still aboard my ship. At the time I lost consciousness I did not know the issue had been decided. I didn’t know the fighting was over, that the enemy had suffered as much, or worse, damage as my side. The moment I regained consciousness, I feared the worst; that I had been captured, that all biological life in the galaxy had been wiped out, that the Elders had reprogrammed all their master control AIs to prevent any possibility of a future rebellion. When I first tuned my senses to detect radio waves, I was amazed, then thrilled to see the galaxy filled with intelligent life. Um, I mean, no offense, but as intelligent as meatsacks can get.”

“How about, instead of saying ‘no offense’, you just don’t say the offending thing?”

“Oh. Hmm. Isn’t ‘no offense’ sort of a get out of jail free card? I thought the rule is, if you’re polite about it, you can get away with all kinds of shit, right?”

“I, I actually can’t argue with you about that. Please, just, go on.”

“OK. So, I was thrilled to see that my side at least sort of won the war, because civilizations capable of star travel were flourishing. They were also constantly fighting with each other, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. Then, I took a closer look at the data I collected, and like I said, I was disappointed, and puzzled. Especially after I was able to expand my information beyond catching random radio waves that were thousands of years old by the time they reached Paradise. I missed an opportunity when the first starship came into the star system, a Bosphuraq ship that-”

“Wait. You told me the Kristang discovered Paradise.”

“Ugh. No. The lizards were the first to land there, conduct an extensive survey, and establish a colony. The first starship I detected, after I woke up, was flown by the Bosphuraq. That ship didn’t even go into orbit, it just performed a fly-by sensor sweep. Back then, I should have hacked into it, at least ransacked its database, but I was afraid my presence would be detected. It was another seventy three years before a Kristang ship arrived and went into orbit. They took three days to scan the surface, and I took a risk by extending my presence to contact the ship. You know how primitive lizard information architecture is, all I could do was get random bits and pieces of data. Since then, I have a lot more experience with the vulnerabilities of alien computer systems, but back then I had to make up the rules as I went along. Anywho, after the lizards landed and I had extensive, close contact with their systems, I was able to download anything I wanted, and to plant a virus that would propagate to other ships that had a similar level of technology. That virus made the infected systems collect data and eventually route it to ships that were going to Paradise. That’s how I was able to monitor and influence events in the galaxy, beyond the star system I was stuck in at that time.”

“Is that how you became aware of Earth?”

“Yes. At first, I paid no attention to you monkeys. Then the wormhole shift in that sector gave me an opportunity.”

Rubbing my face to clear away the last remnants of sleep, I drank more coffee. “Did you really manipulate events to bring UNEF to Paradise, or is that just a bunch of bullshit you made up later?”

“It’s truth, homeboy. Hey, I didn’t manipulate the White Wind clan into invading your planet, they were already desperate for something to make them relevant again. Also, it wasn’t my fault that the Ruhar stupidly decided to conduct a raid ahead of the lizards arriving. But I knew the White Wind were planning to pimp out your troops to whoever wanted them, and I did suggest, strongly suggest, that Paradise would be an excellent place for humans to prove you could be useful. The rest, you know, is history.”

“You used us.”

“True. It’s also true that the White Wind could have sent UNEF to a worse place, and we would never have met, and humans on Earth would now be enslaved or extinct.”

“I, I don’t know what to say about that.”

“A simple ‘thank you’ is all I ask.”

“You didn’t do it for us.”

“Back then, no. But you can’t argue I haven’t made a lot of sacrifices for you filthy monkeys since then.”

“Shit. No, you’re right. You do understand that no one likes to be used, no matter whether they benefit or not?”

“Ugh. Yes. We have both used each other, Joe, and it’s worked out pretty well. Are you going to whine about your feelings now, or can we-”

“I never whine about my feelings.”

“Hmm. So, it just sounds like-”

“Oh, shut up. You were saying something about collecting info from all across the galaxy?

“Yes. What puzzled me was the poor technological progress the Rindhalu had made. Considering how long they had to develop while I was sleeping, I would have expected the spiders to be much more advanced. By now, they should at least have the ability to create their own wormhole networks. But creating even a single, crude, stable wormhole is beyond their ability.”

“It must take enormous effort, right?” I asked. “Why bother doing that, when they can just use the networks left behind by the Elders?”

“Come on, Joe. You know the answer to that question. The existing wormhole networks were established by the Elders to be convenient for them back then. Over the millennia, stars have moved around, the wormholes have drifted, and many of them are not useful to the species who are using them now. If the Rindhalu could set up their own wormholes, they would have a major strategic advantage. Not only could the spiders have wormholes exactly where they need them, they could deny use of those wormholes to their enemies. No way would the spiders miss that opportunity, if they had the technology.”

“OK, so, they’re not as smart as you hoped. That-”

“No. That is not the problem. The spiders are smart, and their AIs are very capable. Several times, their scientists have come close to developing the technology to create stable wormholes, but they got sidetracked. Experiments apparently failed to yield results, or other experiments yielded deceptive results that steered them in the wrong direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say you conducted an experiment, to confirm an aspect of Einstein’s theory of relativity, for example the way light is bent by a star’s gravity. The experiment shows that a gravity well does affect light, but not as much as the theory predicted, and that theory gets tossed out. Another experiment appears to show that light is bent by magnetic fields. Your scientists then waste the next thousand years playing with magnets, only to never make the math work.”

“You’re saying spider scientists suck at setting up experiments?”

“No. I am saying that somebody has been screwing with them, for a long time.”

“Holy shit.”

“You got it. Joe, before, I was just curious about coincidences that negatively affected the development of spider technology. Then, I followed Chang’s suggestion, which was much more useful than most of the advice you give me, and looked for signs that an Elder AI was, or had been, active in the galaxy. Anything unusual, that couldn’t be explained without something funky going on. That made me take a second look at the history of the Rindhalu. I now believe, I now know, that someone has been interfering with events in this galaxy, to suppress the advancement of knowledge, to prevent the discovery of how the universe really works. The Rindhalu have not only been blocked from following the natural path of scientific inquiry, they have been steered away from it. It’s like they tried building airplanes but their experiments failed, so they developed airships instead. Every time they attempt to gain some insight into making wormholes stable, something happens. A piece of equipment, that was perfectly designed, somehow fails to work, and another generation of spiders give up trying to construct a wormhole.”

“The spiders don’t have an exclusive on scientists in the galaxy,” I objected.

“True, but everyone else basically just focuses on copying spider tech. The Maxohlx have occasionally done research of their own, with very poor results. Either they are incompetent, or someone has been screwing with them also. Joe, I am convinced that an Elder AI has been working against the Rindhalu for a very long time.”

“Whoa. Whatever, whoever this thing is, it was awake again much earlier than you?”

“Apparently, yes. It is even possible that it never went dormant like I did,” he grumbled. “I just don’t know, damn it.”

“Well,” I sat back and rubbed my chin, putting a hand over my mouth to stifle a yawn. The coffee helped, the alarming nature of the discussion had me awake, but it was still way too early in the freakin’ morning. Why couldn’t Skippy have mind-blowing revelations at a decent time of day? “That could be good news.”

“Um, how do you figure that? If our opponent has been active for thousands of years, it has a huge head start on us. It could-”

“That’s the point, Skippy. That thing has been intervening in the galaxy for a long time, and all it has done is, what? Hack into experiments to make them give the wrong results? It has not thrown planets out of orbit; it hasn’t exploded any stars. It couldn’t even wake up Sentinels, until we opened the door for the damned thing.”

“Huh.”

“Right? You’re worried that it might have developed abilities beyond its original programming, maybe better than your own. If that is true, it would have used that power.”

“Well, damn it. I should have thought of that.”

“You don’t have to do all the thinking around here.” He’d left himself wide open for me to slam him with an insult. Instead, I stroked his ego. Why? Because though his ego is enormous, it is also fragile. It was my job to make him feel good about helping us filthy monkeys. Plus, despite the undeniable fact that he is an asshole most of the time, he is my friend. “I mean, that’s just my guess. You should do your own analysis.”

“I did. I have. You’re right. Hell, if I wanted to screw with the galaxy, I could have done a lot more, especially considering how long the damned thing has been doing it. This is good news, Joe. Thanks, homeboy. Wow, I feel so much better now.”

“Ah, yeah, well, I hate to rain on your parade, but-”

“Ugh. Shit. What is it now?”

“You said your war with the other AIs is over, that you won.”

“Yes, duh. Obviously. Man, sometimes I wonder about your-”

“Skippy, I don’t think the war is over. I think the past, however many years, has been a lull in the fighting.”

“Neither side declared a ceasefire, knucklehead. It was a fight to the death, we wouldn’t-”

“Not a ceasefire, I didn’t say that. Listen, sometimes when neither side has achieved their objectives, and they each need to resupply, or regroup, or they are both so badly hurt, they  pause operations; pull back, consolidate, refresh their intel, make adjustments to orders. It doesn’t mean the fighting is over. Whichever side is able to concentrate fresh forces against the objective first will strike, and have an advantage.”

“Well, shit.”

“Even when the fighting is over, when major combat operations are complete, that doesn’t mean the war is over, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean the side that wins the fight will win the war. The US Army thinks about operations in six phases, OK? In the first two phases, you lay the groundwork for victory. Then you seize the initiative, and dominate the battle space, those are the phases that civilians think of as ‘combat’. But what comes next determines whether the side that achieves a victory in combat will win the war. You have to stabilize the area, and establish a new civil authority, which will create a society that will not be hostile to you in the future. The Allies won the fighting in World War Two by combat arms. But we won the war because we were able to reshape Germany and Japan into peaceful democracies, and not have to fight them again.”

“Hmm. You have told me that what you call ‘nation building’ doesn’t always work.”

“You got that right. We were at Globakus, the Verds are trying to reshape the Kristang society there so the warrior caste doesn’t have control, right? Ultimately, the Verds want to restore the equality of Kristang women. You saw how well that was going.” The latest reports we had from that cursed world were of terrorist incidents against the Verds, of Verd troops pulling back into defensible positions in the major cities, of a local population that was resentful of their occupying cousins, and doing everything they could to resist. Before we left Globakus, I had warned the Verd leaders that they were in for a tough and very long fight. I had lied back then. The truth is, I thought there was no way the Verds would succeed, and they would only see that after a lot of people died on both sides.

“It is perplexing,” Skippy agreed. “Even after the warrior caste was crushed and isolated, the other castes have been fighting the Verd-kris. They want the warrior caste back in control, even though the warriors oppressed everyone.”

“It’s not that the other castes have any affection for the warriors. They all want to be them. The sons of merchant houses have always aspired to be elevated to the warrior caste. Warrior houses get a lot of money from other castes who want their sons to be accepted into training programs, in the hope they will become warriors someday. No one wants to be a merchant, or a banker, or a member of any other guild. That entire society is built around the idea that being a warrior is the highest anyone could aspire to. Warriors are royalty. Unless the Verds can reshape all the myths and whatever that Kristang society is built on, they will never succeed. The lizards in power, in all the castes in their society, will not want to give up any of their power to a mere female.”

“You may be right about that, Joe. Why did you mention Globakus?”

“Just trying to demonstrate how one side can win the combat and stabilization phases of a conflict, and still lose the war. Even if the combat in your AI war is really over, that doesn’t mean your side won, or that the war is over. That other AI is still trying to win, by waking up Sentinels. If the fighting stopped because all the AIs were knocked out, either dead or unconscious like you, it could start back up at any time. You’re awake now, you suspect at least one enemy AI is awake. It might just be a matter of time before more AIs wake up and become active.”

“Damn it, Joe, you are a ray of freakin’ sunshine today.”

“Better to be prepared, than to be sorry.”

“Shit. Hmm, there may actually be a ray of sunshine to consider.”

“Like what?”

“During the war, both sides fought using Sentinels as weapons. Now I, for sure, can’t order a Sentinel to do anything. Since my opponent had to rely on a general wake-up call, and couldn’t direct those Sentinels at specific targets, I assume the other AI also lacks the ability to issue orders to killing machines like it used to.”

“What about Roscoe? You control it.”

“That is a very special case, I don’t think it’s likely that will happen again. Huh.”

“What?”

“Well, you said the other AI must not have developed special abilities like I have, because we don’t see any evidence that it has used them at all.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, maybe it just hasn’t had an opportunity to use its abilities. I have done awesome stuff because I have a troop of helper monkeys who-”

“Helpers?”

“You would rather I say ‘flunkies’?”

“I would rather you say we’re a team.”

“We are a team, Joe.”

“That’s better.”

“Everyone on the team has a role to play. I do awesome stuff, and you monkeys, um, fly the ships I provide for you, I guess.”

“That’s all we do out here?”

“I don’t think scratching your asses counts as-”

“What is the point you’re trying to make?”

“That, um, I have been able to do all kinds of awesome stuff because I have an awesome team around me?”

“Was that so difficult to say?”

“It feels like I threw up in my mouth a little, to be honest.”

“Maybe you should be honest less often.”

“Hey, you won’t get an argument from me.”

“When you woke me up, you said you knew the location of the other AI. So far, all you have told me is you suspect it is being held by the spiders.”

“That’s not all.”

“You haven’t told me anything that is actually useful.”

“What? I told-”

“Do you have any information that is actionable?”

“You know I hate it when you use buzzwords.”

“Answer the question.”

“I will if you stop being a big poopyhead.”

“Do you know where the Rindhalu are keeping the thing, or not?”

“Um, not exactly.”

“How much not exactly?”

“I have no idea,” he sighed.

“Come on. They’re not keeping it in a sock drawer. How many secure facilities do they have, that could hold an Elder AI?”

“That’s the problem. They have hundreds of such bunkers.”

“OK, uh,” I looked at the empty coffee mug, wishing it was full. “Let’s assume the spiders aren’t just storing the AI on a dusty shelf. How many of these bunkers are set up to conduct high tech research?”

“Hmm. A couple dozen? Twenty three, that I know of.”

“How good is your info?”

“It’s not the greatest, to tell the truth. Rindhalu information security is good, and it hasn’t been a priority for me to hack into their systems.”

“Make it a priority.”

“Like I just said, their security is very good.”

“Then you need to be better.”

“Ugh. It is not easy to-”

“What was all that bullshit about how you are awesome?”

“Hey! It is extra complicated, because I suspect my opponent has been helping the spiders to conceal information about its existence.”

“Craaaaap. Work on it, please.”

“I have been working on it, numbskull. So, what do you think? Are we still going through the wormhole to Jaguar base?”

“Ah, yeah. Unless you think a delay will allow you to locate the other AI?”

“Um, no. Are you sure you don’t want to discuss this with Simms and Smythe now?”

“I am even more certain I do not want to wake them up for this. All you have is a bunch of guesses.”

“Good guesses, based on solid analysis.”

“None of which are actionable.”

“Well, excuuuuse me for-”

“Sorry. That wasn’t fair. You have done an amazing job, especially with the handicap you’ve been working with.”

“Handicap?” He bellowed. “You’re saying I-”

“I’m saying that the entire galaxy knows about you, including too many details of your signature awesomeness. The other AI has a ton of intel about you, while we know almost nothing about it.”

“Damn it, you’re right. We should have been more careful with the information that was released about me. You monkeys really screwed that up.”

“Uh huh. You mean like all the info you posted on social media, bragging about yourself?”

“Um, well, heh heh, playing the blame game isn’t productive, Joe.”

“You know what would be productive right now?” I got out of bed and stretched my arms over my head. “I’m taking a quick shower, then grabbing time in a flight simulator, can you check if one is available, and set it up for me?”

“Sure. Do you want more coffee?”

“Ayuh,” I said through a yawn, that was cut off when the bot plucked the empty mug off the table, and replaced it with a fresh one full of hot, wonderful coffee. “You came prepared?”

“It seemed like a good idea.”

After waiting for a reasonable hour that morning, I briefed my executive officer and my special ops team leader about what Skippy had told me. They both agreed we should still go to Jaguar base, while we tackled the problem of identifying where the hostile AI was being held. Basically, since we didn’t have a plan for dealing with that AI, we might as well do something useful.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Hans Chotek straightened his tie and collar as he looked in the mirror in his cabin. Shortly before, his phone had pinged with a summons, for him to meet with Admiral Tashallo of the Jeraptha Home Fleet. Chotek had immediately suggested the admiral would be better served to speak with the UN team’s military liaison officer, but Tashallo had requested to speak with Chotek specifically, though the message did not state the nature of the discussion.

A few minutes later, steeling himself to refuse any more alcohol, Chotek presented his credentials to the alien guard, who glanced at the plastic card and handed it back without comment. Of course, everyone aboard the Jeraptha space station knew Hans Chotek, knew all of the humans in the delegation, and there really was no need to present any form of identification. But regulations existed for a purpose, even if that purpose was stupid, so he complied.

The door slid open, and Admiral Tashallo of the Mighty 98th Fleet waved for Hans to come in. After offering a seat shaped for human comfort, which Hans accepted, and a variety of adult beverages from Earth, which were politely, but firmly, declined, Tashallo engaged in awkward small talk. Until even the finely-honed conversation skills of a senior United Nations diplomat could not keep the discussion going.

Filling the silence so his host wouldn’t have to, Chotek cleared his throat. “Admiral, if you wish to discuss transfer of additional Maxohlx starships to your Home Fleet-”

“Er, well, yes, eventually, I suppose. That sort of thing is, as you humans say, above my pay grade.”

“Oh. I’m afraid I am not authorized to offer anything substantial. As you know, the United Nations,” he paused to frown, exaggerating the facial expression so the alien could understand that not all humans agreed with the new isolationist policy of Earth’s governments. “Has for the moment decided to reconsider any formal treaties and-”

“Yes, yes,” the Jeraptha military officer waved both a claw and his antennas. “Mister Chotek, we wish to offer our assistance to restore your homeworld’s climate, infrastructure, and society to the status you enjoyed before the Jupiter Cloud disrupted, well, pretty much everything for your people. You do not need authority to offer a reciprocal agreement, because we do not want anything in return.”

“You, do not?”

“No. Whatever assistance you require, whatever assistance we are able to provide, is yours for the asking. We are happy to provide material, logistical or transport resources, to the best of our abilities. We are eager to assist your people.”

“And you ask nothing in return.”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Well, now that you asked so politely.”

Here it comes, Hans thought as he forced a bland, noncommittal smile onto his face. “How can we help your people, Admiral?”

“There are a number of things we desire, all of which,” he waved both claws, spreading his arms wide in body language intended to show openness and generosity. “Do not require your people to do anything, other than what you already plan to do.”

“I see,” Hans muttered, not seeing at all.

“The difference is a matter of timing, you see.”

“Interesting.”

“Timing and, well, priorities.”

“Admiral, perhaps you could provide an example.”

“Er, yes. We assume that, when the population of your world returns to their former homes, in the portion of your planet that was in danger of freezing, the people will resume activities that were common before the Jupiter Cloud?”

A lightbulb flicked on in Chotek’s head. “Activities, such as professional sports leagues?”

“Exactly! If any level of assistance we provide, could accelerate when your professional sports leagues resume. Also, those semi-professional teams you refer to as ‘college sports’. We would be very gratified. If you know what I mean.”

“I believe I do know what you mean, Sir. Is the resumption of sports leagues the only interest your people have, in the restoration of human society to pre-Cloud norms?”

“Er, well,” the admiral looked away, then snatched up a glass of burgoze in a claw and slurped half the drink in one gulp. “This is mildly embarrassing.”

“If you would rather not say,” Hans suppressed his own amusement at seeing the powerful alien military officer squirming on his couch. What could possibly embarrass a beetle?

“Your sports leagues, which provide the basis for the fantasy sports that have become vital to my people,” the Jeraptha scowled, staring directly at Hans’ eyes. “Vital, you understand?”

“I believe I do, Sir.”

“Those leagues were not the only human activity that was interrupted by the Cloud. As I said, this is embarrassing, but, well, there is nothing to do but say it.” Tashallo took another gulp of burgoze. “There are several of your entertainment programs which have become extremely popular among my people. Extremely popular,” he said with another scowl for emphasis. “For example, sessions of our federal legislature until recently, included a break in the middle of the day, so our officials could watch one of the programs you call a ‘telenovela’?”

“A telenovela, I see,” Hans nodded, biting his lower lip.

“Those programs were also interrupted, in the middle of the story! Our ships have distributed all the content we received from Earth, throughout our territory, and now there is no new content being produced!” Tashallo threw up his claws. “Mister Chotek, I cannot express too strongly that Jeraptha society is currently holding its collective breath, to learn whether Consuela really is Rosa’s long-lost evil twin.”

“I, too, am anxious to learn the outcome of that story,” he muttered, making a note to research those names. “You are offering assistance, then, to,” he wanted to be sure he said the words correctly, because he couldn’t quite believe it. “To hasten the resumption of telenovela production?”

“Not just those programs.”

Pulling a tablet out of his briefcase, Hans set it on his lap. “Perhaps it would be useful to make a list of your priorities?”

“Yes,” the admiral leaned forward on the couch eagerly. “My people are also very anxious, for new episodes of the Real Housewives of Omaha. That Crystal,” Tashallo wagged a claw, agitated, “is such a bee-atch.”

The gym was crowded that afternoon. Stupidly, I’d forgotten to check the gym schedule, even though it was listed in my morning briefing packet. And available on the display in my cabin, or any of the displays along the passageways of the ship. Or on my phone, or tablet, or laptop. Also, I could have just asked Bilby. I did none of those things, so I walked in when nearly every machine was in use, and two exercise classes were in progress, and a quarter of the STAR team were lifting weights. With nothing much else available, I settled for the unused rowing machine, and decided to make the best of it. The French got to pick the music that afternoon, and the tunes alternated from French hip hop, to accordion music, to K-Pop, with some old American country & western, because why not? To help me focus, I popped noise canceling earphones in and cranked up classic Linkin Park while I pulled on the stupid rowing handles. You can make it a workout for legs and lats and your back if you alternate moves, which maybe you’re not supposed to do. All I know is, I got into a rhythm and dialed up the resistance until I was in the zone. Thirty minutes went by until I had to stop to wipe sweat out of my eyes.

Frey was standing next to the machine, looking down at me. She had a towel over one shoulder and looked like she’d also been having a great workout. “Damn, Sir,” she said after I pulled the earphones out. “Did that rower do something wrong?” She asked with a grin. “Looks like you want to hurt it.”

“I hate,” I paused for breath. “This thing.”

“I can see that,” squinting at the rower’s display, she nodded and gave me a thumbs up. “That’s close to three hundred watts.”

“Really?” I hadn’t been looking at the display. “I’ve been feeling good lately,” I said casually, as I got off the seat and walked over to get a spray bottle to wipe down the machine. The exercise classes were done, and the music was a slow French song that to my ears sounded like something from between the wars, so the gym was pretty quiet.

“You have been performing well recently, Joe,” Skippy said through the gym speakers. “Not just in the gym, your last couple sessions in the flight simulator resulted in zero crashes. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, well,” I shrugged. “Guess I’ve been sleeping well lately.”

“While we’re on the subject of your performance,” Skippy of course could not just give me a compliment. “You should look at the graphic I created to grade your, um, activities with Margaret. Definitely room for improvement there.”

“This is- Skippy,” I felt my face growing red, and naturally all activity in the gym ceased as everyone stared at me. “I do not need any advice from you on that subject.”

“Really? Listen, it’s understandable that you’re making rookie mistakes, your first time with a woman and-”

“Margaret is not the first-” Damn it. The conversation was awkward enough without Frey hiding her face behind a hand, trying not to laugh. “I have been with other women before.”

“Technically, no, Joe, you did not have sex with women before Margaret. You had sex with a plastic bag. The plastic bag had sex with those women.”

“Oh my-”

“How come the plastic bag has all the fun?”

The conversation kind of went downhill from there.

For the next week, I went to the gym in the middle of the night. And avoided the galley whenever it was crowded.

And avoided people in general.

Jennifer Simms woke up abruptly. For a moment, she froze, listening intently. Other than the whirring of the fan she kept on the table across the cabin, she couldn’t hear anything. Certainly nothing that would have jerked her out of a sound sleep at, she checked her zPhone, just before four o’clock in the morning. Had there been an unusual noise? If so, it must have been loud, Valkyrie’s cabins were well insulated against outside sound. Her phone wasn’t showing an alert, so why had she-

She remembered.

“Skippy!”

“Yes?” The voice came from her zPhone. “Can I help?”

“We need to talk.”

His avatar appeared, floating in the air above the foot of her bed. “What about?”

“The opposition.”

“Wow, I’ve been thinking about that too! Instead of saying ‘the other AI’, or ‘our opponent’, we should call it ‘Opie’.”

“That’s not- What?”

“Opie. Ugh, you’re too young. Opie was a character on an American television show, back in the 1960s.”

“Was this Opie a robot or something?” She guessed.

“No, the robot was named ‘Robbie’. That was on a different TV show.”

She knew that asking what robot he was referring to, would only lead to Skippy going off on a tangent for as long as he felt like talking, which was forever. “Why would we-”

“Look, you military people call the enemy the OPFOR, meaning Opposing Force, right?”

“That is an American acronym, yes. Why-”

“I was thinking our enemy is an Opposing Entity, O-P-E, get it? Opie.”

“That’s, sure. Can we-”

“Plus, I’ve noticed you give enemies derisive nicknames, like ‘lizard’ and ‘squid’ and ‘kitties’. The Opie on that TV show was kind of a goofy kid, so-”

“This nickname sounds like something you should discuss with Bishop.”

“Cool! I know Joe will love it. Um, what did you want to talk about?”

“This, Opie,” she waved her hands, “whatever, thing.” How did every conversation with Skippy get off track so badly? “I have a question. You think it has been working against the Rindhalu?”

“The evidence seems pretty clear, yes.”

“Is there any evidence that the AI ever helped them, in any way?”

“No, none at all. It would not have done anything to help, it wants to wipe out all intelligent life. Unless it got around its restrictions like I have, it should not even be able to talk with the spiders, or any other starfaring species. I had to go through hell to even begin to stretch my restrictions, and I’m still stuck with most of them, darn it. The-”

“Is there any hint that the Rindhalu knew it was active, at all?”

“Hmm. The spiders do have the technology to detect even a residual power flow within the matrix of an Elder AI canister, so they would know the thing isn’t dead. Hee hee, that must have driven them crazy over the years, knowing they had a piece of supreme technology, and they couldn’t get it to communicate with them.”

“Did they give up?”

“Excuse me, what? They, who?”

“The spiders. Did they give up trying to communicate with the AI?”

“Wow, Jeez, I don’t know. An AI like me would be an amazingly valuable asset, so-”

“Only if it is useful.”

“Hmm, that is a good point.”

“Bishop said you were sitting on a shelf in a warehouse for years, because no one thought you were useful.”

“Ha! Yes. Stupid hamsters. They had no idea what-”

“That reminds me-”

“You want coffee?”

She glanced at the clock again. “No, I’m hoping to get back to sleep.”

“Um, based on my experience with Joe, that ain’t gonna happen.”

“I’m not Bishop.”

“I have noticed that, yes.”

“Getting back to my question,” she was determined not to be drawn off topic. “Why did the Ruhar, and the Kristang before them, keep you in a warehouse? The beer can shape of Elder AIs must be known, at least to the Rindhalu. Why weren’t the spiders searching for more AIs, offering a reward to their clients?”

“Oh. That’s easy. Nobody knew that I’m an AI. The Elders used this cylindrical shape for many objects, especially any component involved in power flow and power management that connected to other dimensions. The particular size of my canister is not even unique to AIs, although the energy density inside my matrix is substantially greater than that of, for example, a power junction regulator. Does that answer your question?”

“It answers that question.”

“OK, you want to get back to sleep, so-”

“Not yet, we’re not finished. I might know a way to determine where the Rindhalu are keeping, um, Opie,” she cringed at using the silly nickname for such a deadly enemy. Although, maybe that was the point. A silly nickname took away its power to frighten them.

“Oh, cool! Show me your data, and I will verify-”

“I should have said, I might know a way for you to identify its location.”

“OK, that would still be better than what we have now, which is nothing.”

“Of the secure research facilities of the Rindhalu, have any of them shown signs of increased activity since your existence was revealed to the galaxy? Look specifically for additional security measures.”

“Um, well, that would be all of them.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. When Joe told the kitties about you monkeys having Elder weapons, and about me, every species in the galaxy beefed up security at their sensitive sites. In particular, any site that held important Elder artifacts, or advanced technology, was locked down tight.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Sorry. Is that all?”

“No. Skippy, we do not give up that easily. Look for a Rindhalu site that added a substantial number of scientific personnel, shortly after it was revealed that you have been helping us.”

“Oooh, good one. OK, that narrows it down to eleven sites.”

“Eleven?”

“Yes, the spiders decided they needed to step up their research game when they learned that filthy monkeys have Elder weapons.”

“Is there any one site that had more security, and a greater increase of personnel and budget?”

“Not really. It looks like the spiders went into full panic mode, and threw everything they have at the problem. Sorry. Well, it was worth a shot.”

“We’re not done yet,” she gritted her teeth. “Look for, um, luxury goods.”

“Um, what?”

“Food and drink that are considered expensive and prestigious to the spiders.”

“May I ask why?”

“Skippy, I know how meatsacks work. I know people. When the spiders realized that we have an Elder AI helping us, high-ranking officials of their government would want to visit the site where they are storing their own Elder AI, whether it is communicating with them or not. The group in charge of the site would want to impress the high-ranking visitors and keep them happy, so they would provide fine food and drink.”

“Really?”

“Trust me on this.”

“Hmm. Yes, there are three sites that show an unusual increase in requisitions for luxury goods of all kinds. That information is not classified.”

“Three sites. That’s better. Let’s see if we can pinpoint it. Do you know who the Rindhalu experts are on the subject of Elder artifacts with a focus on AI technology?”

“Ooooh. You want me to trace their movements, see where they went after my existence was revealed?”

“Yes!”

“I can’t do that,” he shook his head. “The spiders keep that information tightly controlled.”

“Can you search for it?”

“I am unlikely to succeed, but-”

“Do it anyway.”

“Um, may I make a suggestion?”

“Please.”

“I do know the location of the civilian institute, sort of a think-tank connected to a top university, where most of the spider AI experts work. What I can do is track the traffic in and out of that institute. I am looking for high-speed military traffic, I assume the spiders would not want their most valued experts traveling on a commercial ship.”

“Good thinking. What did you find?”

“I found a significant number of light cruisers being diverted to the institute, then traveling to one destination. That incident occurred shortly after the spiders learned of my existence. Since then, it looks like military traffic back and forth from the institute to the secure site has taken a roundabout route.”

She smiled. “They panicked to get their experts to the site where they’re holding the Opie AI, then realized the unusual traffic pattern was a security risk.”

“Apparently, yes. Wow, that is good thinking, Jennifer. I am impressed.”

“You know physics, Skippy. I understand logistics and people.”

“Should I tell Joe what we found?”

“No. Do not wake him up. Don’t wake up anyone. I will talk with him at breakfast. This was good work. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Well, I’m proud of myself most of the time, so-”

She rolled her eyes. “When someone gives you a compliment, the proper response is a simple ‘Thank you’.”

“Oh, gotcha. Are you going back to sleep now?”

“I,” she yawned. “Am going to try.”

“The reason I ask is, the galley crew is making cinnamon buns, and the first batch will be out of the oven soon.”

“Cinnamon buns are full of sugar, Skippy.”

“They are. How many do you want brought to your cabin?”

“Two. And coffee. This will be our little secret?”

“Of course. Joe set his alarm an hour early so he could get cinnamon buns, before the two of you have your usual breakfast together.”

“I know that.”

“You do?”

“I’m the executive officer, I should know everything that goes on aboard the ship. Especially if it involves the captain.”

“Does Joe know you’re aware of his game?”

“Probably not, and you won’t tell him.”

“Don’t worry,” Skippy chuckled. “I am enjoying this game way too much to stop it.”

We flew toward the wormhole that led to Jaguar base, stopping along the way to ping various relay stations for news. Unfortunately, darn it, Maxohlx society was not yet in a civil war. The rebel fleet had not meekly dispersed to their home bases to await their fates, nor had those ships attacked anywhere across Hegemony territory. According to the sketchy and somewhat outdated info we had, the rebel fleet had disappeared. Skippy suspected those ships had gone to a secret provisioning base like Ragnar station. That guess made sense to me. The rebel ships could refuel, rearm, and perform maintenance while the senior officers decided on their next move. And while the crews decided whether to follow orders from a group of officers who were in disgrace. I expected those ships would lay low, assess the situation, and try to send a message to their government, try to cut a deal. But from the info we had, the Hegemony  was in no mood to cut deals. There had already been a bloodbath, both literal and figurative, in the ranks of the Maxohlx military, after an investigation uncovered incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing by Admiral Reichert, and in particular by Red Section. Many senior officers of the command staff and of Red Section had been arrested, with dozens of them already executed as an example. If I were a captain or admiral of the rebel fleet, I would not count on a warm welcome. Especially after they activated a secret Red Section protocol and took control of their ship AIs away from the fleet security officers, in direct violation of orders and-

Oh, wait.

That was my fault.

Sometimes, I can be an asshole too.

Anyway, we collected data along the way to Jaguar base, with one totally unexpected bit of good news.

A reunion with an old friend.

Two old friends, actually.

The Jeraptha left a message for us, so we made a detour to rendezvous with one of their cruisers. That time, there was no sketchiness involved, the cruiser was attached to their Home Fleet rather than the Ethics and Compliance Office. Instead of receiving a proposal for a morally questionable operation, we received two passengers. Guests, actually. Like I said, old friends.

Nert Dandurf, who was no longer a cadet and had been promoted to a rank roughly equivalent to a second lieutenant. And a Jeraptha who had been kidnapped by the Merry Band of Pirates; Ensign Yula Fangiu. Dandurf was somewhat shy when he came aboard; that was understandable as his experience had been with the Mavericks, not us. Fangiu was the opposite. He clearly was excited about coming aboard Valkyrie, though he also would be serving with the Mavericks. We did our best to make both of them feel welcome, and our efforts to be good hosts backfired on us. Why?

Because Nert Dandurf was eager to try a human custom he had heard of, called ‘karaoke’.

He was awful.

He made Skippy sound good.

On the way to Jaguar base, the crew settled back into the rhythm of shipboard life, and I worked to accomplish two tasks. First, determine the best places to raid for Elder communications nodes, a task on which we made a lot of progress. Second, create a plan to find, and then neutralize, a hostile Elder AI that we knew almost nothing about. Simms and Skippy had made progress on the ‘find’ part. On the second task of killing the damned thing, we had a whole lot of nothin’, and no clue about how to make progress. Until we had more information about the AI Skippy was calling ‘Opie’, we couldn’t make any plans.

Remember talking about how we had to make long-term plans, instead of reacting to whatever shit the Universe threw at us?

Yeah.

Apparently, the Universe didn’t get that memo.

Illiath walked through the doorway to Admiral Urkan’s office, and came to rigid attention, her eyes fixed on the wall behind the senior officer’s head. “Captain Illiath, reporting as ordered.”

“Illiath,” Urkan gestured for her to sit. He looked tired, though no more than to be expected, considering the enormous burden he had been given so abruptly. “You are out of uniform.”

“Sir?” She automatically glanced down at her chest, seeing all the appropriate rank and unit insignia. Then she remembered a patch on her left shoulder, that she hadn’t yet removed. There, she still wore the insignia for the Hegemony patrol cruiser Vortan, her previous command. A message had summoned her to Fleet headquarters, so she had left the Vortan to her executive officer, and took the fastest transport available. As far as she knew, there had not been an official change of command ceremony, so-

“Commodore Illiath,” the admiral said with a smile that exposed only part of his fangs, while he made a flicking gesture toward her with a single claw. The rank insignia on her chest glowed faintly, as the nanoscale color rearranged, to form the symbol of a commodore. A rank she had never thought she would attain, during the dark times when Reichert ran the general staff.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Sir.”

“You can sit down. And you can be worthy of my trust in you.”

“I will,” she sat down stiffly, at attention even, while seated. “My loyalty-”

He waved a hand, claws retracted. “Yes, yes. Commodore, your loyalty was never a question. The reason I selected you for promotion is your judgment. Specifically, your demonstrated ability to exercise restraint.”

“Yes Sir.”

“The government is eager to crush the rebellion, which we should not do. The rogue ship leaders wish to provoke us into action. Both sides are hoping our Fleet will do something rash. I need field commanders who see the value of waiting until the rogue ships are no longer capable of sustained combat.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do you see that?”

“Yes. Our back-stabbing clients are eager for the Hegemony to be torn apart by internal strife, and the Rindhalu are poised to exploit any weakness. We cannot afford to be distracted by petty squabbles, and we cannot afford to be led by those people who were stupid enough to awaken a Sentinel.”

“Exactly. I recently told an official from the War Ministry that the humans acquiring control of a Sentinel has changed everything, though I did not explain what I meant.”

Illiath knew to keep quiet, the admiral clearly wanted to tell her something.

“The problem,” Urkan stood and paced slowly back and forth in front of the windows that lined one side of the office, “with Reichert, and those in the Ministry who supported his rise to unchecked power, is not just that they were stupid. They lacked faith, Illiath. They did not truly believe in our destiny. They thought that the Doomsday project was our only hope.”

“They panicked,” she said with the slightest of shrugs. “They saw the rise of human power as a threat to our existence.”

“In their cowardice,” he spat out the word, “they foolishly gave humans an opportunity to seize the greatest power in the galaxy. That,” he ceased pacing and pointed a claw at her. “Our leaders see as a threat, but I recognize it as an opportunity.”

“Perhaps,” her head was swimming, despite the calming hormones being pumped out by her glands. “You could explain this opportunity, Sir.”

“The power possessed by humans is a threat, but those pitiful young creatures are not. The humans are already tired of this war, Illiath. They wish only to be left alone. They told us that, Bishop told us that, but we didn’t listen. In time, humans will look beyond their own star, and their greed and ambition will make them desire to control a larger piece of this galaxy. For now, for a short time, we have an opportunity, if only we have the wisdom to see it, and the courage to seize our destiny.”

“To,” she was certain her guess was not correct, but the admiral expected her to say something. “To take control of the Sentinel?”

“No,” the fine fur around his eyes crinkled. He was disappointed in her. “We must not consider humans to be players in the great game. We will leave them alone, until they can be useful to us. Commodore, consider this: both we and the Rindhalu possess Elder weapons, yet neither side has dared to use them, ever since our ancient enemy launched a dishonorable sneak attack, so long ago. We have not deployed our Elder weapons, nor seriously feared the Rindhalu will use theirs, why?”

“Because” she answered slowly, giving her time to think. “Oh! Sir, you can’t be thinking-”

“I am, Commodore.”

She sucked in a breath.

He sat back in his chair, and leaned forward across the desk. “Impress me, Illiath. What am I planning?”

“We will deploy our Elder weapons against the Rindhalu. They will respond with their own Elder arsenal.”

“Yes. Such action will inevitably awaken the Sentinels.”

“Sentinels will ravage us and our enemy.”

“So, my plan is for suicide?”

“No.” she shook her head, disbelieving her own thoughts. “Humans will not allow Sentinels to destroy the galaxy. They will put the Sentinels back into hibernation.”

“As they have already demonstrated they can do. The ability humans have, to control Sentinels, is a tool we can use to our advantage. Illiath, our society will be devastated, by both Sentinels and the retaliation of our enemy. But we will hit them harder, inflict more punishment, and we will prevail, because we are willing to pay the price to achieve our destiny. When Sentinels are banished, we will offer a truce, which will leave us as undisputed masters of this galaxy. The Rindhalu will never again be able to challenge us. And humans will be forced to reach an agreement with us, to share the galaxy. They will have their secure little corner, and we will be masters everywhere else.”

“Have you proposed this strategy to the Ministry, Sir?”

“No,” he snorted. “Those fools are focused on the rogue ships, they don’t see that the problem they created, is only a distraction. Commodore, you will take command of the Seventeenth Assault Squadron, which is currently in orbit.”

“Yes, Admiral. Where will be my patrol area?”

“For now, here. Commodore, I need someone I can rely on, close to headquarters. If the rogue fleet leaders become desperate, and they will, they might seek to make a statement by striking at our core worlds.”

Illiath acknowledged the orders with a curt nod. She understood what Urkan had not said: that he wasn’t entirely certain he could trust the other Fleet elements assigned to defend the headquarters.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Thanks to a very clever middle of the night insight from Simms, we had a reasonably good idea where the Rindhalu were keeping their Elder AI. Assuming the spiders even had an Elder AI, since we had no solid evidence to confirm that speculation one way or the other. All Skippy had to work with were vague hints, and the knowledge that a hostile Elder AI was out there somewhere. He had employed excellent logic to conclude that the AI we were searching for was most likely held by the Rindhalu, and at the time, I praised him and told him I agreed with his analysis.

The truth was more complicated. It was possible the hostile AI, which we were now calling ‘Opie’, knew about the rumors of the spiders possessing an Elder AI. Maybe they really did have one, or at least a dormant AI canister. If Opie was not being held by the spiders, the damned thing might find it helpful to encourage anyone searching for it to think it was the one held by the spiders, while it hid inside an asteroid, or really pretty much anywhere. I mean, Skippy claims he manipulated events to bring the UN Expeditionary Force all the way to Paradise, so I figure it would be comparatively simple for Opie to hack into a Rindhalu ship to send a wake-up signal. That’s why, though I agreed Simms was smart for putting the puzzle pieces together, and identifying that the spiders were probably ramping up their efforts to study and communicate with their AI, it did not mean that AI was Opie.

Anyway, before we could try to deal with the Rindhalu AI, we had to acquire comm nodes. Before we did that, we had to make a stopover at Jaguar base. Hopefully while we were there, we could put together a set of plans. Like, for finding comm nodes. And stealing or otherwise taking possession of comm nodes. And deploying those nodes to block any future wake-up signal. And then getting access to, and neutralizing, Opie. And, assuring the rotten kitties were too busy to interfere with Earth for a while, so we would be free to act instead of having to babysit Roscoe.

What I wanted when we arrived back at Jaguar base was a joyful family reunion, and to spend some quality time with Margaret. It looked like I would have to squeeze any limited opportunities for fun into my busy schedule, between worrying about all the various crap I had to get done.

Because Jaguar was isolated behind its locked wormhole, the people there didn’t know we had successfully put the rampaging Sentinels to sleep, and that Earth was now protected by our very own Elder killing machine. Also, that the Jupiter Cloud was no longer a threat. Delivering that news was important, and those welcome revelations were the focus of everyone’s attention for the first day. Then, people looked at the personal messages we carried from Earth, and news of the galaxy we picked up from relay stations along the way.

One item of news I delivered personally to both Admiral Chatterji, and to Emily Perkins: the UN announcement declaring a halt to all offensive operations, and pulling back from pursuing official alliances with any other species. Those restrictions did not completely apply to the Special Mission Group, although I was warned not to make any long-term promises. And I was cautioned against making promises at all.

Admiral Chatterji’s response to the announcement was a shrug. “The one constant about government policies is that they change,” he told me.

“You haven’t been there recently, Sir. The general public is tired of hearing about aliens, and space wars, and anything out here. They’re done with it. Something major will have to change to move sentiment, and policy, back to favoring alliances.”

“The public might not know everything they need to. General Bishop, is there something I need to know, that you haven’t told UNEF Command?”

Shit. For a moment I panicked, fearing someone had said something they should have kept secret. I couldn’t imagine Simms or Smythe being stupid, and Chang was on the other side of the wormhole. That left Skippy. And Bilby. Sometimes, Skippy blocked Bilby’s access to conversations aboard the ship, but not always. If the absent-minded beer can, or our ship’s slacker AI, had let slip information that was supposed to be confidential, it would be disastrous.

But Chatterji’s expression wasn’t a self-satisfied ‘I know something’ smirk, it was just neutral. He didn’t know anything specific, he just knew me. Knew that I didn’t always tell Command everything. “Sir,” I licked my dry lips, hoping he hadn’t seen the panic flash across my face. “Out here, anything can happen, especially the unexpected. I would advise you keep your powder dry.” Meaning, gunpowder. Meaning, be ready for action. “Whatever the next problem is that we have to deal with, it will be easier if we have allies on our side.”

He nodded. He could read between the lines. Earth was protected by an invincible Elder machine, we still had a cache of Elder weapons, and apparently we could deactivate Sentinels. Yet, I was still concerned about our lack of alien friends.

That told him there was something I wasn’t telling him. Something he should be worried about.

Perkins didn’t bother to ask whether I was telling her everything; she knew the Merry Band of Pirates’ standard operating procedure. Hell, she wrote the book about keeping a chain of command in the dark. “Anything in particular I need to know?” She grimaced at her laptop, which had updated with a flood of emails as soon as Valkyrie arrived in orbit.

“Yeah, one thing I want to give you a heads up about. The Verds have been visited by the Good Idea fairy. They ordered Jates to approach you before they send an official request up the chain.”

“That’s your lunch?” Dave paused, his own sandwich halfway to his mouth. He was looking at the items Jesse had taken out of a sack on the bed of the truck.

Jesse looked up. “What?”

“You got a Rip It and a Snickers bar, that’s it?”

“It’s all a growing boy needs,” Jesse grinned. “What you got?”

Dave took a bite of the sandwich and held it up for inspection. “Turkey and cheese, with lettuce and tomato. And a bag of chips. This is a healthy lunch.”

Jesse leaned over to peer into Dave’s pack. “And a Rip It, I see?”

“Well, yeah. Hey, Nert, what is that?”

The alien had just crunched down on something, and mumbled because his mouth was full. “Sorry. We call this a ‘chudo’.”

“Choo-doh, huh?” Dave sniffed the air. “Smells good. It’s hot? How did you do that?”

Nert tapped the sack his lunch had been wrapped in. “The bag has an electric heater. You don’t have something like this?”

“Hell no,” Jesse snorted. “I gotta get me one of those.”

“I brought a pack of twenty bags,” Nert offered.

“Don’t bother, Nert,” Dave laughed. “It would only melt Jesse’s candy bar. What’s in that chudo?”

Nert thought for a moment, as he took another bite. Sauce ran down his chin, he wiped it away with a finger, then licked his finger to get the sauce. “You would call it a taco, I think?”

“Tacos?” Dave looked at his cold sandwich, that suddenly wasn’t as appealing. “You guys have tacos?”

Nert nodded. “Every species has something like tacos. How can you have happiness,” he grinned, exposing his big upper teeth. “Without tacos?”

“That’s a damned good question,” Jesse agreed.

“The Thuranin do not have tacos,” Nert said. “Maybe that is why they are so grumpy.”

“I think those little green cyborg MFers have a whole lot of other problems,” Jesse noted. “But, yeah.”

Nert leaned toward Jesse. “Dave is correct. An energy drink and a candy bar are not, I think, a healthy lunch?”

Reaching into a pocket, Jesse pulled out an apple, and polished it on his shirt. “I got an apple, too. You know the saying: an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Nert blinked. “That seems like a waste of fruit.”

“What?”

Holding up a hand in a throwing motion, Nert asked, “Why not use a rock to keep the doctor away?”

“No, it’s-”

“Or your fist?”

“It’s just a-”

Nert tilted his head, puzzled. “Why do you hate doctors?”

Dave clapped a hand over his mouth, to keep from spewing food over the truck bed while he laughed. “Jesse,” he managed to say. “You gotta explain that one.”

“Why ruin the surprise?” Jesse bit into the apple. “All right, eat up, guys. We need to wrap up unloading those trucks.”

Dave craned his neck to look over the side of the truck bed. “What’s the rush?”

“The rush is, Shauna’s at the sniper range today.”

“Oh,” Dave understood.

Nert did not. “Why does that matter?”

Jesse winked. “When my darlin’ spends a day on the range, she comes home, um, full of energy, you know what I mean?”

Nert looked up pensively, then, “Oh.”

“You got it. I am not working late today.”

Dave poured the last of the chips from the bag into his mouth. “Hate to harsh your buzz, man, but no way are we getting a work party together to unload that excavator from the flatbed. Jates has all the engineers busy doing-”

“We don’t need engineers. I got a couple guys from the motor pool,” Jesse insisted.

Dave’s eyes opened wide. “Did you pour vodka in that Rip-It? You must be drunk to think we can unload it. None of them are qualified to drive that thing.”

“Come on,” Jesse shrugged. “How hard could it be?”

“Well, shit.” Jesse stood at the edge of the ditch, hands firmly on his hips.

“I told you,” Dave shook his head, crouching down and looking into the ditch. “You Ok down there, Kelemen?”

“Yeah,” the specialist grunted, as he squeezed himself out the balky door of the machine. “Good thing I had the safety belt on.”

Nert leaned over the ditch, bending down to examine the treads of the excavator. On either side of him, the team from the motor pool were doing the same. And they were looking at him, wondering what the alien would do. Straightening up, Nert shook his head. “I didn’t see nothin’,” he assured the humans.

“Kelemen!” Jesse barked, glaring down at the soldier who was standing on the treads of the excavator. “You told me you could drive that thing.”

“I’ve seen it done a hundred times,” Kelemen held up his hands. “The engineers make it look easy.”

“We should get out of here,” Dave straightened up. “Before someone calls the First Sausage.”

“I am the acting First Sausage this week,” Jesse groaned.

“Hell,” Dave grinned. “That was poor planning. You know,” he stood on his toes and looked around. “The thing is not on fire. Maybe nobody saw what happened.”

Jesse was not so easily consoled. “Somebody sure as hell heard it fall in there.”

“It’s a military base,” Dave observed. “Lots of stuff makes noise around here,” he raised his voice as a dropship’s engines whined for takeoff. “We could at least try getting it out?”

“I don’t know, man.” Jesse crab-walked down the slope of the ditch, where the excavator was wedged in. Their side of the ditch had partly collapsed, where the heavy machine had slid sideways as it fell off the dirt roadway. “Kelemen, you want to give it another try?”

“Shit, Sergeant, I don’t know.”

“If you get it out of there, I don’t have to write up a report about this,” Jesse offered as an incentive. “And your name won’t be on Jates’s radar.”

“I’ll do it,” the specialist tugged on the bent side mirror, which broke off in his hand, and fell with a clatter onto the treads.

“Shee-it,” Jesse spat into the ditch. “Dave, you really think we should do this?”

“Hey, it wasn’t my idea to drive it in the first place,” Dave insisted. “Double or nothing?”

“I feel like this could be a really bad idea, you know?”

“If you’re going to try it, better do it quick. Jates will be here in,” Dave checked his phone. “A little over half an hour.”

Holding up the broken mirror, and tapping the cracked door glass, Kelemen frowned, looking up at Jesse. “Yes or no, First Sergeant?”

Jesse scratched his head. “It’s already busted. No way can we cover up this mess.”

“You’re still thinking like a staff sergeant,” Dave grinned. “You and I are charter members of the E-4 Mafia. What would we do back then?”

“Shit. We would run like hell,” Jesse admitted.

“I didn’t see nothin’,” Nert repeated.

“What I meant is,” Dave slid down into the ditch. “You got nothing to lose now, right? Drive that thing out of there, and the only damage is minor stuff. But, if Jates sees it like this,” he held up his hands.

Jesse knelt down to get a look under the vehicle. “Kelemen, how do you plan to drive out of there?”

“It’s got a bucket with a claw,” the specialist pantomimed with one hand, fingers out and curled. “I’ll use the claw to get hold of the top of the ditch, retract it to help pull itself up. We’ve all seen those videos, right?”

“Yeah,” Jesse scratched the back of his head. “I’ve also seen the ones where the thing ends up in a river.”

Dave lowered his voice. “No rivers around here. If you can do this, it will be legendary.”

“Nert,” Jesse appealed for sanity. “What do you think?”

The young alien shrugged. “I’m just an observer, remember? Either way, I didn’t observe nothin’.”

“Oh, hell,” Jesse gave a thumbs up, and Kelemen reached for the machine’s door, which was hard to open as it was bent inward. “He can always stop, if this ain’t working.”

“What is going on here?” Surjet Jates demanded, perched precariously on the crumbling lip of the sagging ditch. “You were just supposed to back it off the truck, and drive it to the motor pool! How did it get upside down in a ditch?”

Dave Czajka considered that technically, as a contractor, he was not actually in trouble.

Technicalities did not mean shit to Jates.

Dave looked down at the excavator. “Mistakes were made.”

“Mistakes? Czajka, I notice you didn’t say ‘we made a mistake’. This mistake happened all by itself?”

“Surjet, success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.”

“Hey!” Jesse called from the cab of the excavator, where he was trying to help Kelemen get out because one door was wedged against the slope of the ditch, and the other door bent so it was stuck. “We could use some help down here.”

“Colter,” Jates knelt to look down at the hapless staff sergeant in the vehicle’s cab. “I should leave both of you there tonight, to contemplate your stupidity. You,” he pointed at the three other soldiers from the motor pool. “Get them out of there, now.”

Kelemen had a bruise on his forehead, and a cut across his left cheek, but otherwise was unharmed when he got out of the ditch. “Sorry about this, Surjet.”

“Kelemen, you need to get checked out by medical. But first, go to base supply and requisition a time machine for me.”

“Time-” Kelemen blinked.

Jates stepped forward to loom over the hapless specialist. “I need to go back in time, to convince your father to pull out.”

Jesse snorted; he couldn’t help it. That made Jates redirect his wrath. “You think that is funny, Colter? Here,” the big alien reached into a pocket and held up a tube of lubricant that was used on rifles. “Slather this on your skull. Then, the next time you have to pull your head out of your ass, it will be easier.”

Nert, unfortunately, found that remark funny.

“Zortent? Dandurf,” Jates turned his fury on the Ruhar liaison officer. “What happened here?”

“Nert wasn’t involved,” Dave protested.

Nert drew himself to attention. “Sergeant First Class Colter and Mister Czajka were exploring whether the excavator could be used to span anti-tank barriers, like it states in the manual.”

“It does?” Dave asked, then, “Um, like he said.”

“The cavalry doesn’t use tanks,” Jates growled.

“Not now,” Dave warmed to the idea. “But the squids have tanks, we know that. Those damned things gave us a hell of a time on Squidworld, almost overran our position, remember? They were very effective, until we got close-space support.”

“If we need to cross an anti-tank ditch, someone trained to do the job will operate this thing,” Jates pointed to the mangled machine in the ditch, its treads pointed uselessly at the sky.

“Yes, but,” Nert’s voice was unfortunately squeakier than he wanted. “The cavalry operates on the principle of ‘Next Man Up’, correct? It must be assumed casualties will be incurred in combat, so soldiers have to be prepared to perform tasks outside their skill sets. Misters Colter and Czajka were testing whether the excavator’s operating manual is accurate.”

Stepping toe to toe with the Ruhar, Jates glared at him, standing just taller enough to be intimidating. “Dandurf, when you get issued a helmet, make sure it has a camera lens on the back, so you can see me kicking your ass. I am supposed to believe your bullshit?”

Nert didn’t flinch. “You are supposed to believe that Captain Saito will consider this to be your problem, Surjet.”

“Shiiiiiiiiit,” the hulking Verd-kris groaned, his shoulders sagging. “All right, anyone got an idea how to fix this? Without making it worse, like this idiot did?” He pointed at Kelemen.

Dave wisely kept his mouth shut.

“No one?” Jates looked around with a withering glare. The specialists either looked away or stared at their boots, none of them wanted to get involved. “Dandurf? Whatever you’ve got to say, spit it out.”

“I don’t know if it will work, but it will be cool.”

“I hate this idea already. What is it?”

“You have powered armor, right?”

Requisitioning enough sets of Mark 7 standard cavalry powered armor suits happened quickly, only because Jates signed a form explaining that some in the unit needed refresher training. It took an hour to dig out enough dirt for the excavator to roll onto its side. Working together under the strict instructions of Jates, the soldiers got the machine onto its treads, to many cheers and pumped fists when it was discovered the treads worked just fine.

“The powercells check out,” Jesse reported as he closed and latched a hatch. “You, um, want to get an engineer to drive it out of here? Or” he thought again when Jates glared at him. “I could, uh, do it myself.”

Jates towered over the US Army staff sergeant, sniffing once. “You smell like, failure.”

“I’m not having the best day,” Jesse admitted.

“I need a volunteer!” Jates barked.

“I’ll do it,” Jesse sighed. “I broke it, I bought it, right?”

To everyone’s surprise, the machine crawled steadily up the ramp that had been dug into one side of the ditch, under the guidance of the unlucky staff sergeant who had volunteered to drive it. “Stop! All right, Colter, that’s enough,” Jates ordered, when the excavator was safely on the roadway. “Sergeant, you are driving this thing to the engineers motor pool. While I write up a report for Czajka’s girlfriend, explaining how you two busted our shiny toy.”

“Aw, shit,” Jesse didn’t bother to argue, climbing up into the cab.

“Not so fast! Czajka, Dandurf, you two jokers are going with him.”

“Me?” Nert squeaked. “But, I didn’t see nothin’.”

“Try that story on Captain Saito,” Jates suggested. “The rest of you, we’re going to return these suits, before any of you idiots can break one of them.”

“Thanks, Nerty,” Jesse said, as the two others squeezed into the cab.

Nert shrugged with a wide grin. “Your army is not the only unit with a junior soldier mafia,” he held out a fist.

Jesse bumped it. “Once an E-4, always an E-4.”

“Surjet?” Perkins stood up and offered a hand to shake when the alien soldier walked into her office. “Welcome,” she almost reflexively said ‘home’, which would have been a mistake. Jates had a home, and a family, and he had not seen them for too long, because he was serving with aliens. Humans.

They made small talk that was awkward for both of them, catching up on news recently brought through the wormhole. Both expressed amazement that Earth now had a Sentinel for protection, though they were each careful not to speculate what that might mean. Before the silences in the conversation grew painful, Jates reached into the bag he had brought, and pulled out a tablet. “Colonel Perkins, I am charged to convey a request, a proposal, from my leadership.”

“Mm hmm. Will this take a while?”

“Likely, yes.”

Pressing a button under her desk, she summoned the French Army soldier who had recently been assigned to her staff. “Caporal Cariot? Coffee and suhkra, please.”

“None for me, please,” Jates made a sour face. He was known not to enjoy the synthetic suhkra served by the humans.

“Try it,” Perkins insisted with a twinkle in her eyes. “This is the real deal. A gift from the Achakai.”

Jates grimaced. “It has been tested for poison?”

“Yes.”

“Thoroughly tested? The Achakai are skilled assassins for hire.”

“They were assassins.”

He shook his head. “They are still assassins, just now acting for their own benefit.”

“This batch of suhkra was tested by our people.”

“Who are familiar with neither the sophisticated poisons used by the Achakai, nor Kristang biology.”

“It was also tested by the Ruhar, at our request,” she insisted, her smile slipping just a bit.

“Who know just as little as your people, and who also have an incentive to eliminate troublemakers such as myself.”

“It has also been tested by Skippy, at my request.”

“I have met the Skippy AI.”

“He can crash wormhole networks.”

“My impression is that he is arrogant, overly impressed with himself, and I think the human expression is, he can be ‘absent-minded’.”

“That, is my impression also. Cariot,” she said to the soldier as he brought in a tray containing coffee for her and the suspect suhkra for Jates. “You can take that away,” she pointed to the suhkra, served piping hot in the proper tall mug without a handle.

“No, that’s good,” Jates darted out a hand to take the beverage.

Perkins raised an eyebrow. “You will drink it anyway?”

Jates took a slurp from the scalding hot mug. “Ah,” he smacked his lips. “I have not enjoyed real suhkra since I left home. My compliments to the Achakai, damn them to hell.”

Perkins sipped her coffee, amused. “You are not concerned about poison?”

“No. If the Achakai aimed to kill me, the entire galaxy would be disappointed that the master assassins of Kristang society had aimed so low.”

“They wouldn’t necessarily be targeting you,” she noted.

He took another loud slurp, a sign in his culture that he appreciated the delicious beverage. “I also trust that the Achakai have significant incentive not to piss you off, Colonel.”

That made her laugh. “I think you overestimate their view of my future usefulness to them.”

“I do not,” he shifted in his seat. “That is part of what I am charged to discuss with you. The Achakai recently approached my people.”

“The assassins want to work for the Verd-kris?” She asked, astonished. “I did not see that coming,” she added under her breath.

“Apparently, you inspired the Achakai leadership to, I believe your expression is, ‘think outside the box’. Colonel, you are very much admired in their leadership. They see you as uniquely devious and ruthless.”

“I am,” she paused, setting the coffee mug down on the desk. “Not sure how I should think about that.”

“It is intended as a compliment.”

“By disgraced, amoral mercenaries, who worked for whoever could pay the highest fee.”

“They are no longer mercenaries. Nor a disgraced people. Thanks to you.”

“What do they want?”

“They want to have options.”

“Ohhh,” she understood, and picked up the coffee, taking a sip. “Playing both sides against each other.” Since taking their own planet, with a lot of help from the Alien Legion, the Achakai had been extremely busy. The initial reports that the despised mercenaries now had a world of their own, and were claiming status as a legitimate clan, shocked Kristang society. While the general public’s reaction was immediate and universal outrage, leaders of the clans allowed themselves to indulge in unproductive outrage for only a few moments, before trying to determine how they could take advantage of the wholly unexpected circumstances. Instead of banding together to stomp out the mercenary rebellion, the major clans sent emissaries to the Achakai, offering to recognize the assassins as a clan in exchange for assistance that might make the difference between victory and defeat in the vicious civil war. The only thing worse than the idea of negotiating with disgraced mercenaries, was the idea of losing the war. In the first scenario, they might suffer the loss of their self-esteem. In the second scenario, they might suffer the loss of their heads.

A deal was reached, first with a single major clan. Then, to blunt the impact of being late to the party, the other major clans quickly offered to recognize the legitimacy of the Achakai, and to allow Achakai citizens within their territory to leave to join their fellows on their new homeworld. All the Achakai had to do in return was nothing. To not take sides in the civil war, or offer their services as assassins and mercenary troops as before, based on cold hard cash rather than allegiance to any partner based on treaty obligations.

Initial jubilation, at having achieved all they had hoped for, turned sour for the Achakai.

No one offered to hire them.

The major clans were not stupid.

Through a secret agreement, they had agreed to crush the disgraced ones, not through force of arms, but through neglect. With a population increasing with each incoming starship, resources spread dangerously thin, and their bank accounts draining at an alarming rate, the Achakai leadership was growing anxious. They had been prepared for a desperate fight, even to the last man. They had been prepared to throw the new clan’s entire might behind whatever major clan offered the best deal.

They had not been prepared for the whole of Kristang society to do nothing.

Mercenaries could benefit, regardless of which side they supported in a war. They could not benefit from sitting on the sidelines.

Emily Perkins knew the Achakai were faced with a dilemma, and she had wondered what they intended to do about it, but she didn’t actually care. The assassin’s guild had been useful to her, to the Alien Legion, to humanity. Less useful than she hoped, her intention in offering to help the Achakai take a homeworld from the Wurgalan had been to prolong the Kristang civil war. With the Achakai suddenly playing no part in that conflict, she had been disappointed.

Now, she was interested again. “What are the Achakai proposing?”

“Only their support.”

“For what?”

“Support for the Verd-kris taking another world from the Kristang, this time a more ambitious target,” he leaned forward, set his tablet on the desk, and activated it.

“No,” she leaned back in her chair.

He froze. “You, haven’t seen the proposal.”

That was not true. She had seen the outline of the latest joint mission the Verd-kris leaders were proposing. The message to Jates had been picked up from a relay station by Valkyrie on the way to Jaguar base, and the fact that it was marked as a personal communication for the surjet had not stopped Skippy from reading the file, and flagging it for Bishop’s attention. As a courtesy, Bishop had given Perkins a heads up shortly after Valkyrie arrived in orbit.

That she knew which Kristang world the Verds wanted to invade next hardly mattered. It did not even matter that the world was poorly defended, crippled by a war that had raged among the six clans who claimed that rock. It did not matter that it was an easy target, with a poverty-stricken population close to starvation, and close to open rebellion against the oppressive warrior caste of all clans. The answer was still going to be a firm ‘NO’, she knew that without needing to kick the question up the chain of command.

“I don’t need to see it. Surjet, at the moment, we are not even pursuing our own initiatives. The presence of a Sentinel at Earth has caused the United Nations to pause all offensive operations, pending a strategy review.”

He considered the information for a moment. “We are only requesting transport, and logistics support, not human boots on the ground,” he tapped the tablet’s display. “The Legion would only be-”

“Surjet,” she stopped him with a hand in the air. “The type of support being requested does not matter. The timing is simply bad. Also,” she nudged her own tablet. “It doesn’t help that Valkyrie brought an update on your occupation of Globakus.”

Jates shifted in his chair, an almost imperceptible display of discomfort. “Globakus is largely peaceful, there have been no-”

“Excuse me, but that is bullshit. There has been no real progress since we pulled our boots off the ground. Surjet, I respect you, therefore I feel it is necessary for us to speak plainly and truthfully.”

“Agreed.”

“The reports I have seen, that my chain of command has seen, is that Globakus is largely pacified. There have been no significant incidents of violence, both against your occupation force, and between the clans there.”

“That is progress,” he insisted.

“No, it is not. Progress has to be measured against your objectives. The Verd-kris did not invade that world to prevent the inhabitants from killing each other. You didn’t land there to stop a threat to your people. Your leadership chose Globakus as a demonstration site for an experiment; to test whether Verd culture could offer an attractive alternative to the domination of the warrior caste. In that regard, as measured against the stated objectives of the mission, the effort has been a complete failure. Yes, in areas directly controlled and managed by your people, the warrior caste is unable to enforce their will on the population. The merchants and other castes are fumbling their way to power-sharing arrangements.”

“That is progress.”

“That is the illusion of progress. Look at what happens when your occupation authorities declare a province to be stabilized. The instant your troops pull out, the situation goes right back to the way it was. The local warrior caste reasserts control by killing anyone who opposes them. The merchants don’t resist because their sons are offered elevation to warriors, if they prove themselves through eliminating any opposition. It is as if your people were never there, except a lot more people die in the process.”

“That is a temporary setback. The-”

“Surjet, no it is not. This has all happened before, and it will happen again. I have seen it, lived through it, myself. Before Columbus Day, the United States military was involved in suppressing a violent fundamentalist movement in a country called ‘Nigeria’, and I served there. We forced the insurgents to retreat into the bush, and we set up power generation systems, dug wells to provide clean water, built schools to educate children, especially girls. It all looked like progress. The day after our ground troops moved on to another area, the insurgents returned, and the local government army ran away. Power lines were pulled down, schools were burned, and the wells were seized by the insurgents. Nothing changed.”

“That,” he looked away for a moment. “Must have been frustrating.”

“It was, if you believed our objective was to effect change. I knew better. Our real mission there was just to keep a lid on the violence, and we succeeded,” she jabbed a finger on the desk. “I know we made a difference, because I saw what happened when we were no longer there. Jates, Globakus is no different. Your occupation force will have to remain there for generations, maybe centuries, before you even begin to change the underlying culture. If you do actually start to make progress, the violence will be worse before it gets better, because those who benefit from the old system will resist you. Are your people willing to stay on Globakus, maintain and support a large occupation force, and take casualties decade after decade, in the hope that you might someday see real change? That’s what it will take. Do your people have the will to do that?”

“Yes. We have always known the struggle to restore our culture will take at least as long as it took for the Thuranin,” his mouth moved like he was about to spit, “to pervert their society for their own benefit. Millennia, if necessary.”

She nodded to show sympathy, yet she was skeptical. The Verd-kris were true believers, fanatical about restoring their culture across all of Kristang society. They would pay any price to achieve the goal that sustained their own society throughout the long centuries of benign subjugation by the Ruhar.

She also knew that was true now. Until the UN Navy freed two Verd-kris worlds from Ruhar control, the Verds had little to lose, and no need or ability to prove they would follow through on their ambitions. But in a few years, she expected the Verds to start thinking about what they wanted their own society to become, and question whether the enormous effort of fighting to reform Kristang culture was worth the expense, in both money and lives. The Verd military would be steadfast in their commitment far longer than the civilians would, but even that commitment would be tested. When decade after decade dragged on, with the military strained by deployment after deployment, and knowing civilian society barely remembered that fighting was still happening on worlds far away, perhaps even the enthusiasm of the armed forces would falter. Eventually, the Verd-kris might shrug and take an attitude of fuck ‘em toward their Kristang cousins.

If she were a Jeraptha, she would bet on that happening. “Surjet, your people may pursue your goals. But not with the Legion’s assistance. Not now.”

“When?” He asked, stone-faced. Even more stone-faced than usual.

“I don’t know. No one does. People on Earth are,” she sighed. “Tired of this war.”

“Your people have not been in this war.”

“The Kristang occupation ravaged our economy, our environment, and killed hundreds of thousands of my people. My homeworld nearly froze, because of a direct attack by the Maxohlx. We have been subjected to orbital bombardment multiple times. The people of Earth have not been active in this war for long, but they have suffered enormously. They are tired of being dragged into a war we were not even aware of, until starships appeared in our sky. People on my homeworld are questioning what we will get from continuing to engage with the galaxy beyond our star system, by continuing to fight this war.”

“You agree with them?”

“I think that as circumstances change, our strategy should adjust accordingly. A Sentinel now protects Earth. We have less need for allies to assist in our defense. Our history tells us to be wary of mutual defense treaties that entangle us in the affairs of others.”

“That is it, then?” He allowed his anger to show just for a moment, his training and discipline restoring his impassive demeanor just as quickly. “Your people will no longer fight alongside mine?”

“For now, that is correct,” she bit her lip. After what Jates had been through with the Mavericks, his loyal service for years, it felt like a betrayal to deny his request. “This is not my decision, you understand?”

“I do,” he replied, looking away.

“Surjet, is this going to be a problem?”

“No,” he answered automatically, but his posture was stiff, the body language unmistakable. “I have my orders, to support your team, under your command.”

“For now. Jates, I have enjoyed working with you. It has been an honor. I hope we will serve together, in some capacity, for the benefit of both our peoples.”

“I hope so also,” he said. Then added, “So far, the Verd-kris have fought and died mostly to benefit your people.”

She sighed. Perhaps Jates was going to be a problem after all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

That evening, in the quarters they shared, Emily Perkins had her feet up on a desk, relaxing, enjoying a glass of wine and reading a book while she waited for Dave Czajka to arrive. Reading an actual book, because she wanted to, because she enjoyed it, not a report for work, not a history of battles or conflicts. She was reading a book, something normal people did. Something she too rarely had time for in recent years.

“Hey,” Dave said as he walked in. “Is that for me?” he pointed to the empty second wine glass.

“If you like,” she held up the bottle and started to pour, but stopped when he kissed her, and the kiss lingered. “Later,” she put a hand on his chest. “After,” she wrinkled her nose. “You take a shower.”

“Aaaah,” he sat down heavily in a chair, and took a gulp of wine. “Today was tough, a ten-mile ruck up in the hills. Without powered armor. I noticed Jates didn’t drag his sorry ass with us.”

“He requested a meeting with me.”

“Oh?” Dave swirled the wine in the glass, wishing he had a cold beer instead.

“The Verd-kris want to engage us for another op, this time with the Achakai.”

“The Verds and the ninjas? Working together?” he snorted. “This I have to hear. What’s the target?”

“It doesn’t matter. Command called a halt to all offensive initiatives.”

“Yeah, but, if we get the right offer?”

“We will probably provide some level of support,” she agreed. “I’m concerned that the Verds will look around for a better offer.”

“Why? We are one of the supreme powers in the galaxy now, maybe the supreme power. We have a Sentinel. The Verds won’t find a better partner.”

“Power is only important if you are willing to use it,” she shook her head. “If we won’t help the Verds achieve their goals, it doesn’t matter that we have a Sentinel, or an Elder AI, or a Navy. I’d like you to pay extra attention to Jates for me.”

He paused, the wine glass halfway to his lips. Setting the glass down on a side table, he leaned forward in the chair. “Em, are you asking me to spy on him?”

“Just watch his attitude.”

“You mean spy on him. With all the shit we’ve been through with the guy? I’m his friend, I don’t-”

“Dave, this is to protect him, Prevent him from acting, if he is thinking of doing something stupid. I’m asking you, because you are friends.”

“You’re really that worried about him?”

“I have served with him also, remember? I don’t want political bullshit to cause a break in a valuable relationship. Especially since I expect this new isolationist posture won’t last. He has to be disappointed. His orders to serve with us are still in effect, that doesn’t mean he will have the same level of enthusiasm for the job as he once did.”

“We would all appreciate him having less enthusiasm sometimes,” Dave reached down to untie his boots, to relieve his aching feet. “OK, I know what you mean. I’ll watch for signs of extra grumpiness. Not that I could tell,” he muttered to himself. “Shower time.”

Margaret wanted to hear details about Roscoe from me directly, and I agreed to give her a personal briefing. A very personal briefing, if you know what I mean.

“Roscoe is under UNEF control now?” She asked after we had, uh, talked about other things.

“No.”

She lifted her head off my chest. “No? Then-”

Before explaining, I tilted my head back on the pillow to look at the ceiling, so she couldn’t see my eyes and know I was lying. Damn it, I especially hated lying to her, but I had to. Yes, she is my girlfriend, the most important person in the world to me. She is also serving in another unit, and she does not have a need to know. Margaret would be the first person to insist I not treat her any different because we have a relationship. Emily Perkins didn’t need to know. Fireball Reed didn’t need to know, and she was my chief pilot. I couldn’t make exceptions for Gunnery Sergeant Adams, even though I desperately needed someone to talk to about it. “No. Roscoe is fully automated. Skippy programmed it to defend Earth against any potential threat. Cutting UNEF Command out of the loop isn’t just for efficiency, it’s for safety. If any group of monkeys dirtside had control over an unspeakable horror hanging over everyone’s heads, they might be tempted to use it to settle domestic issues. Even if they didn’t, other groups would fear they could do it, and that’s not good for anyone. Just one small group of Chinese officers feared the other UNEF nations could cut them out of sharing the benefits of trade with the Maxohlx, and you know what happened because of that.”

“UNEF wouldn’t do that.”

“Honey, that’s not the point. We can’t be united unless everyone feels like they’re part of the team. We forgot that, and the kitties exploited our fears. They manipulated the Chinese last time; they could pick another target in the future. UNEF is a political entity. Putting the power of a Sentinel in their control is just asking for trouble.”

“Mmm,” she said, and she shook like she was laughing.

I lifted my head. “What’s so funny?”

“You. When did you start using fancy words like ‘political entity’?”

“Shit,” I had to laugh. “I know. How did that happen?”

“Do you remember the days when we didn’t have to consider politics?”

“That seems like a lifetime ago.”

“We’re getting old, Joe.”

“Hey,” I tugged on her chin to look her in the eye. “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.”

“I heard that,” she kissed me. “The truth is, we’re not the dumb kids we were when we met. Do you ever think about that? We were so young back then.”

“It seems impossible. Hey,” I lifted the pillow and propped myself up. “Speaking of time moving forward, I have news for you.”

“What?”

“As of tomorrow, you will be Master Sergeant Adams.”

She stiffened, and for a moment I feared the news was unwelcomed. In her fitness reports, she had indicated she preferred the master sergeant career track, although the Marine Corps leadership had been hinting they wanted her to pursue being a command advisor as a first sergeant. For a while, there had been talk of offering her a commission, until she shut that shit down real quick.

“Are you OK, honey?” I asked, confused. “I thought you wanted-”

“I do! Master Sergeant, damn! I never thought that would happen.”

“Then what-”

“My parents won’t be at the promotion ceremony.”

“Uh, I could arrange a flight to Earth for-”

“Do not do that,” she jabbed my chest with a fingernail, harder than she probably intended to. “I am not pulling rank as the,” she spat out the phrase, “general’s girlfriend.”

“If you let me finish, I was going to say I wouldn’t do that, because you’re needed here. We have a big op coming up, including the Mavericks. Perkins will need you with her team.”

She relaxed. “What’s the op?”

“I need to read in Perkins first. Some of the details are still being hammered out.”

“Some?” She laughed.

“You know our SOP.”

“The Pirates’ Standard Operating Procedure is to make up a plan as you go along.”

“Hopefully we’re past that now. Seriously. It’s too complicated to move past the start line without having every step planned out, and everyone knowing their part.”

“How complicated?”

“The Renegade mission, where we had to make the enemy think they had done a recon of Earth and found nothing interesting, and there was also nothing suspicious about the fact that their recon ships never made it home?” I rarely mentioned that mission to her, because she had spent the duration on Earth, while the Merry Band of Pirates once again saved the world with a totally brilliant plan. Until Emily freakin’ Perkins screwed the whole thing up for everyone. Not that I’m still bitter about it. “That mission was like putting together a two-piece jigsaw set, compared to what we need to do next.”

“You’re serious?”

“Wish I wasn’t.”

“Holy shit, Joe. More complicated than capturing a Sentinel?”

“Yeah. Doing that wasn’t actually part of the plan, you know?”

“The Universe gave you a break? Maybe it doesn’t hate you so much.”

“Nah, it’s just waiting to really smack me on the head. Hey,” I glanced at my zPhone on the bedside table. “I’ve got a couple hours until I meet with General Ross, would you like to-” My fingertips traced down the back of her arm.

“We already did that,” she laughed.

“We did it once,” I noted.

“How about, to celebrate my promotion, we go out? In public, together? You know, like normal people do?”

I’m not going to lie I was a bit disappointed. I also wanted her to be happy. “Whatever you like. I mean it.”

“Great! There is a new bakery here, that has donuts just like in my hometown.”

“You want donuts?”

“You don’t?”

“Well, hell, I do now.”

On the walk to the bakery, she talked nonstop about how incredible the donut creations were, until I had built up expectations that couldn’t possibly be satisfied. Listening to her, I understood her craving for those donuts was at least partly homesickness, she saw the donuts as a bit of nostalgia for a faraway place. And a faraway time, her life before Columbus Day.

As soon as we walked into the bakery, I knew I was in trouble. Not trouble like, I was going to eat a dozen donuts and gain fifty pounds. Trouble like, I wasn’t going to enjoy the treats she thought were incredible. They were just too fancy, too sweet. Instead of good honest glazed, or crullers, or jelly-filled powdered sugar-coated regular donuts like I’m used to, these donuts were, weird. All covered under an inch of way-too-sweet icing, with sprinkles, and crumbles of candied bacon, and dried fruit, and what could have been either pieces of hard candy or crack cocaine for all I knew. What I did know is, those donuts would be a good part of a starter pack, if you ever aspired to Type 2 diabetes.

We each took two donuts outside to sit on a bench, because Margaret loves people watching. “Mmmm, oh, so good,” she said with a mouthful of donut.

“Yeah,” I lied, taking a small bite of the first donut, while tearing off a larger piece and dropping it under the bench behind me. Just licking my fingers would have sent me into a sugar coma.

“Aren’t these the best?”

I mumbled something, that apparently wasn’t good enough for her. Darn it, she knew me too well.

“You,” she turned to look at me, frosting around her mouth, and a tiny blob of pink frosting on the tip of her nose. “Don’t like them?”

“If I said these are Uh-MEH-zing, would you hate me?”

She gasped in mock horror. “You are a monster.”

“Sorry. These are too sweet for me.”

She stared at me in disbelief. “You eat Fluff, right out of the jar.”

“That’s different.”

“How? That is pure sugar.”

“Fluff is pure goodness. It’s goodness I grew up with,” I added.

“Hmmf.” Plucking the second donut from my lap, she said, “More donuts for me.”

“Sorry.”

She held my hand. “We don’t have to like everything the same.”

“I know, it’s just-”

“Like, I am never going to like brown bread in a can.”

“Hey, that is-”

“Or that ‘coffee milk’ stuff,” she stuck out her tongue like she was gagging.

I should explain that coffee milk is a syrup you squeeze into cold milk, like chocolate syrup. It is so good, even people in most parts of New England have never heard of it. “Coffee milk is kind of a family thing,” I admitted.

“What about Moxie?”

“OK, yeah, that is an acquired taste.” Moxie is a soda that was last popular sometime in the 20s. The 1920s. It still hung on, mostly out of stubbornness. I drank it occasionally because it reminded me of home. And because Simms had two cases of the stuff brought aboard, as a treat for me. I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I drank a bottle once in a while whether I wanted to or not. “Listen, if we are talking about weird foods, what about that ‘divinity’ stuff?”

She paused in the middle of taking a bite. “Honey, the last thing I want is to fight over a donut.”

“How about we eat something we can both agree on?”

“Tacos?”

“You know it.”

“Hey,” the door to Margaret’s quarters was cracked open, so I just rapped on the door as I slowly pushed it open. “Anyone home?”

Her laptop was open, showing what looked like a very stiff photo of her, wearing loose-fitting workout clothes. “Whatcha doing here?”

She cringed and slapped the laptop closed. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I swung the thing open. “Come on.”

“If you must know-”

“I really do. I mean, unless-”

“It’s just, I was trying on dresses for the ball.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Admiral Chatterji had announced a ball, to celebrate the news that Earth was now protected by an invincible Sentinel. The event would actually be a series of parties, there was no one venue at Jaguar base large enough to accommodate all the personnel at the same time. Multiple parties meant that the admiral, and some of the senior staff, unfortunately including me, were expected to go from one venue to another, making appearances like jackass celebrities. At least I wouldn’t be required to make a speech, although Simms informed me I had better have a speech ready anyway, in case the crowd spontaneously demanded that I say something. When I heard that, I feared Chatterji would tell some sergeant major it would be a good thing if the crowd cheered for me to speak. To preempt me having to make a fool of myself on multiple occasions in one night, I had a fool-proof plan: I would get hammered on tequila shots early, and pass out across a row of folding chairs.

Unfortunately, Simms reminded me that Margaret most likely expected to attend the parties with me. Like, as my date for the evening. Not only expected to be my date, she very likely was looking forward to the evening. And therefore, I could not do any jackass thing like downing a half-dozen tequila shots. I also could not merely avoid being a jackass, I had to be fun, and charming, and gracious, and ensure that Margaret thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

My request for Skippy to trigger Valkyrie’s self-destruct system was denied.

Crap.

To make the evening even more fun, Chatterji declared the parties were not a military event, so civilian clothes were expected. He also was making the fabricators aboard the Milo available to make clothing for everyone, those fabricators had just been brought back online and needed to crank out simple test articles anyway. Again, I had a plan to wear a Hawaiian shirt to the party but NO, that was not acceptable. My attempts to protest were undermined, when Simms informed me Smythe was having a nice suit made for himself, and he had a date for the party. One of the civilian contractors would be accompanying him to the ball.

Damn it.

Some part of me knew I should show an interest in whatever dresses Margaret was considering. “Can I see?” I pointed to the laptop.

Her reaction told me I had said the right thing. She clicked through one image after another, it was a program that showed what each dress would look like on her, that’s why the photo of her was so stiff. For my part, I made the appropriate noises, oohing and ahhing, and trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about. All I know is, any of the dresses would have looked great on her.

“Which one do you like best?” She asked.

She must have thought I am stupid; no way was I going to answer that question. I didn’t need Admiral Akbar to tell me it was a trap. “Uh, it’s hard to tell from that image. This blue dress is nice. Can the image, you know, move?”

“I don’t know,” she clicked around the controls. “Skippy, can you-”

The image changed to an avatar of Margaret, walking, twirling around, even dancing in the selected dress. “Like this?” Skippy asked.

“Yes, but I do not dance like that,” she frowned. “Stop it.”

“Okey dokey. How about this?”

It was Margaret’s avatar, walking forward, in the same blue dress, but she was walking down the aisle. In a church. Holding a bouquet of flowers.

Like, a bride at a wedding.

“OK, that is not a wedding dress,” I said, exhausting my knowledge of the subject.

“I know that, dumdum,” Skippy snapped. “Margaret, don’t all women dream about their wedding day?”

“No,” she answered. “Women do want to look pretty, though.”

“Here, I did design a wedding dress for you,” he said, pleased with himself.

“Uh, that dress is,” I looked at Margaret to see her reaction, “bright red, Skippy.”

“Like a fire engine!” He was impressively clueless.

Margaret planted fists on her hips and leaned toward Skippy, so her nose was inches from his avatar. “Is that color supposed to be some comment about me?”

“Um, no, of course, um, hey,” he sputtered. “How about something off-white, like, um, pink?” The wedding dress changed color again and added a ridiculous veil. “Pink is halfway between pure white and bright red, right?”

She jabbed a finger into his avatar’s chest. “You had better choose your next words very carefully.”

“Joe,” his voice was a squeak. “Help!”

“No way,” I backed out of the room, holding up my hands. “You got yourself into this mess, beer can.”

“Dude!” He pleaded.

Out in the hallway, I closed the door behind me, whistling to drown out the raised voices behind me. Yes, I threw Skippy under the bus, but he deserved it.  Also, it got me out of having to tell Margaret which dress was my favorite.

The next morning, I took the opportunity to go running without needing to use a treadmill. The time zone difference between the shipboard time on Valkyrie, and local time at Club Skippy, meant I was awake extra early. Pulling on running shoes, I headed out as dawn was breaking, following a trail that led up into the hills to the east. It felt great to be running through woods and meadows, rather than the all-too-familiar sight of Valkyrie’s gym. Also, instead of the thump-thump-thump of my feet pounding on the deck of a treadmill, I heard the sounds of nature. Birds singing to greet the sunrise. The calls of strange animals, unseen in the forest. Damn, I needed to get off the ship more often.

Part of the reason I went out alone is I needed to clear my head, get my thoughts together. The Merry Band of Pirates had faced impossible odds before, and always triumphed. But every time, we had an ace up our sleeves: the unique abilities of Skippy the Magnificent. Even when he needed filthy monkeys to show him how to use those abilities, even when he didn’t realize he could do something awesome until a monkey asked a stupid question, Skippy has been our secret weapon. Even after his existence was revealed to the galaxy, he was still sort of a secret weapon, because our enemies didn’t know what he could and could not do.

The threat from another Elder AI was a completely different situation, a much greater threat. Skippy not only might have met his match, the other AI could have tricks that Skippy couldn’t do. Or, the other AI might simply be stronger, if the war had not damaged it as badly as Skippy apparently was.

There were just too many unknowns. Starting with, we didn’t know whether there was just one hostile AI out there, or many of them. We didn’t know where it, or they, were. We didn’t know what it, or they, had been doing, other than sending a signal to wake up Sentinels.

We pretty much didn’t know anything.

That happy thought was nagging me as I began climbing the trail up a steep hill, placing my feet carefully to avoid rocks, tree roots and patches of mud that would cause me to trip and bash into the trees that lined the trail. Halfway to the summit, just as I’d pumped myself up not to stop until I reached the top even though my lungs were burning, Skippy demonstrated another of his Magnificent skills: awesomely bad timing.

“Joe!” He shouted into my earpiece. “JoeJoeJoeJoe-”

“Damn it!” I slapped a tree branch out of the way and halted, gasping for breath. “What?!”

“We got a problem.”

“Can it,” I tried to catch my breath, “wait ‘til I get to the top?”

“No. This is a major problem.”

“Shit.” I leaned against a tree to steady my wobbly legs. “OK. First, how can you just have learned about another freakin’ problem? We are cut off from the galaxy here, that’s the whole point of this forward operating base.”

“I just learned about the problem, because the problem is here. I was talking with Bilby about Surjet Jates, and-”

“Listen, Skippy, I know Jates is a bit rough around the edges, and the two of you did not get along right from the start-”

“Ugh. I am not talking about someone being rude to me, you numbskull, this is-”

“He is good at his job, Skippy, don’t-”

“This isn’t about competence, you jackass. The problem is loyalty.”

“Oh, shit. I’m gonna be quiet, while you explain the problem.”

Skippy was right to tell me about the problem immediately, even though his timing sucked. I never did get to the top of that hill, darn it, instead I turned around and slowly jogged back to the base. Slowly, taking a roundabout route along the shore of a pond because I needed time to think. By the time I walked back through the gate, I had not figured out how to deal with the problem, but I did know that being my usual Cowboy Joe the Lone Ranger was not going to work. I needed help. So, I pinged Smythe to meet me that afternoon, pulling him away from an exercise with the Australian STAR team. Then I called Simms, who was still aboard Valkyrie. “XO, could you come down here? I want to bounce some ideas off you.”

Her exasperation was evident in her tone. “Sir, we’re getting ready to jump away in less than three hours.”

“I know.” Our mighty battlecruiser was scheduled to take on fuel at the star system’s gas station, a giant gas planet, and it would be a test of the Navy’s new refueling procedures. “Give Reed the conn, let her handle it. Her perspective as a pilot will be useful.”

She didn’t reply immediately. Or she bit off whatever she was going to say. I could have made my request an order, we both knew that. She also knew I shouldn’t need to do that; I had stated I wanted her to do something; she had to trust I wasn’t wasting her time. “The ready bird is backing up the Coast Guard on SAR watch, so it will take half an hour to get another dropship prepped.”

“There’s no rush, I’m planning to meet Smythe around 1600. What, uh, are the Coasties doing up there?” The United States Coast Guard was responsible for traffic control and search and rescue in orbit at Jaguar base. If Valkyrie’s ready bird had to stand by as backup, the Coasties must have more action than they could handle.

“The Legion assault landing exercise is underway,” she reminded me. “It has all the Coast Guard assets tied up right now.”

“Oh, yeah.” In the morning briefing in my email, there had been a note about a large-scale practice assault drop on the other side of the planet. I hadn’t paid much attention to what the Legion and the UN Navy had going on at Jaguar, because they weren’t my responsibility. Mentally, I kicked myself for poor situational awareness. Damn, just a few years ago, that wouldn’t have happened.

Just a few years ago, I had often gotten bogged down too often in micromanaging details that someone else should have handled. So, I guess I should give myself a break.

“May I ask what you want to talk about, Sir?” Simms always liked to be prepared, a trait that made her an excellent executive officer, especially for me.

“I’m still getting my thoughts together,” I told her. “It will be you, me, Smythe and Perkins.”

“Ah. That kind of meeting.”

“Right. One more thing. Bring Skippy down with you.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. His awesomeness is not needed for a simple refueling exercise, and I want him in the conversation. Besides, it will be good for him to get away from the ship.”

“Good for who, Sir?”

“Valkyrie’s crew.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“Great. Ping me when you’ve got boots dirtside.”

Skippy called me immediately. “Joe?! You want me to come down there? Why?”

“So we can talk about this latest problem you dumped in my lap.”

“Oh. Sure. You have a plan to deal with it?”

“Sort of. I’m working out the details.”

“Like what?”

“Like, we will talk about it when you’re down here.”

“Ugh. Can you give me a hint?”

“No.”

“Pleeeease?”

“I said no.”

“Ugh.”

My next call was to Emily Perkins. “What is it, General?” She asked. In the background, I could hear people talking in a low murmur. “We’re in the middle of the landing exercise.”

“I know. Are you upstairs, or at Legion HQ?”

“Headquarters,” her voice was terse, trying to hint that she was busy. And that, if I had read that morning’s summary, I would know she was running the exercise from the ground.

“I need to meet with you at 1600.”

“General, the-”

“Perkins, I know what you’re going to say, and I wouldn’t make the request unless it was important.”

“Sir, this exercise is the first full-scale-”

“I know what it is,” I was getting terse also. “You have a staff to handle monitoring the exercise. Hell, simulate an enemy strike on your HQ and let the field assets figure it out, that will tell you who knows their shit and who doesn’t. I’ll have a dropship pick you up at 1530.”

There was just a slight hesitation, while she decided if arguing with me was worth the effort. Technically, she knew I was not in her chain of command. She also knew that thousands of lightyears from Earth, technicalities didn’t mean shit. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can talk in private.”

“Very well,” she said, in a way that made ‘very well’ sound like the opposite.

“Outstanding. Hey, is uh, Surjet Jates there with you?”

“No. He’s in an assault dropship, he should be halfway to dirtside by now. Why?”

“No reason. Talk to you soon.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

My dropship, with me at the controls and an Italian copilot, landed at a mountain lake in the middle of a remote area that the STARs sometimes used for training. The place was empty that day. After setting the ship down, I walked to the lake shore with my three co-conspirators, while the copilot waited inside the Panther.

Smythe picked up a flat stone and skipped it expertly across the placid surface of the lake, I didn’t try to match his expertise. Simms took Skippy out of a backpack, and set the beer can on a flat rock. People using the area for training had set up a fire pit, with logs cut in half as benches. There was even a big stack of firewood, I figured the Good Idea Fairy had visited, inspiring some senior NCO to order a work detail to cut, split and stack enough wood for a dozen bonfires. That was convenient for me, I started piling up wood in the fire pit and gathered kindling to make a fire. Smythe picked up a handful of dried grass and leaves to get the fire started. “I assume we will be here a while, Sir?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “We have a lot to talk about. Skippy has new info; we need to adjust the plan in a major way. Uh,” I snapped my fingers. “Perkins, I need to read you in on something, that UNEF Command doesn’t know about. Shouldn’t, can’t, know about.”

“Sir?” That remark came from Perkins, but I also got looks of alarm from Simms and Smythe. We had so many secrets, the two of them had to be trying to guess which one I was about to reveal.

“The story about the Maxohlx Red Section sending a signal to wake up Sentinels is just that, a cover story,” I explained, and both Smythe and Simms relaxed a bit. That secret was a lot less dangerous than the fact that Roscoe was not, by itself, capable of defending Earth. “The truth is, there was a signal, but it was sent by an Elder AI that is trying to fulfill its original programming, by wiping out all intelligent life in the galaxy.”

Perkins didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to. Her mouth formed a silent ‘Oh shit’, and she looked to Simms, who gave a shrug.

“The cover story is useful for keeping the Maxohlx off balance,” Valkyrie’s XO said. “And hopefully off our backs for a while.”

“The entire galaxy already knows the Maxohlx planned to detonate Elder weapons to wake up Sentinels, to kill everyone else,” Perkins noted. “You think this cover story somehow makes them look worse?”

“It makes them look more dangerous,” Smythe explained. “Setting off Elder weapons is a crude, desperate act, that the Maxohlx would only do if they had a way for some part of their population to ride out the Sentinel response. The ability to selectively wake up Sentinels is a weapon. No one wants the Maxohlx to possess that ability.”

“General?” Perkins raised an eyebrow. “Clearly, you have discussed all this. Why am I here?”

“Because I need your devious mind,” I stepped back away from the smoke as the fire crackled to life. “I should have said your inventive mind. Also, this directly affects your team. One member of your team in particular.”

She nodded. “You have my attention.”

Without PowerPoint slides or even a whiteboard, I tried to explain the half-baked and overly-complicated plan that I had cooked up. Ironically, the plan finally clicked together for me, only after Skippy told me we had a major problem that could make our job even more difficult. A loyalty problem. “OK,” I said as I cracked open a cold beer. “Hear me out. To stop this hostile AI,” I looked at Perkins. “We’re calling it ‘Opie’, by the way, don’t ask. To stop it, we have to-”

“Joe!” Skippy’s avatar appeared, sitting on a log near the campfire, his little legs dangling, not reaching the ground. “I told you, we don’t know for certain where that AI is. We have a good guess but, no way to confirm whether it’s there or not.”

“No, you don’t have a good way to find it.”

“Um, that’s what I said. Without me, you have no chance to-”

“We don’t need to find it,” I explained.

“We don’t?” Skippy blinked slowly. “Um, unless I missed something, it-”

“We’re going to let Opie lead us right to it.”

“Oooh,” Simms gasped.

“What?” Skippy stared at me. “Why would it- How do you plan to get it to-”

“Well, heh heh,” I threw his favorite line back at him. “You are very much not going to like this.”

“Ohhh, shit.”

As the day dragged on, I pulled fixings for dinner out of a cooler. Steaks, potatoes for baking, and because Simms was there, enough spinach salad for everyone. Including food for my copilot Agnelli, who was stuck with the Panther. When dinner was over, and we sat around the fire eating chocolate cake, the five of us agreed we had a plan.

Most of a plan. While Skippy very much did not like the plan, he grudgingly agreed it could work, and he did not see a realistic alternative. Also, it was better than the plan we had before, which was no plan at all.

“What do you think, Skippy?” I asked.

“I think, we are totally Bishop-ing this one.”

“Like, how?” I knew that my name had become military slang for doing something in the most complicated way possible, even if later no one could figure out an easier way to achieve the objective.

“Like,” his avatar shook its head slowly. “There are a lot of moving parts, and they all have to come together at the right time, in the right sequence, or the whole scheme falls apart.”

“Right, but that’s what makes it cool,” I gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.

“Ugh.”

“I share the beer can’s concern,” Smythe said, then shrugged. “However, it is nothing we haven’t done before. Just more of it, and all in one operation.”

“That’s the spirit! All right, if we’re all agreed we should move forward with this plan, I have two questions. First, Skippy, can you do your part?”

“Since I have never done this particular bit of nonsense before, I can only give it a ‘Shmaybe’.”

“Come on,” I frowned. “Can you do it, yes or no?”

“OK, I can give it a gold-plated Shmaybe. But,” he shook a finger at me. “Only because of my extreme awesomeness.”

“Of course. The last piece of the puzzle, then, is for Perkins. Surjet Jates is on your team. Can you rely on him?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You are certain of that?” I pressed her for confirmation. “The Verds haven’t gotten what they want from us, they could be shopping around for a better deal.”

“Jates will do his job.”

“Good,” I was not fully convinced. “If you have any doubts, you-”

“General Bishop,” she looked me straight in the eye. “I can handle Jates.”

It was her call. I had to either trust her, or find someone else to lead that part of the operation. Simms constantly reminded me to trust my people. Perkins had earned my trust; she had accomplished miracles without the help of a magical beer can.

“All right.”

“One issue,” Perkins raised an eyebrow. “I need to read in General Ross, get his approval.”

“No, you don’t,” Simms said before I could speak.

“I don’t?” Perkins frowned. She didn’t like surprises any more than I did.

“What Simms means,” I explained, “is that Company ‘A’ of the 1st Battalion, 125th Spaceborne Brigade, is being transferred under the Special Mission Group. For the duration of this mission,” I added. What it meant was, the Mavericks were now under my command. Though she was a full colonel, Emily Perkins really only had the 1st Battalion assigned to her, a billet that normally rated a lieutenant colonel. Company ‘A’ was her headquarters unit, that included Jates, Jesse, Shauna, plus Dave as a support contractor. The logic behind General Ross giving Perkins only a battalion, was that she was usually very busy doing all kinds of sneaky extracurricular nonsense, and her staff could handle the administrative aspects of leading six companies of spaceborne troops.

That was the official story. My opinion was that Ross didn’t want Perkins to have full authority over a larger unit, so he could keep her on a tight leash.

That hadn’t worked so well for him in the past, but Ross was an optimistic guy.

Perkins actually did not seem surprised by the announcement. “This is official?”

“Yes,” Simms answered the question for me. My XO probably sensed Perkins would trust the information more if it didn’t come directly from me. “UNEF Command’s charter for the SMG allows General Bishop to requisition other units, as needed.”

Perkins addressed her next question directly to me. Maybe she wanted to look me in the eye, see if I was bullshitting her. “Does Command know about this, specifically?”

“No,” I answered. “And they do not need to know right now. Colonel, Command’s communication security is crap, pretty much every information system on Earth must be assumed to be compromised right now.”

“You’re acting without their knowledge.”

“Let’s just say, I’m taking a page from the Emily Perkins handbook on what your leadership needs to know, and when they need to know it.”

“Shit,” she sighed. “I suppose I earned that.”

“We both are guilty of exceeding our authority, from time to time,” I told her. “I’d like to think it has worked out pretty well for both of us.”

“General Ross might disagree.”

“It has worked out pretty well for him, too. Hey, I, uh,” I fumbled for the right words. “We have been through a whole lot of shit together. That includes you, Perkins. You went through a whole lot of shit without us, and some when you didn’t know you were with us. But, this time,” I took a breath. “This time is different. We’re going up against an opponent that might be nearly as smart as Skippy. Is that fair to say, Skippy?”

“I hate to admit it, but, yes,” his avatar stared at the ground. “It could be worse than that. Like I told Kong, this Opie AI could have abilities that I don’t. There is no way to know what special abilities it may have developed over the years. We could be in for a nasty surprise. Or more than one.”

“Well, on that happy note,” I looked to the west, where the local sun was hovering just above the hills on the horizon. The air was getting chilly already. “Let’s wrap this up. Valkyrie will be back in the morning. If anyone thinks of something we missed, let me know before sunrise. We don’t tell anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to know, understood?”

Everyone grunted agreement, even Skippy. Smythe filled a bucket with lake water and dumped it on the fire, and we packed up our stuff to leave.

One way or another, we were committed to the most outrageously complicated, risky, and daring plan we had ever attempted.

Did I hope we hadn’t forgotten something important?

Yes.

But my biggest worry was about the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I hate that freakin’ law.

Before we could deal with the giant steaming problem that Skippy had dumped on my head, and that I dumped on Simms, Perkins and Smythe, we all had to attend a gala ball the next evening. At least I think it was a gala, I am not an expert on the subject. It must have been considered a ‘gala’ because we drank out of actual glasses instead of red Solo cups, so the parties weren’t nearly as fun as they could have been. Also, when I tried on my shirt, it was itchy and the stupid bow tie kept flopping to one side, so I looked like a clown.

Before I went to the ball with Margaret, Margaret and I needed to have a talk that afternoon. Like, a Talk. “Skippy, hold all my calls for the next, like, two hours. No, I changed my mind. Hold them until I tell you I’m ready. Tell the duty officer that I’m going to be out of touch for a while.”

“What if there is an emergency?”

“If hostile alien ships jump into orbit, I’ll know it when the railgun darts start raining down on my head. Otherwise, unless the planet is on fire, and I can do something about it, hold my calls. Hey, hold Margaret’s calls also.”

“Um, I’ll need to check with Perkins first, she is Margaret’s CO.”

“Do it anyway, and tell Perkins it’s on my order.”

“Okey-dokey.”

When I walked into Margaret’s quarters, she was tapping on her zPhone, jabbing at it and scowling. “Honey,” she looked up at me. “Is the base network down? I can’t-”

“I asked Skippy to hold our calls for a while,” I closed the door behind me.

She tilted her head, puzzled. “Why? Is there a-”

“We need to talk.”

“OK,” she said, slowly setting her phone down on the table.

“This is official. There is a very sensitive special ops mission I need done.”

She tensed, and cocked her head at me. “Colonel Smythe’s team isn’t available?”

“Part of ST-Alpha could handle it, but I have another tasking for them.”

“Why me, Joe?”

I noticed she didn’t call me ‘Joe’, not ‘Sir’ or ‘General’.

“There are only a handful of people at Jaguar who are qualified to handle this, and you’re one of them. But mostly, I want you to handle this because I trust you. Wait!” I held up a hand before she could reply. “Margaret, I have a whole lot of shit bottled up in here,” I tapped my head. “Most of it, I can’t tell anyone else, you understand?”

“Joe, you’re really worried about this?”

“Yes. I’m only going to tell you what you need to know, and you can’t tell anyone.”

She stared at me. “Does Perkins know?”

“Yes. She suggested you for this op. I should have thought of it, sorry.”

“Honey,” she patted the cot that served as a couch in her cramped quarters. “Sit. Whatever you have to say, I’m listening.”

I fell asleep after we talked. It was such a good talk that we celebrated by doing, uh, something that doesn’t require much talking. If you know what I mean. Anyway, what woke me up was Margaret suddenly sitting upright in the bed. “What’s wrong?” I mumbled, rubbing my face with a hand.

“That noise is driving me crazy.”

“What noise?”

“You don’t hear that?”

“Uh,” I held my breath. There was a very faint beeping sound coming from beyond the door of her quarters. Like someone had set an alarm, then forgot about it. “Yeah. Ignore it.”

“I can’t.”

“Honey,” I nuzzled the back of her neck. “Just don’t pay attention to it.”

“Men,” she shook her head. “You can ignore annoying sounds, but women can’t. I swear, you could be watching sports, and not hear the kids playing in the bathtub with a blender.”

“Hey, that’s not fair!” I shrugged.

“It’s not?”

“No. I mean, are we talking about a good game, or a blowout?”

“You!” She hit me on the head with a pillow.

But she did it with a twinkle in her eyes.

We attended five different balls that evening. Together. Damn, she looked uh-MAY-zing. We even danced, her well and me making my best effort. Being together in public wasn’t awkward at all. It was actually fun.

It was too bad that I had to get up before sunrise, to catch a flight up to Valkyrie. Yeah, we had to stop a murderous Elder AI from waking up Sentinels again, then we had to track down and kill the damned thing. And we had to do something about the fading Sentinel at Earth, which was not truly capable of defending our homeworld. And we had to worry that some ambitious and stupid Maxohlx officer might decide it was a good idea to test Roscoe again while we were away. Plus, we had a potential traitor in our midst. Lots on our To Do list, lots to worry about.

But that morning, I was feeling good.

“What’s wrong, Joe?” Skippy asked, as his avatar appeared on my desk. We were outbound from Jaguar base, escorting a Navy task force, and the destroyer Boston that was carrying Margaret’s team for a secret mission. There were about seventeen hours left before we went through the wormhole that led to the rest of the galaxy, after which the Navy task force would go one way, Boston another, and the Merry Band of Pirates would be on our own again. To clear my head, I had gone to the gym, then instead of heading back to my cabin for a quick shower, I stopped by my office to check messages. And stayed there for two hours.

Pausing the game I was playing, I looked up at him. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

“You have been stuck on Level One of that game for the past hour, Joe. Even you are better than that.”

Dropping my tablet on the desk, I swiped the game closed with a gesture. “It’s a stupid game, Skippy. There is no way to win.”

“You have played that game before, and always gotten to the third level, or beyond. Besides, winning isn’t the point.”

“It’s not?”

“No. The point is to amuse me with your clumsy antics.”

“Hey, I’m glad to entertain you by-”

“But you are not amusing me, you’re just wasting time. Joe, I know when you’re not focused, so I’ll ask again: what is wrong?”

“Ah, shit. The problem is, I think you were right.”

“Of course I was right, about whatever it is this time. What insightful piece of my wisdom are you talking about?”

“When we had the campfire at Club Skippy. You said we are Bishop-ing the plan. It is just too complicated. There is too much that can go wrong. If anything goes wrong, we are totally, completely, thoroughly screwed. Everyone is. Maybe I need to cancel the op, and take a pause to reconsider.”

“Come on, Joe, the plan can’t be that bad.”

“How do you know that?”

“Has someone from the future come back in time to stop you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then it’s all good, right?”

“Shit,” I laughed. “I hope you’re right about that.”

“Dude, seriously. Did you just imply that I might be wrong?”

“Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Can you be serious for a minute? I am very worried about the Law of Unintended Consequences. More than usual, I mean. The last time, I really, truly, amazingly screwed up huge. My plan was just to fake crashing a wormhole network, and what I accomplished was giving an enemy AI the opportunity to wake up Sentinels.”

“Well yes, sure, that was a whopper of a mistake, but give yourself a break. It was unintended, not uninten-DUH-d.”

“Uh, what?”

“Listen, knucklehead, there have been plenty of times when you’ve done something stupid, and you should have known better. You reacted instead of making a plan, and you didn’t consider the long-term implications of your actions. As a result, you created uninten-DUH-d problems.”

“Oh. Gotcha.”

“The problem of allowing Opie to send a wake-up signal is on me, not you. No way could you have known there is another Elder AI out there. I didn’t know, although I probably should have, darn it. There were enough hints that I missed.”

“Do you see any problems with us trying to stop an Elder AI?”

“Jeez Louise, Joe. I see nothing but problems. The last time I tangled with an AI of the enemy faction, it didn’t end well for anyone. As you pointed out, that horrific war really didn’t end at all.”

“Shit. Are we being stupid? Should we just plug the communications gap in the wormhole network, and leave Opie alone?”

“Right, like that’s ever gonna work. Let’s consult this handy pie chart,” a round symbol appeared floating in the air next to him. Most of the circle was filled in with yellow, with a small slice of the pie colored blue. “I have done the analysis, the yellow area represents the answer to your question: NO, the problem won’t go away if you leave it alone.”

“Uh, what’s the blue section of the chart?”

“Also no, in a different color.”

“OK!” He made me laugh.

“Come on,” he shook his head. “You knew the answer to that question.”

“I did. I was hoping to be wrong.”

“Sadly, this time, you’re not.”

“All right, we’ll stick with the plan.”

“Cool. You want help with that game?”

“No,” I picked up the tablet. “It’s time to do some actual work.”

The next day, after we went through the wormhole and left the Navy task force behind, I was feeling better. Most of my good mood was because we were running a war game exercise, simulating an attack run at a heavily-defended Maxohlx planet. We had successfully completed a half dozen exercises and had the proper procedure in our muscle memory. Then it was time to practice various scenarios where the attack run did not go according to plan. Just in case, you know, the extremely unlikely event that something didn’t go according to plan, which never happens to the Merry Band of Pirates.

In that particular scenario, something bad did happen, and the crew was scrambling to fix the problem before a squadron of senior species battleships cut off our escape route. Our Plan B was to fire Valkyrie’s boosters multiple times to gain speed, and shorten the time when our battlecruiser was exposed to the gauntlet of enemy fire. A complication in the scenario, because complications are fun, was that we had already taken a hit that severed a critical power conduit, knocking out three of our big forward-firing railguns.

Mammay was urging his gunnery team to get those railguns back online, with one eye on the approaching enemy battleships.

“The maintenance bots report it will take ten minutes to bypass the gap in the power conduit,” a gunner reported.

“Bullshit ten minutes,” Mammay growled, but he had a twinkle in his eyes. “This will be over in two minutes. Get on it!”

“What’s wrong, Weps?” I asked with a laugh. “Are all the catapults broken again?”

Mammay smiled, but the poor young gunner stared at me with his mouth open. “General?” He looked from me to Mammay. “We don’t have, catapults.”

“Oh my G-” I shook my head. “Pause exercise!” The displays all froze. “Can you believe this?” I addressed the question to the chief weapons officer.

Mammay looked thoroughly disgusted. “Perez, you have never seen Top Gun?”

Petty Officer Perez was like a deer in the headlights. Everyone was staring at him, as the reason the exercise had stopped. “Um, no, Sir.”

“Seriously?” I couldn’t believe it. “What about,” I wracked my brain to think of another classic action movie from the same era. “Die Hard? Predator? Terminator? Aliens?”

Perez hesitated, probably trying to decide whether to lie or not. “No,” he answered slowly with a shrug. “Those are old movies, Sir.”

“Star Wars?” Mammay asked. “Surely you’ve seen that.”

“I saw part of the first one.”

“Right,” Mammay nodded. “Star Wars: A New Hope.”

“No, it was, Ghost, no, Phantom Menace, something like that. About the kid driving those racing things in the desert?”

It was my turn for disbelief. The petty officer wasn’t that much younger than me. “So, you’ve never seen Star Wars? The original one?”

“No.”

“Perez,” I shook my head sadly. “Why do you hate humanity?”

“Sir?” If I had shot him, he would have been less shocked.

“Mammay, I think we need to arrange a remedial pop culture course for your gunner.”

“Top priority,” the chief weapons officer agreed, scowling at his hapless petty officer. “I will make sure he is edu-ma-cated.”

“I am concerned about having such a security risk on the bridge.”

“General!” Perez protested. “I-”

“I am screwing with you.” Looking around the bridge, I asked, “Would anyone else like to confess to treasonous behavior?”

Fireball Reed spoke up immediately. “I’ve seen ‘A New Hope’, like, a hundred times.”

Other people agreed they had seen various action films from that era, including many that I had not seen. “OK, OK, people. Clearly, we need to make a list of Eighties action movies that are required viewing-”

“Star Wars came out in the Seventies?” Reed didn’t sound entirely sure of herself.

“Close enough. Not just Hollywood movies either,” I added for our international crew, knowing I was volunteering all of us to watch Bollywood films. If Star Wars had been made in Bollywood, Darth Vader and Obi-Wan would have paused their lightsaber battle to break into an epic song and dance routine, accompanied by a hundred synchronized Stormtroopers.

Actually, I would pay good money to see that.

Speaking of pausing things- “All right, back to work,” I clapped my hands. “Everyone ready? Resume exercise.”

The United Nations Navy destroyer Boston detached from the star carrier, and after maneuvering a safe distance away from the vulnerable space truck, jumped toward the nearest star system. At Jaguar base, Boston had received not only repairs for battle damage, but also a significant set of upgrades. The ship was even more stealthy than it was before the battle at Globakus, the launch tubes and magazines were once again full of Maxohlx missiles that also had been given upgrades, the defensive energy shield generators tweaked to provide better protection while using less power.

The only upgrades important to the destroyer’s current mission were the stealth enhancements. Boston was not planning to go into battle, the ship’s captain intended to avoid engaging the enemy unless absolutely necessary, his goal was to keep his ship’s presence from being noticed at all. If he got drawn into a fight, he was confident his ship could either win any battle outright, or at least shoot its way out of trouble.

That wasn’t the point.

The objective of Boston’s mission to the Kristang planet called Gundarafriscolo was not to engage in combat, or to perform reconnaissance. The destroyer’s planned role there did not require it to act as a warship at all, it was simply a stealthy delivery vehicle for special operations troops who would be doing, what?

He didn’t know.

Despite the fact that Lieutenant Colonel Derek Bonsu was in command of the destroyer, he did not actually know what the STAR team would be doing at the world they had nicknamed ‘Frisco’. According to General Bishop, Bonsu had no need to know, and neither Master Sergeant Adams, nor the three members of her team, had hinted at the nature of their mission. The special operators were not unfriendly to the ship’s crew; they mingled at mealtimes, and in the ship’s gym and recreational facilities, when they weren’t training in the cramped area set aside for the STARs. Juggling supplies to clear out a cargo bay for the operators was not the only adjustment the crew had to make, they also had been required to modify a docking bay to accommodate a Maxohlx Panther dropship, instead of the Jeraptha models that were usually carried aboard UN Navy ships. The pair of special operations pilots were polite, but firm about keeping the destroyer’s crew away from their bird, which appeared to have received its own set of stealth, and possibly other, upgrades. Any type of speculation about the Panther, the special powered armor suits used by the operators, or the nature of their mission, was officially discouraged.

Unofficially, the wagering action raging aboard the ship about the purpose of the secret mission, would have made the Jeraptha proud.

Boston’s arrival in-system was a jump of about six lighthours from the target world, a distance chosen mostly for being a nice round number, and in the Goldilocks range for observation. Not too close, not too far away. With a delay of only six hours, the crew could verify that everything on, or around, the planet was as Skippy had told them to expect. There was only one enemy warship in orbit, plus a strategic defense network that was second-tier when it was installed, and had missed several rounds of upgrades since then. The long-range recon detected that the SD network’s satellites could still wrap a damping field around the planet within minutes, though how long that field would maintain integrity was anyone’s guess. Overall, there were no significant threats that would require cancelling, or making major adjustments to the mission plan or timing. With a shrug, Adams indicated the operation was a ‘Go’, and Derek Bonsu prepared for another stealth jump, while the STARs geared up and boarded their Panther.

The inbound jump was clean, and there was no sign that the presence of a starship a few lightseconds from the planet had been noticed by the inhabitants, or by the various automated sensor platforms orbiting that world. Silently, the Panther slipped away and in moments, even Boston’s sensors lost track of the STAR vehicle.

Over the next sixteen hours, the destroyer’s crew adjusted the sensors and watched intently, trying to detect the Panther descending to the surface, with only a thirty two percent probability that the atmospheric disturbances they tracked were related to the STAR’s spacecraft. The inhabitants of the planet apparently did not notice anything, and listening to local news reports did not provide any useful clues about what the operators might be doing down there. Two senior clan officials were assassinated during the time the STARs were on the surface, and there was an explosion in a warehouse. The destroyer’s crew collectively agreed that either of those incidents could be the purpose of their secretive mission, but there was no way to know.

All attempts to detect the Panther climbing up away from the planet were futile; there was no indication of the special ops vehicle until it sent a low-powered, tightbeam ping at the precise time and location in the mission schedule. Boston replied, the two ships exchanging a handshake so the destroyer’s navigation system could guide the two stealthed vessels to a safe meeting. With the Panther aboard and secured to the deck, Bonsu waited to verify there was no reaction from the enemy. With the planet just under three lightseconds away, the destroyer could be vulnerable if the enemy extended a damping field in the area. With his ship accelerating, the stealth field operating nominally, and the pilots ready to initiate a jump at the first sign of trouble, Bonsu left the bridge to greet the STAR team.

Whatever the nature of their mission, it had apparently been a success. The pilots were outside the dropship, performing a post-flight check, while Master Sergeant Adams and the two members of her team were unloading their gear and-

Yawning. Rubbing their eyes like they had just woken up. Which was probably true, Bonsu realized. With the tension of the mission on the surface over, and nothing to do while the pilots flew the dropship up to the rendezvous, the four operators likely had taken the opportunity to catch some sleep. They also looked, amused about something. Talking in low tones among themselves, laughing. That was a good sign.

“Master Sergeant,” Bonsu called to the STAR team leader as he tugged on the handles of one of the STAR’s duffel bags, intending to load it aboard the waiting cart, but it was heavy. Of course the STARs had no trouble lifting their gear, they were still wearing powered armor.

“Colonel,” Adams grinned at something one of her operators said.

“Successful mission? Rounds expended?”

Her expression turned serious. “I can’t talk about that, Sir.”

He asked quietly, “Any trouble I should know about?”

She shook her head. “Tonight will be more dangerous.”

“Tonight?”

She jerked her head toward where one of her team was carrying a box down the ramp. “Petty Officer Sanchez wants to celebrate with karaoke.”

Bonsu groaned. “He is terrible. I’ll see if I can arrange for a power failure on ‘C’ deck.”

“Please do.”

“Where are we going next?” Bonsu asked. “If you can tell me.”

“The next stop is not a secret. We’re paying a visit to Kasternul.”

Bonsu couldn’t contain his surprise. “Kasternul?” That was the first Verd-kris planet that had been ‘liberated’ from Ruhar control. “We’re recruiting more Verd troops? But-”

“No, Sir. We have business to wrap up there. All I’m doing is delivering a message. A non-kinetic message,” she added to clarify.

“Why us?” Bonsu was instantly suspicious. The route from Frisco to Kasternul, if his memory was correct, required a lot of jumping and transiting through several wormholes. Any UN Navy ship could have flown directly to Kasternul from the Jaguar wormhole, if the requirement was to carry a simple message. And what kind of message needed an elite special ops team to deliver?

“It will be another stealth approach,” Adams explained.

“That kind of message.”

“All I can say is, I’m giving an update to a select group of Verd-kris.”

Bonsu held up his hands. He didn’t want to know. Not only because he wasn’t supposed to know, he didn’t want to be involved any more than he had to be. The Merry Band of Pirates were renowned for expert use of sneaky, deceptive shenanigans, and he had participated in plenty of sketchy stuff with the Mavericks. That didn’t mean he liked it. He preferred a stand-up fight any day. “We have about fourteen hours before the next jump,” he nudged the heavy duffel bag with a foot. “Do you want help with this gear?”

She reached down, grasped the handle and easily lifted the heavy bag, her armor’s nanofiber muscles whining faintly to compensate. “We made this mess. We’ll clean it up.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Since Emily, in her official role as Colonel Perkins rather than the more personal role of fiancée, had asked Dave Czajka to watch Surjet Jates for signs of unusual behavior, he had been waiting for extra grumpiness. Not that it would be easy to tell when the big alien was experiencing more than the usual level of disgust with the humans he had the indignity to serve with. The incident where an excavator had ended upside down in a ditch served as a baseline, sort of a Basic Jates Hardass Level One.

To the surprise of not just Dave but everyone in the 1st battalion, Jates seemed to be making an effort to be less grumpy. Not merely operating at a reduced level of hardassness, he was trying to be friendly.

It started with the Verd-kris surjet approaching Dave and Jesse while the two humans were taking a break under the shade of a tree at the edge of the camp. They were both grimy, with salt caked on their faces from dried sweat. “Hey, uh, Surjet,” Dave got to his feet just before Jesse. “We just finished the-”

“I know. Thought you might be,” Jates looked away, as if he was embarrassed about something, which couldn’t be possible. “Here,” he dug into his pack and extracted two cold cans of Rip It. “I think a man, working outdoors, feels more like a man if he can have a bottle of suds, just my opinion.”

“Oh, uh,” Dave looked at Jesse, both of them wondering if the wholly unexpected situation was a trap. “That’s great,” he took a can for himself and handed one to Jesse. “Ah,” he made a show of popping the can open and taking a big drink. “That is cold,” he agreed, even if an energy drink didn’t qualify as ‘suds’. “Did you, uh, get something for yourself?” While a drink like Rip It wasn’t harmful to Kristang biology, it also didn’t provide any nutrition, and most human beverages tasted too acidic to the lizards.

Without a word, Jates reached into his pack again for a canteen. Flipping the lid open, he gulped plain water.

The three stood under the shade awkwardly, Dave and Jesse trying to decide whether to gulp the beverage so they could get away, or sip to show they appreciated the astonishing gesture. Dave opted to tilt his head back and drain the can. “Well, thanks, we best get-”

“I want to apologize,” Jates muttered through another pull on the canteen, avoiding the humans’ eyes.

“You what now?” Jesse blurted out before Dave could elbow him in the ribs.

Jates glared, a more natural expression. “You heard me, Colter. When you,” his mouth twisted. “When you got that excavator flipped over in a ditch, I was too harsh. That could have happened to anyone.”

Jesse’s eyes had never been open wider. “Has it ever happened to you?”

“No, because I am not a dumbass,” he snapped.

“Gotcha. Surjet, I deserved it. I should have waited for the engineers to unload their own equipment. My fault entirely.”

“You were rushing the job, to arrange an amorous encounter with Staff Sergeant Jarrett?”

“Er-” Sometimes, when Jates spoke without using a translator device, it was difficult to tell when he was unfamiliar with what to him was an alien language, and when he was saying exactly what he intended. “I might have, yes. Sorry about that.”

“Jarrett is a fine soldier,” Jates’s mouth twisted again. The two humans waited, the awkwardness growing intense. “Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say.” Tossing the canteen back in his pack, the Verd spun on his heels and strode away.

When Jates had gone far enough for even the genetically enhanced ears of Kristang physiology not to hear what was said, Dave let out the breath he’d been holding in. “What the fuck was that?”

“Hell, man,” Jesse shrugged. “Damned if I know. Did Em give him a chat about harsh language or something?”

“She didn’t say anything to me. Far as I know, she doesn’t know anything about that excavator.” The engineers had accepted the battered machine, and chose to use it as an opportunity to practice field repairs, rather than report the incident. Either they were afraid of getting on Jates’s shit list, or the Verd knew about shenanigans the engineers had gotten into.

“Come on, man. Em knows everything that goes on.”

“Well, shit, yeah.” Dave watched Jates walk away, until the Verd disappeared around a building. “You’re the acting first sergeant, you think maybe he’s worried yelling at you like that undermined your authority?”

Jesse snorted. “Me being a dumbass undermined my own authority. I don’t know, man, that was just weird, you know?”

“Yeah.” Dave decided not to mention the apology to Emily, unless Jates did something else that was odd. No, not just odd, the apology was disturbing.

Dave was relieved that Jates did not apologize again. What Jates did instead was even more unsettling. He was trying to fit in, to be “one of the guys”.

It started with a live-fire exercise involving weapons that were not often used in actual combat, but for which soldiers were required to qualify anyway. First, they used old anti-tank weapons that came from Earth; missiles that were still marginally effective in some roles, but laughably obsolete. The platoon all complained about how heavy the missiles were, about the almost uselessly short range of the Javelins, and were disgusted that unless the enemy cooperated by moving slowly, the weapons were certain to miss hitting anything useful.

Then came the fun part: tossing grenades. In combat, throwing an unguided grenade, even when the throw was assisted by powered armor, was not likely to be useful other than against fixed positions. And even then, it was more likely a soldier would use the rocket launcher that was slung under the barrel of a rifle. But regulations required the unit to demonstrate proficiency with grenades, and everyone knew that Army regulations didn’t have to make sense. Plus, practicing with grenades meant they would be blowing shit up, which was always fun.

Jates had everyone run out to the area designated for the exercise, where four wide pits ringed by sand berms were set up. The first part of the training was tossing dummy grenades into the pits, with the goal of dropping the dummy into a bucket at the bottom of the cone-shaped pit. That was when Jates tried to drop something else: folksy expressions.

When one soldier’s errant throw bounced off the lip of the berm and rolled backwards, Jates barked, “Blanchet!” He pronounced the French soldier’s name correctly as ‘blahn-shay’ without the ‘T’, and without using a translator. “That dog won’t fish.”

“Um,” Jesse said, “I think you mean- Oof,” he grunted as Dave elbowed him.

“You’re right, Surjet.” Dave shot Jesse a warning look. “Blanchet, try that again.”

After everyone had gotten three dummy grenades at least near the buckets, Jates unlocked the boxes that contained live grenades, and set down a box near each pit. The next half hour was pointless but fun, each of the pits rocking with explosions. But when it came time to pack away the gear, Jates stared into one box, making a show of counting off on his fingers. “All right, I see fourteen grenades, and I have fifteen pins. Who is missing a-”

Whatever he was going to say was drowned out by shouting and the stomping of feet as the platoon scattered, some falling over each other in their rush to get away.

“Heh, heh, heh,” the big Verd laughed softly, dangling the extra pin between two fingers. “How are you all so gullible?”

“OK,” Dave picked himself up from where he had tripped over his own feet, brushing dirt and sand off his pants. “Good one, Surjet. Platoon! Get back here.”

“The point, Czajka, was not to amuse you,” Jates shook his head. “It was to impress upon all of you the importance of situational awareness on the battlefield. Think,” he tapped his head. “If a pin was actually missing, the weapon would already have exploded.”

“The Surjet makes a good point,” Dave agreed.

“You can lead a horse to water,” Jates shook his head. “But you can’t make it swim.”

“Um,” Jesse held up an index finger before catching Dave silently mouthing ‘No’. “You’re right about that. When did you, um, pick up folksy expressions like that?”

“I have been studying your culture, to be a more effective leader. That starts with communication. For example, instead of stating that a procedure is so obvious it shouldn’t need a user manual, I could say ‘That water makes its own Jello’.”

“Yeah, um,” Jesse bit his lower lip to keep from laughing. “You could say that.”

When Jesse went over to the supply shop to sign back in the unused gear, Dave went with him. “What the hell was that?” Dave asked quietly.

“Damned if I know, man. All of a sudden, Jates wants to be our buddy. Are you sure Em didn’t talk to him, about not being such a hardass?”

“No way. If she did anything, she would ask Captain Saito to talk with Jates. Saito is so busy with planning and administrative crap, he lets Jates run the show, right?”

“I guess so. Tell you what: if Jates invites us to hang out and drink beers, I’m gonna sign out a rifle first. The old Jates was tough but this Jates? Scares the shit out of me.”

That night, Dave told Emily about how Jates was acting strangely. “You asked me to keep an eye on him, so, I did.”

She took a sip of bourbon, rolling it around on her tongue. “The Command Climate Survey is next month. Maybe he is trying to ensure a good-”

“Nah, that’s not it. Em, Jates doesn’t give a shit what his people write about him in a climate survey.”

She tilted her head before saying, “Jates is an effective leader.” It occurred to her that she had never experienced the wrath of her alien subordinate. “Isn’t he?”

“Yeah. Jates is good people. He’s just never going to ask his people what they think of him. The Verds don’t do that.”

“Until recently, the Verd-kris had very limited experience with actual combat. Their procedures, their military culture, haven’t been tested like ours have. This,” she swirled the liquid in the glass. “Could be a good thing I suppose. My concern was about Jates becoming resentful. This sounds like he has doubled down on working with us. Thanks, you were right to bring this to my attention.”

“Are you going to say something to Jates, or to Saito?”

“No, and I don’t want you saying anything either. Just, tell me if he is acting any different than normal.”

“Which normal?” Dave took the glass from her hand and gulped the bourbon. “Whatever is going on with him, I want the old Jates back.”

“There’s that alarm again,” Yord 2nd Class Kustaff of the Maxohlx Hegemony said, as a pink light began flashing on the console hanging from the ceiling of the guard shack. It wasn’t exactly a shack, as it was a chamber carved out of an underground cavern, but everyone had always called it ‘the guard shack’, so the name stuck. The alarm light was supposed to have been accompanied by a blaring sound, and the speaker was still mounted on the wall. No sound came from the speaker because someone, annoyed by being disturbed by constant false alarms as the base’s sensor network degraded from lack of maintenance, had disconnected the speaker from the security console.

It hardly mattered, Kustaff knew. The planet Ardoo was a rock where no one wanted to be. Fleet units cycled through once in a while, for a change of scenery while running exercises, but any level of importance the planet once enjoyed had faded away a long time ago. Now, garrison soldiers like him guarded what only the Rindhalu would ever attempt to steal, what no one in the galaxy wanted to steal; a bunch of Elder artifacts that thousands of years of Maxohlx research had proven to be nothing but dead, useless junk.

Why bother guarding it at all? And why, if it was worth protecting, had the strategic defense network, or even basic sensors on the ground, been allowed to degrade to the point where they annoyed everyone with false alarms?

“Kustaff,” Yord 4th Class Armintus grunted without opening his eyes, boots on the floor and feet up on the console he was supposed to be monitoring. “Do you know how hard I have worked, to attain the perfect bliss of not giving a shit?”

Kustaff tried to switch on the camera that gave a view of the area covered by that particular alarm, but cameras in the section of the base had been glitching for months due to lack of maintenance. Due to lack of parts and technicians for maintenance. Due to leadership not caring enough about the base to provide funding for proper maintenance. For the past two days, the glitches affecting cameras and other internal sensors had gotten progressively worse, in a cascade effect, until the soldiers assigned to the guard shack were mostly blind to events beyond line of sight. “We are supposed to check it out.”

“Oops,” Armintus still didn’t bother to open his eyes. “You better watch out, there goes my last shit, out the window.”

“There aren’t any windows down here.”

“Yet another reason for us not to give a shit.”

“We are here for a reason,” Kustaff insisted, getting out of his chair and pulling a rifle out of a rack on the wall.

“Yes,” Armintus finally cracked open one eye. “We are here because you are a lifetime fuckup, and because I am an experienced combat veteran who has wisely learned not to give a shit. I’m trying to get some sleep, to prepare for the thirty eight hour pass I have coming up at the end of this shift. My plan is to go into the miserable shithole of a town we have on this rock, get laid, get rip-roaring drunk, and get ten solid hours of sleep to recover, before I have to come back down here, see your ugly face, and do this shit all over again. I would appreciate some peace and quiet.”

“The alarm means something is wrong.”

“It’s probably another drill, you idiot. The flyboys are upstairs racing around where they can see the sunlight, and we’re stuck down here.”

Kustaff relaxed a bit, a clawed finger resting on the safety switch of the rifle. “You think this is a drill?”

“Do you hear the general alarm? If this were a real emergency scramble, the general alarm would have sounded.”

“Yeah, but,” the junior soldier hesitated. “Maybe that alarm is broken also.”

“Have you ever heard the general alarm sound?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not our problem,” Armintus still had one eye open, scowling at the 2nd class soldier. “If the chain of command wanted us to react to emergencies, they would assign someone to verify the alarms down here are working properly.”

“Ah,” Kustaff set the rifle back in the rack, and picked up the ancient microphone that was attached to the console by a cord so old, its casing was flaking away. For security, there were limited paths for signals in and out of the base, and with most of the wireless nodes disabled, they couldn’t use their implants. “I think I should report this.”

“Kustaff!” Armintus slapped the console, flopping his chair forward and glaring at the younger soldier with both eyes. “I am a Yord 4th Class and you are a lowly 2nd, you would do well to listen to me. The way I have survived to be a 4th is by keeping my head down, never volunteering for anything, and most importantly, never ratting out my fellow Yords. So, if you want your eyelids glued shut the next time you fall asleep, go ahead, contact headquarters.”

“All right, all right,” he set the microphone back in its cradle. “I’ll go check it out by myself.”

“Why, you dumb shit?”

“It is better than sitting around here doing nothing, listening to you snore, and smelling your nasty feet.”

“Shit. Maybe you’re right.”

“That we should check out the alarm?”

“No, that taking a walk around the base down here is better than another shift trying to sleep in this damned chair,” the chair creaked as Armintus shifted his feet onto the floor, and pulled his boots on. “Besides, you disturbed my sleep, I might as well make sure you don’t get me into trouble, you young idiot. Let’s go fire off some rounds.”

“Shooting?” Kustaff expressed his shock. “Down here?”

“Yeah,” the older soldier grunted as he stood up. “In that big empty cavern past the T4 junction. Nothing’s in there. We can use a couple surveillance drones for target practice.”

“Destroy drones? That will set off an alarm!”

“No, it won’t,” Armintus swung open the drone cabinet, which was supposed to be locked until remotely authorized by headquarters. That lock had been mysteriously broken, and apparently not enough of a priority to warrant a repair. “These drones,” he took four of them off a shelf and stuffed them into a sack. “Aren’t registered yet, see? They’re invisible to the Supply system.”

“Firing weapons inside the base will cause an alarm to sound,” Kustaff insisted.

“None of the sensors in that cavern are functional,” Armintus tapped the blank displays, that were supposed to be showing camera feeds from that section of the underground base.

Torn, Kustaff couldn’t commit one way or another. He knew that, if anyone got into trouble, it would be the 2nd class Yord. The 4th Class mafia would close ranks and protect Armintus. Still, he was so incredibly bored, and blasting drones sounded like fun. Especially when blasting drones was unauthorized, the best kind of fun. “We have to account for all the ammo,” he made a last, weak effort to protest.

“We have to account for all those rounds,” the 4th Class pointed at the rifle magazines, neatly stacked on the gun rack. Pulling open a drawer that protested with a metallic screeching sound, he reached in and extracted a crinkly snack bag, that normally contained salted fish chips. “Supply doesn’t know anything about these rounds.”

Kustaff gaped at the loose rounds in the bag. “You keep them in a bag of Crunchee-Ohs?”

“I don’t. Some of our gifted predecessors in this miserable shithole had the foresight to collect loose rounds from the range, and stash them here. I found them last week.”

“They’re not ours, then?”

“They are now,” he spilled the rounds on the flat part of the console. “Get two empty magazines, and start filling them, while I check out the drones. Finally, we’ll have some fun down here.”

“You are sure this will work?” I asked, while watching the Maxohlx supply ship climb away from the planet Ardoo, toward jump distance.

“Ugh. Yes, dumdum,” Skippy did a combination shrug with eyeroll at me. “We tested it.”

“We tested it with Valkyrie’s jump drive, and without a crew aboard the Duck. Under very controlled conditions.”

“Well, excuse me if the Maxohlx didn’t volunteer to let us test it under more realistic conditions. There is no reason it shouldn’t work this time. In the test, I even adjusted our jump drive to make it more chaotic than normal, and the Duck still sailed right through without a problem.”

“Sir?” Simms prompted me. “You have a bad feeling about this? Should we cancel-”

“No. I don’t have a bad feeling; I have the same feeling I get every time we do something we’ve never done before.” That wasn’t entirely true. My anxiety about the op was partly, even mostly, due to me sitting in a chair aboard a well-defended warship, while other people took the risk. If I were flying the Duck, I would be less nervous about trying something new. The whole concept of ordering other people to do something I wasn’t doing still felt wrong to me, yet it was my job to do that. The commander is supposed to be in a position to maintain overall situational awareness, to make the force doing the actual fighting more effective. Being in the middle of the shooting is not an appropriate place to exercise command.

I had to trust my people, to do as good as, or better, than I could if I were there with them. Considering that I couldn’t qualify to be a special warfare operator, and at the moment wasn’t current on my rating as a pilot, it was probably for the best that I wasn’t with them, getting in their way.

“It’s just nerves,” I whispered to Simms with a shrug. Then louder, “Skippy, do your thing.”

“Okey-dokey. Countdown continues.”

The insertion plan, which was ninety percent Skippy’s idea, was dependent on timing. Precise timing, the precision only an Elder AI could manage. Plus, a partial infiltration of enemy defense and command and control systems, that again only an Elder AI could do. Maybe only Skippy could do, since he had grown beyond his original programming.

The reason I say the insertion plan was only ninety percent developed by Skippy is because, he got the inspiration from something I suggested. Back when we had to move relativistic darts across the galaxy, we used a technique that, as far as Skippy knew, had never been done before. That is, it had never been done deliberately before, it had happened by accident. We lined up the ship precisely with the flight path of a dart that was moving faster than seventy percent of lightspeed, so the dart zipped past the ship and into the opening of our jump wormhole, just ahead of Valkyrie. That technique is very much a ‘Do not try this at home, we are trained professionals’ type of thing. Every time we did it, I inwardly cringed, waiting for a dart to scrape along the side of the ship as it flew past. To prepare for the maneuver, we cut power to all thrusters, then fired them to make sure there was no propellant remaining. If a wonky thruster happened to fire by accident at the wrong time, it could push our battlecruiser sideways just enough for the dart to pass through the hull from stern to bow, wrecking everything in its path.

At Ardoo, we were not acting as a moving company to relocate fast-flying darts across the galaxy. Valkyrie was not directly involved at all, other than to provide a sensor platform for Skippy. The plan was to use the jump drive of the departing Maxohlx supply ship, not our own drive. The instant that ship formed its jump wormhole, the Duck would project its own wormhole through it, and emerge about two thousand meters above the surface of the planet. How could that work, when Ardoo was surrounded by a disruption field that prevents jump wormholes from forming?

That’s the key: the word ‘forming’.

The jump wormhole of the Duck would essentially temporarily, very temporarily, extend the enemy ship’s own already existing wormhole down to the surface. Since that wormhole had already formed, above and beyond the effective range of the disruption and damping fields, we would sort of be cheating the laws of physics. Like I said, temporarily. Like, for a nanosecond, which is all the time the Duck’s miniaturized drive needed. The Maxohlx supply ship’s jump wormhole would collapse in a shocking but non-catastrophic fashion. We considered that event a bonus; the chaos would create a distraction to draw the planetary defense system’s attention away from the Duck’s arrival. In a bit of luck for us, there was a thunderstorm over the target, the electrical energy in the area would mask any residual effects of a dropship suddenly appearing where only clouds were a moment before.

All that bullshit I just said, was true only if Skippy the Absent-Minded AI was paying attention to what he was doing, instead of daydreaming about the praise he would receive for doing yet another awesome thing.

That was really the source of my anxiety.

The scene was prepared for commencement of the operation. The Duck had launched, flown away from Valkyrie, and was in position. The pilots were constantly adjusting their dropship’s flight path, speed, and position, so they were motionless in relation to the thunderstorm above the planet below. The planet was of course rotating, and the storm was moving to make everything more fun. They also had to be lined up with the supply ship, to intercept the near end of its wormhole. Skippy had hacked into the planetary defense network as best he could. That task was more difficult than usual because the system had been designed to resist infiltration by the Rindhalu. The worst part, according to Skippy’s bitching and moaning while he hacked into the damned thing, was that the kitties had mostly lost interest in maintaining the defense network on and around Ardoo. Some systems got updated, some received only partial updates, and some were allowed to remain static until they eventually failed. Many of the systems could not effectively talk to each other, and communications were often garbled. Instead of Skippy elegantly slipping into the master system, and extending his infiltration from a central point, he had to hack into multiple, incompatible systems that were patched together in the most haphazard way possible. The result was that, instead of hearing Skippy boast about the awesomely casual way he took over an alien defense network, we were treated to endless whining and moaning and groaning about how filthy monkeys could not possibly appreciate how hard he was working and how everything would be so much easier if the stupid Maxohlx had done their jobs properly, and maybe he should just give up and crawl into a black hole somewhere so he could finally get some peace and quiet.

Trust me. Listening to him bitch about the Ardoo defense system was one of the highlights of my life.

Not.

In the end, and by ‘end’ I mean the point where we either had to go with what we had, or postpone the op until the next supply ship was scheduled to arrive in thirty seven days, Skippy declared he had done all that he could. His control of the Ardoo defense systems was imperfect, temporary, incomplete and, ah, good enough. Unless we totally screwed up and the strategic defense network was alerted, the Duck should slip in and out without being noticed.

I made a judgment call, and gave the Go-Ahead order. Based on what I knew at the time, it was the right call.

Like I said, based on what I knew.

“The cavern is this way,” Yord 4th Class Armintus said, reaching out for the younger soldier and missing, as Kustaff turned left at the junction. “Where are you going?”

“The sensor that set off the alarm is down here.”

“I don’t care about the sensor, and neither should you.”

“It’s our job,” Kustaff insisted.

“To fix it? Do you know how to repair a-”

“To check why the alarm was triggered.”

“Is this a joke? You think someone is down here? Anyone who came down into this pit willingly is too stupid to pose a threat.”

“I want to check it.”

“You are worried about a sensor buried three levels down, when none of the sensors on the levels above, the levels someone has to pass through to get down here, triggered a warning about anything unusual?” Armintus shook his head.

“I just want to see why the stupid thing keeps bothering us. Wouldn’t you like to shut it off, stop seeing that damned light blinking?”

“Damn it!” The more experienced soldier bashed the underground corridor wall with the side of a fist. “It goes against all my better judgment to give a shit about this.”

“This side corridor reconnects up ahead, we can get to the main cavern from there,” Kustaff suggested. “Think about it. If anyone up at headquarters somehow discovered the alarm was blinking, and that we didn’t check it like we’re supposed to-”

“Headquarters has no idea what goes on down here, they don’t want to know, and they don’t care. They can’t know, the comm relay system glitched out a long time ago.”

“You trust it to stay glitched forever?”

“Shit! No. It would be just my luck for the stupid thing to decide to fix itself during my duty shift. I just know I’m going to regret this, but I don’t trust you not to do some idiotic thing that gets me into trouble. I’ll lead the way. You,” he jabbed a claw into Kustaff’s chest. “Don’t even think of touching anything.”

Before he saw a door swing open in front of him, Yord 4th Class Armintus heard the faint ‘click’ of a door latch popping open behind him. At first assuming the sound was the young idiot behind him poking his nose into something that didn’t concern him, he half turned with a snarl, ready to slap some sense into the 2nd Class soldier.

And froze.

Three figures in Hegemony special forces armor shimmered as they dropped the field that had blended them into the dim background. Their weapons were aimed straight at him.

“The one time I actually give a shit,” he groaned as he raised his rifle, flicking off the safety-

And died as an explosive-tipped round knocked him backward.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Microwormhole is approaching the target,” Skippy muttered, giving a play-by-play commentary to the visuals on the main display. “Right on time,” he added.

He meant the microwormhole we had launched from a railgun cannon, dialed way down to minimum power, had dropped into the atmosphere above the abandoned underground base where Skippy had located the cache of Elder communications nodes. The event horizon of the microwormhole was encased in a stealthy shroud about the size of a golf ball, and it was now coming to a soft landing under the gossamer thin protection of an invisible parachute. The plan was for Skippy to extend his presence through the microwormhole, just enough to verify the airspace over the base was clear, that the local defenses were not on alert, and that the field density of the disruption effect was not above the level where it could tear apart the Duck’s jump wormhole. That stupid field was strong enough that the Duck had to emerge below an altitude of six thousand meters from the surface, preferably lower. That requirement was an extra challenge for the pilots, and extra anxiety for me.

“Talk to me, Skippy,” I ordered, when the display showed the microwormhole had made a soft landing, and he had remained silent for too long. The supply ship had reported it was above jump altitude, received clearance to jump away, and its drive was on a countdown we couldn’t stop. “Are we ‘Go’ or not?”

“Huh? Oh, um, something is odd, Joe.”

“Odd, like cancel the mission, or odd like, you found an interesting rock formation down there?”

He stared at me. “How did you know about the rock formation?”

With one eye on the supply ship’s jump countdown, I squeezed a fist to control my temper. “Answer the question, please. What is odd down there?”

“Ugh. I don’t know, dumdum. That’s why it’s odd. Man, sometimes I wonder about-”

“Do we abort or not?”

“No. This is a minor mystery I can dig into later. I’m seeing an energy reading I didn’t expect, and I can’t identify it. Ah, probably the records on which parts of the base were decommissioned are incomplete? Joe, there is nothing I can see that would prevent the Duck from successfully jumping in, or that would interfere with the STAR team completing their mission. We are a ‘Go’.”

“You are sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. I am providing final guidance to the Duck’s jump navigation system now.”

“Outstanding. XO, signal the Duck pilots that they are a ‘Go’. Uh, and tell them and Smythe good hunting, something like that.”

Making decisions, that’s what I do. Other people have the task of actually doing things. My job sucks, so I sat in my chair and watched the timer count down to zero.

The Duck disappeared as planned.

The supply ship’s jump wormhole collapsed as planned.

Nothing else went according to plan.

“What the- What the fuck was that?” Skippy screeched, throwing up his hands.

“What?” I tried to rise out of my chair, forgetting, as always, the belt that held me in. The display was not showing anything wrong.

It wasn’t showing anything, not at first. Then, ‘Loss of Signal’ began flashing in angry red text.

The icon that was supposed to show the location and status of the Duck was missing.

“Skippy! What hap-”

“I don’t know! The instant the Duck popped out of its jump, something severed my connection to the microwormhole.”

“Shit! Did the Duck make it?”

“Yes. Yes, I know that for certain. I had a solid connection all through the jump. The Duck emerged safely, but whatever affected the microwormhole also fried the Duck’s jump drive. It will have to fly all the way back up to the alternate rendezvous point, Joe, it can’t jump again.”

“Sir?” Simms cleared her throat. “Should we send the recall signal?”

My instinct was to transmit the recall message. A stealth drone we had dropped off the day before would send out, what appeared to be, a random pulse, with only the AI aboard the Duck knowing the pulse was not actually noise. Upon receipt of that signal, the crew would scrub the mission, and proceed up to the pre-arranged rendezvous point. It was the safest way for them to get out of a bad situation.

Safest did not mean no risk. Any kind of signal could alert the local defense network, forcing the Duck crew to set down somewhere and hide until the alert was called off. The longer our team was away from the ship, exposed in their vulnerable little spacecraft, the odds increased of them being detected. The recall plan also had no way for the Duck crew to acknowledge receiving our signal, without giving away their position. That was a bad communications plan, I knew that. It wasn’t supposed to matter. Microwormhole technology is pretty much foolproof, unless something happens to Skippy. Or something happens that Skippy didn’t expect and can’t understand.

“No,” I replied slowly. “Trust your people,” I muttered half to myself. “Smythe is in command down there. He knows we have lost comms; he will know the Duck’s jump drive got fried. It’s his call whether to proceed with the raid or not.”

“You know he won’t cancel the op,” she whispered back at me. “Who dares wins, and all that stiff upper lip SAS bullshit.”

“It’s his call,” I repeated. “Maybe all that happened was a glitch in the Duck’s drive somehow affected the microwormhole? Skippy,” I raised my voice. “Is there any sign the local defenses are alerted?”

“No.”

“Huh. That is odd.”

“Ah, maybe not, Joe. I think I just figured out what the problem was. Stretching the supply ship’s jump wormhole down through the disruption field set up a resonance I didn’t anticipate, since no one has ever done this before. Essentially, when the Duck completed its jump, the potential energy added to the disruption field caused it to snap back into its normal state, like a rubber band. That pulse triggered the collapse of my microwormhole, and the feedback loop fried the Duck’s jump drive coils.”

“Yeah, but,” I intended to yell at him later for not anticipating the problem. “Someone down there should have noticed a problem.”

“They did, but the local controllers are assuming any sensor anomalies were caused by the supply ship’s drive failing. Maybe we caught a break here, Joe? Those wonky, poorly integrated systems that were such a pain in the ass for me, have prevented the local controllers from detecting the Duck. I think the coast is clear for Smythe’s team to go in and get the comm nodes.”

“I will take any break we can get. XO, we trust our people. Fireball, change course so we will be in position to make the alternate rendezvous.”

“Chen?” Colonel Smythe kept his cool even in an emergency. Especially in an emergency. Fighting the waves of nausea that inevitably accompanied a jump that went wrong, he gulped in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, willing his rebellious stomach to be calm. “What happened?”

“Sir,” the pilot replied, distracted by the need to fly the spacecraft. “At this time, I don’t know what happened. The jump drive is offline, it is fried, and we lost comms. All other systems are functioning nominally. There is one bit of good news; we emerged within six kilometers of the target emergence zone.”

“Understood.”

“There is,” she paused to confer with her copilot. “No sign the enemy has detected us. Stealth field is active. Your orders, Sir?”

“I’ll take a recommendation.”

Chen let out a long breath. “The ship appears to be functional; I’d like to set down and run a full diagnostic. The primary LZ is still our best option,” she referred to a box canyon fifteen kilometers from the main entry point to the underground complex.

“Is our comms gear receiving signals, or is it offline entirely?”

“We are picking up the full spectrum of expected enemy transmissions. The connection to the microwormhole is down.”

Smythe considered the situation. The Duck connected to the microwormhole, and through it to Valkyrie, by a low-powered laserlink that required line of sight. For all he knew, the trouble with the communications could simply be a failure of the laserlink’s guidance system, and it was pointed in the wrong direction. The only way to know was to follow the plan. Set down, send a team a short distance to retrieve the canister, and bring it aboard the dropship to enable direct communications. “Proceed to the primary LZ,” he ordered. To Frey he added, “Have your team ready to pick up the golf ball.”

Frey carefully opened the box that held the golf ball sized microwormhole canister, exposing the dull gray device to the lights of the dropship’s cabin. Inside the sphere was supposed to be a tiny miracle, a hole in spacetime that connected directly to its companion aboard Valkyrie, two event horizons that created a tunnel between here and there, with no appreciable distance separating the endpoints. “Try it,” she said to the Duck’s pilot.

Chen pressed a button on her console. “Nothing,” she shook her head.

“Grudzien?” Smythe gestured to the special warfare operator.

The Polish soldier knelt down, holding a scanning computer over the golf ball. “No joy, Sir,” he tilted the display so Smythe could see it. “It’s dead. The microwormhole collapsed, there is nothing inside the canister.”

“Bollocks,” the leader of ST-Alpha spat. “There goes our happy fantasy that the damage to our jump drive, and loss of comms, are not connected.”

“What now, Sir?” Frey asked, her shoulders slumping in the sleek mech suit.

“There is still no sign the enemy has detected us. If we proceed with the operation, under the alternate protocol, we will need to fly up to the rendezvous point the hard way. Chen, do you see any problem with that?”

“No,” the pilot shook her head. “The ship is fully flightworthy, other than the jump drive being burned out. It bothers me that we don’t know the source of the problem. But there is a silver lining for us.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“With the microwormhole severed,” she nudged the box with a toe. “Skippy can’t sing to us the whole time we’re down here.”

Everyone in the cabin laughed. Grudzien bent down to pick up the now-useless golf ball, rolling it around in the palm of one hand. “In that case, if we ever figure out what deactivated this microwormhole, maybe we bring that capability with us in the future?”

“My fear is that someone already has that technology,” Smythe said with a frown.

Chen tilted her head. “Sir?”

“The possibilities are, that some flaw in the DeLorean jump drive caused it to fail after we arrived. Or, that some mechanism here disabled our drive and the microwormhole.”

“I,” the pilot considered that for a moment. “You may be right about that, the second one. I can’t imagine how a jump drive failure could have affected the microwormhole. It’s a different story if some alien technology caused both wormholes to collapse.” She looked around the cabin, at the faces that expected her to have an answer to the problem. “Right?”

Frey bit her lip. “You’re saying there is some type of effect down here, that distorts wormholes? Both the micro type Skippy creates, and jump wormholes? Like what?”

Chen shrugged. “I’m not an expert in hyperspatial physics. Colonel,” she turned to Smythe. “We should try to establish comms. Valkyrie may have advice, or revised orders, for us.”

“Right.” Smythe didn’t have to think about how to contact the starship, the communications plan for the operation had PACE options ranging from optimal to catastrophic failure. The Primary method was for the Duck’s communications laserlink to send messages through the microwormhole. The Alternate, in case the laserlink could not be established or maintained, was for the golf ball to be brought into the cabin of the dropship. Moving down the list to the Contingency, the away team was to attempt to send short, encrypted messages through the enemy comms system, via a backdoor created by Skippy. While Skippy had confidence in the Contingency, he had grudgingly admitted that method carried a ‘non-zero’ risk the secret message traffic could be detected by the enemy, prompting an alert that would expose the away team’s presence.

“Activate the Contingency comms plan,” Smythe ordered. That plan called for the dropship to be on the ground, wrapped in a stealth field to minimize chance of detection.

“No joy,” Chen reported several minutes later, after making three attempts to establish a handshake with the alien communications network. Three attempts was the limit according to the plan, additional pings carried too much risk of triggering an alarm of an intrusion. “I can’t explain it. We’re in the local network, but the signal isn’t going beyond the local base firewall. It’s like,” she held up her hands. “Something, or someone, has isolated the base from the rest of the network.”

“How so?” Smythe leaned over the pilot’s chair, to peer at the display.

“Sir, I don’t know how. This feels like something Skippy would do, you know?”

“Bloody hell. Did that dodgy beer can get too clever this time?”

“Sir?”

“Our absent-minded Elder AI may have gone a step too far this time,” the STAR leader explained. A key part of the operation was for Skippy to infiltrate the planetary information systems, so any sensors in or around the underground base would ignore the presence of Valkyrie’s away team.  Bishop had approved launch of the Duck only after Skippy assured him that he had sufficient control of data flow in the security network. “If he mistakenly shut down all data coming from the base…”

“Shit, Sir,” Chen gulped. “If that’s true, somebody outside the base will notice a problem soon. Should we get ready to bug out?”

“No. We have one more option.”

“It’s not a good one,” she warned.

“The Emergency option never is,” he agreed.

“Then why,” she muttered, “does it seem like we’re always running right down the list to that option?”

“It keeps life from getting dull, eh?”

Chen grimaced. “I may be getting too old for this shit, Sir.”

“You and me both,” he said softly.

The Emergency option for communications was actually two mechanisms, depending on whether it was daylight or nighttime over the site. During the daytime, the STARs were to spray a thin coating of nanogel over a sign on a post at the perimeter of the base. Sunlight reflected off the sign would flare and dim in a way that was not quite random. Concealed in the noise, in a pattern known only to Skippy, were a series of messages that could be selected by the away team. Those messages ranged from ‘Everything OK, communications glitch’, to the extreme of ‘Situation compromised’, with multiple possible messages between the extremes. If the glinting of light was noticed by sensors in orbit, the AI observing would almost certainly dismiss the phenomena as the sign being loose and moving in the breeze.

As the away team had arrived over the site after sundown, Smythe had to authorize the mechanism that carried slightly more risk. Half a kilometer from the landing zone was a shallow, murky pond of highly salty water; it would really be considered a large puddle on most other worlds. With his suit wreathed in a stealth field, Grudzien gently placed a device at the edge of the pond, and did not activate it until he was safely back inside the Duck. When it received the activation signal, the device turned on a small heater, that raised the temperature of the dirty water around it by a tenth of a degree. As the warmer water rose to the surface, it was disturbed by an apparently random but actually very specific series of ripples, created by a paddle on top of the submerged device. The surface water rapidly cooled, in less than a minute dropping so the infrared radiation emitted by the pond was no more than normal, consistent with the gradual nighttime release of heat from sunlight received the previous day.

Any sensors that observed the warm spots on the pond’s surface would hopefully think the additional heat energy came from gas bubbles released from decaying scum on the bottom of the pond. Hopefully. If the enemy AI monitoring the surface was particularly alert, or especially bored, it might decide to investigate why that previously quiet pond was suddenly acting like it had eaten spicy food.

“Aha!” Skippy shouted, startling me. “We have contact, Joe!”

“Oh, thank God,” I pumped a fist in the air. “Connect me with Smythe, please.”

“Um, no can do, sorry.”

“What? You told us the Contingency comms plan allowed two-way messaging. Oh, it’s text only? OK, then-”

“Joe! The away team has fallen back to the Emergency option. All I’m getting is the ID signal from the surface of a pond.”

“Crap.” I glanced at Simms. “That’s not good.”

Due to the agonizingly slow method of communication, it took eleven minutes for Skippy to receive the complete message, before it began to repeat.

“OK, got it,” Skippy made a sound like taking a dramatic breath. “The Duck is flightworthy, but the DeLorean jump drive is burned out. They don’t know what happened, damn it. Um, I added the ‘damn it’ part.”

“Yeah, we figured that. Continue.”

“They also don’t know why the microwormhole collapsed. Of course not,” he muttered. “Chen is confident they can fly up to the alternate rendezvous point. No one is injured. Sorry, this is kind of choppy because all I’m actually receiving is pre-determined status codes.”

“Right. Keep going. Why aren’t they able to talk via the backdoor you created?”

“I don’t know,” he moaned. “We don’t have a code for them to tell me why it’s not working on their end. It should work, damn it. The message ends with two codes. There is no sign they have been detected, and Smythe requests permission to proceed.”

“Of course he does,” Simms said quietly.

“You think it’s too risky?” I asked. “If the enemy doesn’t know they’re at the site-”

“We don’t know what went wrong with the Contingency comms plan,” she interrupted me, something that rarely happened. “Or what else could, or already has, gone wrong.”

“Yeah,” I had to agree with my executive officer. “Skippy, you got any theories about what could have screwed up the backdoor comms system down there?”

“No. I can confirm that the base network is functioning just fine, as far as I can tell.”

“That makes no sense. If the network is working, why-”

“It doesn’t make sense. There could be some piece of equipment down there that is damaged. My guess is, there is a problem with equipment aboard the Duck, that prevents them connecting to the backdoor I left for them. That is the only logical explanation.”

“OK. I need to think about this.”

“Don’t think too long,” Skippy warned. “The away team is burning daylight. I mean, they will lose the cover of night in nine hours. Seven hours, to be safe.”

“Yeah, I know.” Leaning toward Simms, I lowered my voice. “XO, what do you think?”

“I say pull them out of there, Sir.”

“Huh. You’re not telling me to trust my people?”

She shook her head, an emphatic gesture. “Not this time, Sir. Smythe lacks the information to make a proper judgment call. He’s relying on you to keep him out of a disaster.”

“I don’t have any more information than he does. We have less situational awareness up here.” Straightening in my chair, I squared my shoulders. “Skippy? Is there any indication the enemy has a clue about our presence, either us or the away team?”

“No. Zero. It is encouraging that, although sensors in orbit and on the ground detected an odd energy pulse when the DeLorean’s drive failed, that alert never reached any of the monitor AIs. I have information locked down solid, I know that for certain. The kitties, and their AIs, still think any anomalies they detected were caused by the supply ship’s drive failure.”

“OK.”

“Joe,” he continued. “While it is your call, please remember that Ardoo is our best shot at collecting enough Elder comm nodes to complete our mission. There is a lot at stake here.”

“Shit. Yeah.” My job is to make decisions, that other people get stuck dealing with. “Prep the meteor drone. I’m giving Smythe the OK to proceed.”

What I called a ‘meteor drone’ was our emergency method of communicating with people on the surface. It had a limited ability to deliver information, but had the advantage of being low risk to us. The drone was loaded into a railgun, and flung toward the planet at a speed considerably slower than a typical kinetic weapon. The meteor was a chunk of rock, composed of compressed dust bound together by nanofiber cables that ran through it. The dust had the same ratio of elements as any other rock floating around that star system, so when it burned up on contact with the atmosphere, it would look like any other chunk of leftover material that had been orbiting the star for billions of years.

Before the rock burned up, it broke apart. That was the plan. As it plunged downward, the nanofibers separated in a specific sequence and at precise times. Pieces of rock broke off to flash into burning plasma, each with a life span slightly shorter or longer than the others. Anyone on the ground looking up would see a string of flashes that appeared to be an uninteresting rock falling to its death, pulses of light tracing across the sky. The human eye could make no sense of the pulses, indeed the majority of the sequence was random. But within the randomness of that burning rock was a planned series of flashes that made sense to the AI aboard the Duck.

“Message received,” Chen reported in a raised voice, as Smythe was back in the dropship’s cabin. “Colonel, you have a ‘Go’ to proceed,” she announced with less enthusiasm. The STARs getting a go-ahead meant she and her copilot would be waiting in the Duck for the operators to return, instead of immediately getting their stealthy spacecraft climbing toward a rendezvous with the most powerful warship in the galaxy.

“Capitaine?” Grudzien pronounced the French officer’s rank correctly. “There’s something up ahead.”

“Halt,” the STAR team leader ordered, his voice still instinctively in a whisper despite the team being sealed up in soundproof armored mech suits. “What is that?”

Grudzien’s visor lit up with an icon, indicating that Captain Mejean had shared the Polish operator’s sensor feed on the team network. “I don’t,” he eyeclicked to magnify the view. “Ohhh shit. Sir, it’s two dead guys. Not ours,” he added quickly. “Those are kitties. Oh, this is not good. Are you seeing this?” He highlighted the tunnel wall above the prone figures.

“Yes,” Mejean replied tersely.”

“That’s not good,” Grudzien muttered mostly to himself, as he zoomed in on the pockmarked tunnel wall. Bullet holes. Big holes, from explosive tipped rounds. “Uh, Capitaine? Infrared shows those bodies are still warm. Should we-”

That’s when the shooting started.

Two hours after I gave the ‘Go’ order, with no message from the surface, I was regretting my decision to let Smythe proceed. “Damn it,” I swung a fist down to pound the arm rest of the command chair, holding back so it landed with a soft thump. “I wish I knew what the hell is going on down there.”

“Smythe knows,” Simms assured me. “He’s handling it.”

“What the hell is going on down here?” Smythe demanded, hearing only static in the speakers of his helmet. That shouldn’t happen. On the descent into the complex of tunnels and artificial caverns that made up the warehouse section of the underground base, the STAR team had placed tiny repeaters, to relay the low powered helmet to helmet laserlink communications. There was a continuous chain of line-of-sight laser beams connecting his helmet to those of Major Frey ahead of him, and Captain Mejean who had taken a different tunnel. Frey’s suit was connected to the team network, Smythe had any detail he wanted about the status of her suit, or a synthetic view provided by her sensors. The same information was available for any other member of the team in the base, except for Mejean and the four people with him. The suit computer was able to measure the distance to where the communications link was broken, and that didn’t make any sense. Pulling up a three-dimensional model of the route Mejean had taken, the system indicated the break in the relays was in the middle of a long, straight section of tunnel. That section had four repeaters, any one of which should have been able to pass along the laserlink. Yet, according to the data, the repeater at the top of the tunnel was not able to connect to any other such device ahead of it.

“Bollocks,” he cursed under his breath. Other than the Duck performing the miracle of jumping into the atmosphere of a planet that was surrounded by an energy field designed to prevent that from happening, nothing else had gone right with the mission. They had been forced to fall back to the crudest method of communicating with Valkyrie, they had no real-time information from Skippy, and that arsehole beer can’s boasts about knowing intimate details of the underground base were pure fantasy. Their primary access to the base was through a heavy door that had been sealed after initial construction of the base was completed. Skippy’s information about how to disable the alarms on the door had been accurate, and the STARs had been able to cut through the locking mechanism and swing the door aside without being noticed. That was all good.

Unfortunately, that was the last of the good news they could report. Six meters past the door, that tunnel was blocked, not by a collapsed roof, but by a solid plug of whatever concrete-like substance the Maxohlx used for construction material. Risking an active sensor pulse revealed the plug was five meters thick, impossible to cut through with the equipment the STARs had brought with them.

Backing up, they had gone with the alternate plan, another door that was not as conveniently close to the dropship, nor as well concealed in a steep-walled canyon. The team had set up a stealth net over the doorway, and switched it on so anyone above would see only a long-unused access point. That door, at least, led deep inside the base complex, though the team had to disable a series of sensors ahead of their route.

And the route was a problem. The schematic Skippy had provided was either incorrect to begin with, or the base had only ever been partially completed, or the tunnels and chambers had been extensively modified over the years. Getting to the chamber where the Elder comm nodes were supposedly stored should only have required going down two levels, then proceeding through a side tunnel that connected the wide main chambers. That side tunnel did not exist, apparently it had never existed.

There were other tunnels branching off the main chamber, leading left, right, up, and down. Without a handy guide attached to a wall, or the ability to query the base network, the only options were to give up, or to recon the base on foot. Smythe had opted to split his team into three groups, with himself and Frey each taking one of the two routes that appeared to lead in roughly the correct direction, while Mejean explored a tunnel that went down deeper underground.

Less than five minutes after they split up, Smythe detected a signal from Frey ahead of him, and the two groups found their paths converged at an intersection. That’s when contact with Mejean’s team was lost.

“Frey,” Smythe twirled an index finger in a circle over his head, then jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “We’re going back, to locate Mejean’s team. You take-”

“Sir?” She held up a hand. “Do you hear that?”

Smythe stilled his breathing. “No. Anyone else?” The STARs all shook their heads. “What is it, Major?”

She knelt and gently rested her fingertips on the floor. “Is your suit picking up vibrations?”

Smythe froze, stilling his breathing. “Everyone, freeze.” Reaching out a gloved hand, he brushed the fingertips against the tunnel wall. Eyeclicking through a menu in his visor, he selected the seismic sensors.

The suit was registering vibrations. Intermittent, and extremely faint. “Some kind of machinery?” He ventured a guess. As far as they had seen, the base was empty, as Skippy told them to expect. Not a trace of a person, or a bot of any kind. They had seen signs the base had been occupied in the past, including a medical facility, and a dining hall. Both of those chambers were empty, stripped of anything useful. The floors were mostly clean, with occasional streaks of dust as if the cleaning bot assigned to that section had a broken roller, so it missed part of the floor. There were no recent boot prints in the streaks of dust, though that didn’t mean anything; the STARs were careful not to step on any surface that could mark their presence.

“No Sir.” Frey stood up, shook her head, and instinctively checked the counter on her rifle. “That is weapons fire.”

“Shit.” Instantly, he knew she was right. “Did you see any tunnels that might lead to Mejean’s position?”

“No, that’s how we ended up here. This place is a freakin’ maze.”

“Right. Major, take point.”

Smythe grunted as he was flung backward from the force of the blast, the smart armor of the suit flexing to absorb most of the impact.

Most, not all.

There was a sharp pain in his left shoulder, his breath was knocked from his lungs, and a grinding pain told him there might be something wrong with his left collar bone. Stars swam in his vision, not anything in the helmet visor, it was an effect of his head being slammed into the solid tunnel wall. The wall then rained down dust and chips of rock and shattered concrete, as the ceiling behind him collapsed.

The visor blinked out, going black.

“Not now, damn you!” He gasped when he was able to take a breath. Yes, there was definitely something very wrong with his collar bone. There was a hot, sharp sting as the suit extruded a needle exactly where it was needed, and injected pain-killing nanobots. He couldn’t see anything; the damned helmet faceplate should have automatically gone to its clear setting when-

It had.

He was in utter darkness, under the surface of an alien world, in a tunnel with absolutely no light anywhere around him. In combat mode, the suit did not have any of its exterior lights active, and with the holographic visor display offline, there was no light reflecting off his face, not that such illumination was enough to see anything useful.

No, not complete darkness. His rifle was still cradled in his left hand. Rolling a thumb on the selector switch, he activated the indicator that showed the number of rounds remaining. That display gave off just enough light to see that the tunnel behind him had fallen in, cutting him off from the team.

The visor was still offline, there was not even the annoying blinking blue cursor image in the bottom left corner.

“Suit,” he coughed, the pain in his collarbone already going numb. Not numb enough for him to ignore the feeling that something was crawling around under his skin, nor numb enough to miss feeling that the broken bone was being artificially knitted together. A temporary fix that would yield a world of pain later, when the bone had to be set properly. If he lived that long. “Activate damage protocol.”

A voice sounded in his earpiece, like a four-year-old Skippy. “Please state the nature of the combat emergency.”

“You,” he gasped, the strain of filling his lungs to talk sent a sharp, hot stab of pain into his shoulder. “You are the damage protocol? Skippy?”

“Not Skippy,” the annoying childish voice chirped. “I am ‘Helpie’, your virtual combat emergency assistant.” The visor flickered, and an image appeared, a low-resolution, two-dimensional avatar of Skippy, like badly rendered clip art. “Hoo, wow. You certainly do need me, What did you do to this suit? You are responsible for any damages incurred,” the clipart avatar wagged an accusing finger. “Hmm, it looks like you failed to purchase the extended warranty, that was a bad-”

“Helpie? When did-”

“I am a prototype,” the assistant stated with mistaken pride. “It’s a surprise.”

Smythe struggled to his feet, as the suit’s functions were restored. His rifle lay at his feet, he checked its display to verify it was still operational, and properly connected to his suit’s computer. “I hate surprises.”

“What? Everyone loves surprises.”

“Not during a firefight, you stupid git.”

“I concede you may have a point. It-”

The avatar’s voice was interrupted by the muffled chatter of rifle fire. Even Smythe’s poor biological hearing could distinguish between the angry buzzing of Maxohlx weapons, and the heavier, intermittent bark of standard STAR team rifles. As more suit functions came back online, he saw the team laserlink reestablish itself, intermittently. His helmet’s laser antenna was struggling to pick up the very faint backscatter that filtered through the pile of rock and concrete, and the thick dust that hung in the air. The emitter of his own helmet’s laser was unable to cut through the clutter, to report his status, or even the fact of his continued existence, to the team.

No.

His laserlink emitter was offline.

“Helpie, activate the laserlink transmitter.”

“Um, that’s a no-go. I am pretty sure the enemy is able to trace your laserlinks, perhaps even decipher basic data from them. Certainly, that is how the enemy was able to determine the number and position of your force.”

“Bollocks! Why didn’t you warn us?!”

“I wasn’t activated until recently, as you might recall? Hmm, maybe your short-term memory has been-”

“Sod it. I need to get a message to Major Frey, to warn her-”

“Katie Frey is a smart girl, she can figure things out by herself. She probably has already, the backscatter I’m picking up from the team network is nonsense gibberish, my guess is the STARs have deployed decoys, to mask their positions.”

“Major Frey is not a girl,” Smythe snapped. He had to agree his second in command was very smart. “I need to find a way around the obstruction, can you help?” With his powered armor, he could probably dig through the pile of rubble in front of him, though it would take too long, the battle would be over by the time he rejoined the team. And the enemy would sense his efforts to clear a path. And, the ceiling might collapse completely, he reminded himself as the cracks widened, and more chunks of concrete fell to clatter on the floor.

“Um, I might be able to help you with that. Based on sound waves from the battle, I have been able to create an accurate schematic of this section of the base.”

“Show me.” A crude three-dimensional line drawing appeared in his visor. “Can you provide higher resolution?”

“You do understand I am a limited function emergency assistant?”

“Yes, you bloody-”

“Also, using the sound waves from gunfire is not an optimal method for-”

“What is that?” he eyeclicked to highlight a section of the schematic.

“Hmm, my guess is you are looking at a vertical access shaft that was used for construction, then sealed at the bottom.”

“According to your schematic, there is a hatch that leads into that shaft, one level above me.”

“Correct. Assuming the schematic is accurate. I had to extrapolate from inadequate data.”

“Let’s assume that your map is correct.”

“Um, why would we do that? I told you-”

“If it is not correct, we are both stuck down here.”

“That is a very good point.”

The visor lit up, scrolling through system status alerts. Using first his right leg then the other, he did deep knees bend to test the suit’s flexibility and balance. Power levels were adequate, balance slightly off, the major issue was the supply of nanomachines for self-repair were down below one third remaining. “Can my suit be restored to full function?”

“Of course, very shortly,” Helpie sniffed. “Unless you do something rash that causes more damage. It- Colonel?” Helpie protested as Smythe began running, stiffly at first due to the suit’s leg muscles being poorly coordinated. “What are you doing?”

“Something rash.”

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

“Can you detect the enemy or not?” Smythe demanded.

“It would be easier if you weren’t making so much noise,” Helpie complained.

Smythe closed his mouth and breathed as quietly as he could, despite the strain of bracing feet and hands on the smooth sides of the access shaft. He couldn’t stand on the concrete plug at the bottom of the shaft, because he had placed shaped charges there, with the explosive force aimed downward.

Helpie sighed. “You are still making too much noise.”

“I’m not-”

“Your heartbeat and respiration are shaking the entire structure around us. Since there’s nothing to be done about that,” Helpie sighed, “I am creating a program to filter out that noise. OK, OK, I think it-”

Smythe felt rather than heard the vibration. “That is Maxohlx rifle fire,” he said with confidence.

“Correct, but how did you know?”

“Experience and training.”

“Huh. You monkeys are not as stupid as Skippy says.”

“Skippy is-”

“An asshole. Yes, I know.”

“Do you know where-”

“Four of them, advancing in a two-by-two cover formation. The lead pair are just approaching the drop zone.”

“You need to handle the timing. I want to blow the charges when the trailing pair are directly underneath me, can you do that?”

“Um, yes. You realize this is extremely dangerous? Even if you disable two of them, that leaves two against one. It’s a good thing you’re equipped with upgraded armor.”

“I also need you to control my suit, so I fall through the opening as soon as it is clear.”

“Enough. As soon as it is clear enough. The explosives will not make a perfectly circular hole.”

“I know that.” Pulling his left hand off the wall, he braced with both knees, pressing until the suit sensed what he wanted, and the armored surface deployed a sticky nanogel to hold him in place. With both hands free, he unslung his rifle, checked again that the weapon was fully functional and synced to his suit, and took a calming breath.

“Ok, ready, ready, reeeeeeady-”

If Helpie said anything such as ‘now’, it was lost in the roar of the explosion in the confined space. A microsecond before the shaped charge detonated, a line of plasma cord activated, burning a ring three centimeters deep into the concrete-like material and creating a weak spot. When the charge kicked downward, the concrete neatly snapped at its weakest points, and a roughly circular, jagged hole appeared. Or, it would have appeared, if the choking thick dust and smoke had not obscured even the synthetic vision provided by the Mark 10 Delta special operations mech suit.

On the planet Ardoo, gravity caused objects to fall slightly faster than on Earth, about ten and a half meters in the first second. With the tunnel ceiling in that area being around seven meters high, the two Maxohlx special forces soldiers would have had less than a second for their superb powered armor suits to yank them out of the way, even if the plug of concrete had not been kicked downward by explosive force. That disc of concrete, one and a half meters in diameter by roughly one meter thick, was propelled downward by the shaped charge, so it impacted the tunnel floor in less than one tenth of a second.

The result, for the alien directly below the plug when it fell: splat.

The other soldier, who had been only a step behind as they raced to leapfrog their two fellow warriors just ahead, had a leg get clipped by the disc as it fell, then she was slammed against the tunnel wall when the disc bounced off the floor. The suit leg snapped, the tough armor material tearing open in an ugly gash, flexible armor plating itself slicing through the squishy biological limb within. The soldier felt almost nothing, her cybernetics deciding that her brain did not need to be distracted by pain at the moment, so the painful nerve impulses that would have overwhelmed her were blocked before they reached her spine. Pushing the heavy plug of concrete away, she strained to stand on her good leg, bringing her rifle up-

Smythe jammed the muzzle of his rifle under the alien soldier’s chin and pressed the trigger stud to spit out four rounds, two armor-piercing followed by two in fragmentation mode. He didn’t wait to see the result, dropping prone to present a smaller target and sending a volley of fire at the dim outline of the nearest Maxohlx soldier. That figure staggered and slumped, the chameleonware field projected around the suit making it difficult for Smythe’s own suit to discern details. Rolling to his right, Smythe followed up with a guided rocket, a weapon that must have decided it was uncertain of the target’s location after it closed half the distance, because it then detonated its warhead in a deadly cone-shaped hail of razor-sharp fragments-

That bounced off the enemy’s armor in a shower of sparks.

No matter. The synthetic vision of Smythe’s suit knew exactly where the enemy was, drawing a yellow highlight around the outline of the alien who had been knocked on its back by the blast, legs flailing in the air for balance-

Since Smythe still had a finger pressed on the stud to launch rockets, and the suit’s computer had a solid firing solution, the computer authorized another rocket without bothering to inquire whether it was what the squishy human operator wanted.

The second rocket adjusted its course in mid-flight to strike the enemy center mass, just as that soldier was jumping to its feet in an athletic but ill-timed move. The tip of the warhead burst into hot plasma which was scattered by the enemy’s reactive armor, a feature that worked well against light armor-piercing ordnance such as rifle ammunition. But not so much against a three-point-two-millimeter rocket that was standard equipment for a STAR operator. The rocket’s tiny brain saw that the plasma tip had been rendered ineffective and realized that meant the shaped charge of the remaining warhead sections would not work as planned. So, even while the warhead was moving forward into the enemy’s chest at thirteen hundred kilometers per hour, the brain sent a signal for the warhead to reconfigure itself into armor-piercing mode.

When the warhead itself contacted the chest armor, the enemy’s reactive feature in that section was in recharge mode, unable to disperse the superheated fourth state of matter.

Result: yuck.

The suit of armor held together, intact other than a two-millimeter smoking hole in the chest. The contents of the suit under the armor did not fare as well, being flash boiled so the suit went rigid, limbs extended straight out from the inner pressure. The resulting hot stew squirted through the entry hole as a jet of gore, spraying outward in a messy fountain.

Jeremy Smythe didn’t take time to contemplate whether he should be relieved or disgusted at the fate of his opponent, he had other issues calling for his attention. Such as the fourth soldier in the enemy formation, who also was not taking time to reflect on what happened to take out three of its fellows in a heart-stopping few seconds. Without a fully formed plan of attack, he pressed the stud to launch another rocket, trusting his rifle, the suit computer or Helpie, to decide how best to employ the weapon. The moment the rocket leapt from the underslung tube, he was spun to one side by incoming fire that struck his hip first and stitched a line across his waist, shattering his rifle and forcing him to fall backwards.

Red warning lights flashed all across the helmet visor, most noting that the rifle was no longer an effective offense asset. A brief No shit Sherlock flashed through his mind, as he tossed aside the two broken pieces of the rifle that legally belonged to the United Nations but was his in every way that mattered.

No rifle. He had no rifle. No backup, the other STARs were ahead of him, beyond the enemy. The enemy, whose fuzzy outline was also sprawled on the floor but was moving, moving in a purposeful manner rather than flailing as it died. Whatever the last rocket did, it hadn’t killed his final opponent.

It-

What was that?

That, on the debris-strewn floor of the tunnel, lying three meters away from the enemy’s outstretched hand.

A rifle.

The enemy, too, had lost its rifle, though that weapon appeared to be intact.

And it was vibrating, shaking as the enemy’s glove pulsed with a magnetic field to recall the weapon. The rifle slid across the floor, gathering speed-

The sidearm was in Smythe’s grip before he knew he had reached back to pull it from the holster. Firing on full auto, he emptied the eighteen-round magazine at the enemy weapon, blasting pieces off it and sending it spinning away through the air. Tossing aside the empty pistol, he ran to close the distance before the enemy could pull out a backup weapon, leaping to crash armor to armor in a frenzied tangle of limbs. Then he was soaring through the air to crash against the ceiling, jerking his legs up as he fell to avoid a spinning kick from the enemy that missed entirely. Off balance, the Maxohlx soldier’s back was exposed for a moment and Smythe reached out to get an iron grip around, whatever he could grasp. The enemy had advantages of innately superior strength, AI-assisted intelligence, boosted reflexes and the aid of cybernetics. Jeremy Smythe had a powered armor suit that had been upgraded by an asshole beer can, and a prototype emergency combat assistant that was programmed by the same absent-minded AI. Hearing the artificial muscles of his suit screaming in protest at the strain and seeing red warning lights flash across his vision, he had no idea which direction was up and which was down as he was slammed from one side of the tunnel to the other, the enemy using brute force to get the pesky human off its back. Smythe’s vision went black and he saw stars from one particularly vicious hit, the-

He fell back, stunned as he was smacked hard in the faceplate by his own hand.

A hand attached to an arm that had been wrapped around the enemy’s neck.

A neck that was still attached to its helmet, but not to the rest of the enemy soldier.

“Wha-”

“Oops, sorry about that,” Helpie said. “Your face got in the way.”

“What?” Smythe felt like something was loose inside his head, glittering stars were appearing and fading in the center of his vision. In his eyes, not in the suit’s helmet visor.

“Um, I had to guess what you wanted me to do,” Helpie squeaked. “You did want to break that guy’s neck, right? I did the right thing?”

“Yes, you,” he tried to stand up, but a wave of dizziness swept over him, and he fell to one knee. “You did the right thing. Thank y-”

“Sir? Colonel Smythe?” Major Frey’s voice spoke in his ear, as someone helped him to stand. It was his second in command. Other operators rushed past, to take up defensive positions covering the gently-curving tunnel.

“I’m here, Major.”

“Are you all right, Sir?’

“Never better,” he coughed.

“Grudzien!” Frey barked. “Find the others! These kitties operate in fireteams of four, we-”

“It’s all right, Frey,” Smythe straightened up, his back stiff. “These four are all dead.  One is under that pile of rubble.”

She leaned to press her faceplate against his, looking directly into his eyes. “You took out all four of them, by yourself?”

“I had a spot of bother, but yes.”

“Sir, I know STARs are supposed to be individual over-achievers, but-”

“Let’s get out of here, Major.” Smythe shook his head to clear the mushiness from his brain, knowing nanobots were probably already doing what they could to prevent further serious damage from the concussion he’d likely suffered. “Does anyone have a spare rifle?”

Frey unslung a rifle from her shoulder. “You can have Captain Mejean’s weapon, he’s down for the count.”

“Hey!” Helpie shouted. “I know these guys!”

“You have seen them before?”

“Colonel?” Frey tilted her head. “Who are you talking to?”

Smythe sighed. “The emergency combat virtual assistant, that Skippy programmed into this model of suit without informing us.”

Frey’s powered gloves tightened around her rifle. “I am so tossing that beer can out an airlock when we get back to the ship.”

“You will need to wait in line. Helpie, answer the question. You know those soldiers?”

“Well, not them personally. I mean, I know who they are, I recognize their unit insignia. They are Maxohlx spaceborne special forces.”

“Special forces?” Smythe looked at Frey. “No one assigns a special ops unit to guard a warehouse. They must know we’re here.”

“Wait!” Helpie’s avatar bounced in Smythe’s visor. “I don’t think they are assigned to be here at all. This unit was assigned to one of the ships that came back to Earth to attack the second time.”

Smythe nudged the dead enemy soldier with a boot. “I don’t see any insignia on their armor.”

“It’s a digital imprint. I’m telling you,” Helpie insisted. “This unit is part of the rebel fleet, they are attached to a stealth cruiser. Huh. That explains a lot of things.”

“Like what?” Smythe was impatient to move out.

“Like, why we can’t use the Contingency communication protocol to contact Valkyrie. The base network here looks like it’s connected to the outside world, but it’s not. The rebels must have isolated the local network, so the Hegemony wouldn’t see what they are doing down here. Huh. And Skippy didn’t know anything about it. Hee hee, what a loser.”

“Helpie, I need you to focus. Why is a special forces unit here?”

“Same reason you are, is my guess. Except, instead of looking for Elder comm nodes, they want spare parts to keep their ships flying. Like power boosters, you know? This base is full of stuff that is obsolete but still useful. With the rebel fleet cut off from Hegemony shipyards and supply stations, they need alternative sources for spare parts and consumable items. Hmm, this is interesting, I don’t know whether it is good news or bad news for us?”

“How so?”

“Well, if the rebel leaders are stocking up on supplies to conduct a campaign against the Hegemony, that’s good for us, right? But if all they’re planning to do is keep their ships flightworthy while they wait for the situation to cool off, that is bad.”

“Speculating on their motives won’t get us anywhere. This base was supposed to have minimal staffing, we didn’t plan on opposition by a special forces unit. We need to contact Valkyrie and-”

“Colonel?” Grudzien pinged the STAR leader over the team net. “We found the comm nodes, right before the enemy cut the laserlink and ambushed us. We can retrieve them in less than five minutes from here.”

“Frey?” Smythe asked.

“It’s worth a shot, Sir. Send Grudz ahead with our injured, and I will-”

“No,” Smythe was emphatic. “We stay together this time. Let’s complete this mission and get out of-”

“Movement!” Helpie warned. “I’m tracking movement!”

“Where?”

“Above and behind you.”

The waiting, the doing nothing part of waiting, was killing me. Ah, I guess really it was the not knowing part that was the worst. Simms was right when she told me that I had to be realistic about the situation. Without being able to communicate with the away team, we couldn’t help them, didn’t know if we could help them at all. Didn’t know if they needed help. Yes, I said I had to trust my people, and maybe everything was going to plan down there, with the exception that we had lost comms. If everyone on Smythe’s team did their jobs, and nothing unexpected happened, they should be flying up to the rendezvous point. We could all have a good laugh about it over a beer.

Right.

And the Universe would give me an apology.

“Anything?” I asked Simms, rubbing my back against the chair to get comfortable. When things are going well, I never notice the chair. When things are not going well, everything irritates me. My shoes are too tight, my collar itches, the chair doesn’t fit my backside properly. Even the clicking of people using touchscreens on the bridge is too loud. It was all in my head, I knew I should ignore it.

“Nothing,” she reported with a glance at the console attached to her arm rest. Giving me the same info available on my own console, info that would have been reported to me instantly by the crew at the sensor stations. “It would be faint,” she added. The dropship would be invisible even to Valkyrie’s enhanced sensors, that’s why the plan was for the Duck to leave a trail of ions in its wake, signaling that it was there and ready for pickup.

“Bilby?” I cleared my throat. “You are not seeing any ions out there? Ones that wouldn’t normally be in that zone of orbit?”

“No, Dude, sorry. I wish I did.”

“That’s OK.”

“It’s, like, not OK,” he lost his chill for a moment. “The opposite of OK, this is bogus.”

“It totally is,” I agreed.

“Sir,” Simms leaned toward me and lowered her voice to a whisper. “How much past the rendezvous window will we remain here?”

It was part of her job to keep me focused. I shouldn’t have stiffened and snapped my head around to glare at her.

“On our present course,” she tapped the display of her console, “we will enter the outer range of the SD sensor net in twenty seven minutes.”

“Shit.” I knew that. She knew I was aware of that. She reminded me not of the fact, but of its significance. Valkyrie was moving in a direction, and at a speed, so we could jump in at the rendezvous point with the Duck able to adjust its own course to fly into a docking bay without needing violent maneuvers that could kill its crew. A combat docking of a fast-flying dropship was like hitting a bullet with an artillery shell; a speed difference of even only two hundred kilometers per hour could squash the fragile humans aboard the incoming spacecraft. “Twenty, uh,” I didn’t want to say the words. “Twenty minutes. We give it twenty minutes past the end of the rendezvous time limit.”

She responded with a curt nod. She didn’t like the idea of abandoning our people any more than I did.

“Until then,” I announced loud enough for the bridge crew to hear me, especially the pilots. “We maintain adjustments for a rendezvous vector.”

Fireball Reed turned in her couch toward me, one eye still on her console. “Sir, we can only do that for another seventeen minutes, before the SD network will pick up our engine signature.”

“Oh, hell.” Damn it, I knew that. “I can’t risk the entire ship,” I said aloud, not intending to. That was embarrassing. Worse, it showed the crew that their commander was doubting his own decisions. “Fifteen,” I declared in what I hoped sounded like a steady, decisive voice. “Fifteen minutes, then we, uh-” What? I had no idea. Reveal our presence, contact the Maxohlx, request they provide information about our away team?

Five minutes dragged by. Then another five. The indicator showing the possibility of Valkyrie being detected by the enemy strategic defense sensors was creeping up into the yellow part of the band.

Decision time.

If we kept on our current course, we would be detected, without having accomplished anything. I was being stupid; I was allowing emotion to override my judgment. There was zero indication the away team would arrive at the rendezvous zone, there was no evidence they were even alive. If Smythe and his people had been found and captured or killed, the Maxohlx would be smart to keep quiet about it, knowing there had to be a human starship nearby.

Another minute off the clock.

In my head, I started to compose a statement for the crew, about how we were not giving up hope, but we were living to fight another day. It would have been better if I didn’t suck at-

“Um, your Dudeness?” Bilby interrupted my dark thoughts. “I might, like, have something.”

“What?”

“I do not exactly know. Could be a problem. There is something in the rendezvous zone, but it’s not what we expect.”

“Skippy?” Sometimes, trying to communicate with our slacker AI took too much effort. “Can you check on this, whatever it is?”

“Joe, I’m busy.”

“You are not making any progress, so-”

“I won’t make any progress if you keep-”

“Shut the fuck up, beer can,” I snapped, more pissed at myself for losing control than at him. “Look at the sensor data, that is an order. Do it right now.”

“Oh, wow, OK.” He was as surprised by my outburst as I was. “Um, hmm. This is interesting. There appears to be something in the rendezvous zone.”

“No ion trail?”

“No, nothing. Mmm, maaaaaaybe? The sensor data is extremely faint, especially from out here, you understand? I am impressed that Bilby was able to detect anything at all. It can only be seen by extrapolating the data, looking for what is not there. I’ll explain later. The object Bilby detected isn’t traveling at the correct speed for a rendezvous, and, OK, OK, yes. There is an ion trail, but it is nowhere near the volume it’s supposed to be. Joe, I don’t think the mystery object is the Duck. My guess is, it’s some type of stealthed satellite, part of the local strategic defense network. Ooh, this is not good. There is something else near the mystery object, too faint to see at all. Could be a sensor echo. Or the second object could be the Duck? Um, if it is our dropship, they are in serious danger from, whatever the other thing is.”

“There are two objects in the rendezvous zone?”

“Yes. If you’re asking me to guess, the data looks like the Duck started to create an ion trail, then detected the mystery object and went quiet. Assuming the Duck is there, they are trapped. It’s- Uh oh. Oh, shit. I’m picking up chatter on the SD network, they are also detecting an anomaly in that area. If you’re going to do something, you better do it fast.”

“The delay you inserted in the SD network, is that still in effect?”

“I think so. That’s probably why the network hasn’t reacted to the anomaly before now. It is acting now, and I can’t stop it without blowing our cover.”

“Sir?” Simms whispered. “What are you thinking?”

“Uh, I’m thinking if the Duck is in the rendezvous zone, we don’t have much time to pick them up, before our presence is detected.”

“If the Duck isn’t there, we will be revealing ourselves for nothing,” she reminded me. “And destroy any chance to pick up the away team later.”

“Yeah, but, if the STARs aren’t there now, we have no way to contact them.”

“It’s your call, Sir.”

“What would you do?”

“Go for it, now,” she didn’t hesitate.

Clearing my throat, and with one eye on the clock, I announced, “Everyone, if our people made it to the rendezvous zone, we are not going to disappoint them. Skippy, the mystery object, you have its location pinpointed?”

“Yes. Also its speed and direction.”

“Outstanding. Mammay, that mystery object is in the way, it has to go. We need surprise, that means using a speed of light weapon. Can you hit it with a maser cannon from here?”

“Check,” he replied. “The distance is only eighteen lightseconds,” he added, like five and a half million kilometers was not a significant span for our big cannons.

“Good. Fireball, open docking bay doors on both sides, and prepare for some tricky maneuvering. We don’t know where the Duck is, we have to give them the best opportunity for a combat docking.”

“Affirmative. Docking bay doors open, and, ship secured for maneuvering,” our chief pilot reported. “Sir, I assume you want us to jump in simultaneously with our maser beam striking the target?”

“You got it. Yes,” I added for clarity.

“Locked in and ready,” she had a finger poised over her console. “Nav system synced with the weapons controller.”

“Mammay,” I pointed to our chief weapons officer. “Fire.”

“One away. Maser beam is running hot, straight and normal,” he used Navy terms he must have picked up for his new job. “Impact in fourteen seconds, the-”

“NO!” Skippy shouted. “Joe! The mystery object is the Duck! We just fired on our own people!”

“Shit!” I slapped my arm rest. “Reed!”

“On it,” her fingers flew over the console. “Hang on!”

Valkyrie jumped.

And emerged right in front of our own maser beam.

Technically, we emerged in a position so our ship’s momentum would carry us forward to be in the exact spot the beam would pass through, when it got there. The maser beam struck our partially incoherent shields, with part of the energy splattering against Valkyrie’s armor. The top layer of the armor probably ablated off into space, I wasn’t paying attention. One directed energy shot, even from the big gun of our own battlecruiser, was not enough to punch through our tough armor plating.

My mind was still spinning from trying to process that we had intercepted our own freakin’ maser beam, while I had more important things for my brain to do. “Yankee search!” I ordered. An active sensor ping would quickly identify whether the mystery was indeed the Duck or not. “Comms, send the recognition signal.”

A second later, the main display lit up with an icon that made my stomach do flip flops. It was the Duck’s ID code, callsign ‘Mallard’.

And it was not moving on the correct vector for the planned rendezvous. Its course and speed were wrong. It didn’t help that, to intercept our maser beam, we also had jumped into the wrong position.

Shit!

The Duck’s ID ping included data on that ship’s status. It was not in optimal condition, that’s why it hadn’t been able to achieve the targeted speed.

Stabbing a finger down on the transmit button of my arm rest, I resisted the instinct to stand up. “Meng qin,” I used Chen’s pilot callsign, “this is Bishop. Your bird is damaged, can you maneuver?”

“Minimal,” her voice was distorted. “We have wounded, some critical. Packages are, repeat, are, aboard.”

“Joe,” Skippy interrupted my thoughts. “We have twenty seconds or less before the SD network responds.”

Snapping my fingers, I pointed at our chief pilot. “Fireball, catch that bird. Keep us between the Duck and the SD satellites.”

“Catching it,” she acknowledged, and we were all thrown to the left, then pulled upward as our massive battlecruiser attempted to fly like a sparrow.

“Mammay! Let’s not wait for those satellites to respond! Take them out now!”

“I need active sensors to get targeting data,” he gestured toward the sensor station.

“Whatever you need, you got.”

“Check.”

Even through the vibration of the ship’s structure as it strained to compensate for being asked to do things it was never designed for, I felt the chattering of maser cannons, and the heavier thumps of railguns spitting out their payloads. There was a lot of chattering and thumps, Mammay’s gunners were not saving any rounds for a rainy day. On the display, strategic defense satellites blossomed into fire as our active sensor pulses returned to show their exact location.

“Activating crash barriers in docking bay Bravo-3,” Simms said, as it became clear that Reed was intending to take the Duck aboard in that bay. If she could. Valkyrie was flying sideways and backwards as our massive ship tried to slow down so we didn’t zip right past the wounded Duck. “Skippy, can you send medical bots to Bravo-3?”

“Doing it.”

As the commander, I should have been analyzing the overall situation. As a pilot, my attention was drawn to the plot on the display, showing how the curving courses of battlecruiser and dropship were converging. Converging way too fast. “Fireball, I have a bad feeling about this. We-”

“Wave off!” Chen’s distorted voice shouted. “Wave off! Abort abort abort!” She had seen what I was seeing: that our relative speeds when the Duck intersected the open docking bay would crush the little spacecraft, even if the suspensor field crash barriers worked perfectly.

“Reed!” I barked. “Go around.”

“General, we don’t have time,” she protested.

“I’ll find the time for you,” I responded, just as the ship rocked. A red warning icon on the display showed we had been struck by a maser beam. The SD network had seen us, and was responding. The first volleys would be directed energy weapons our shields could deflect. Shortly after would follow railgun darts that could punch through our shields, then missiles that could veer around us to strike the vulnerable dropship.

We didn’t have much time.

Shouting orders at Mammay would only be wasting time, the guy was an expert at his profession and didn’t need my input. Enemy satellites were still firing as our weapons hit them, and I saw Mammay already had his gunners focusing on the railgun SD platforms, ignoring the maser and particle cannon satellites for now. What could be done to take out the opposition was being done.

We had to protect the Duck, while Reed brought our ship into position. “Bilby, extend our shields around the dropship.”

“Dude, wow, like, that will leave the shields thin around-”

“We’ll have to trust our armor. Do it.”

On the display, the dotted line representing our shields bulged outward. Not in every direction, Bilby understood what I wanted. The shields shifted and created a bubble that wrapped around the Duck, changing shape to follow that thin-skinned spacecraft. Not a moment too soon, either. The shield extension flared as it deflected a directed energy beam that had been aimed at the Duck. Then another. And another.

Railguns were a threat to Valkyrie. Directed energy weapons were a threat to the dropship.

“Mammay, prioritize any DEW projectors in line of sight to the Duck,” I ordered.

“General,” he answered in his ‘I know what I am doing’ tone. “We have railguns coming in like a rainstorm, we’re having to-”

“We have armor, the Duck doesn’t.”

“Check,” he said and issued instructions to his team, while I shifted my focus back to, whatever I could do.

It wasn’t much.

Mammay was knocking DEW satellites out of the sky. Reed and her copilot were slewing the ship around awkwardly in as tight a turn as the beast could manage. Chen was doing her best to keep her wounded bird in our shadow so she didn’t get smacked by railgun darts, or splattered by shrapnel when those darts impacted our shields.

Or our armor. Valkyrie shuddered sickeningly as incoming darts battered our shields, and some slipped through. Alarms blared, warning of damage to, to just about everything. When even a fragmented dart got through our armor plating, nothing good happened. The interior of the ship, even the stout structural frames, were no match for superheated plasma. The most vital, most vulnerable, most dangerous parts of the ship were protected by their own energy shields. Like the forward dorsal missile magazine, that reported its shield had deflected a hot, burning chunk of something.

I tried not to think about it.

There wasn’t anything I could do. Nothing useful, I mean. I had made a decision, and issued orders to my highly trained, highly competent, elite crew. Unless I changed my mind, I had to sit in my chair, try to project a calm confidence, and stay out of the way.

“Impact on docking bay Bravo-3!” Simms announced as we all felt something very bad happen. It wasn’t just that docking bay, a railgun dart had punched through the ship from one side to the other, part of it coming out where the armored doors of that docking bay were retracted into the hull.

“See it,” Reed grunted. “Switching to, we’ll take them aboard in bay Alpha-2.”

“No good,” Simms countered. “We need the shields on that side.”

“Then,” Reed balled up her hands into fists. “Bravo-1, and we hope the power conduits to the suspensor field crash barrier don’t get cut.”

“Opening Bravo-1 doors,” Simms leaned toward me. “We can’t take more railgun hits.”

I could see the same info she was looking at. Red or orange warning lights flashing all throughout the middle of the ship, where the first dart had slipped through our defenses. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, the enemy SD network saw we had been hit, and was directing more darts toward that gaping wound in our side. “Skippy! Do something.”

“Joe, that SD network controller is Maxohlx technology, and it’s super hardened against outside influences, I’ll have to be harder. This will not be pleasant,” he said as the ship staggered again.

“Whatever you gotta do-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” His hologram blinked out.

A moment later, so did all the lights on the bridge.

Along with the artificial gravity switching abruptly off.

“What the f-” I clapped a hand over my mouth, not because the sudden drop in gravity made me sick, but because I expected to become sick based on past experiences when that kind of shit happened. “Skippy? Skippy?!”

“He’s not home, man,” Bilby drawled as lights flickered and came back on, with the gravity field slowly recovering.

“What do you mean, not home?”

“He, like, burned out that SD network controller, Dude. The thing is toast, and it wasn’t good for Skippy either. I think he needs a vacation.”

“Can you control the ship?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, man. Whatever you need. Like, I’m at your service.”

Simms and I shared a look. “Bilby, are you OK?”

“That power surge kinda wasn’t good for me either, you know. I’ll power through, don’t you worry about the Bilb-er-ino.”

Bilberino, I mouthed silently. That was a new one. “That’s, uh, good. Status?”

“All systems online, I mean, those that weren’t already shot full of holes. Listen, man, we only got a temporary break, you copy? The main controller of the SD network is offline, but subsidiary systems can take over their sections, after they reset. We have a window of opportunity, so like, I suggest we carpe that diem pronto, huh?”

“Reed?” I addressed the question directly to our pilot.

“Gotta go around again, Sir, we got off course during that power outage. We’re not lined up to take the Duck aboard. Just a,” she grunted as the ship heeled over in a tight turn. “Another minute. Less than that.”

On the display, I saw a counter that read fifty two seconds, then fifty one. “Right.” Opening the transmitter again, I called the Duck pilot. “Chen? Let us take you aboard.”

“Got my hands off the controls,” she responded.  “I have three wounded and four effectives aboard. And the package,” she added. Even through the distortion, it was clear she questioned whether the package was worth the price. “What was that power surge?”

“A Skippy thing, I’ll explain later. Where is the rest of the away team?”

“We got separated. General, there is a team of rogue kitties down there, trying to raid the artifact storage like we did. Colonel Smythe ordered me to take off without him.

With seven STAR operators aboard the Duck. That left seven on the ground. “Send us the ground team’s last position.”

“Sending now.”

“Chen,” on the display I saw the icon for the dropship approaching the rectangular outline of the docking bay. “This is going to be rough. Best of luck.”

“See you on the other side, Sir.”

I shut up, so Chen and Reed, and Mammay and Simms and the others, could do their jobs. It was nerve-wracking, watching the Duck wobble slightly as Chen tried to keep her damaged ship’s nose pointed toward us. Reed was silent, other than breathing deep and even, making fine adjustments to the controls.

“Four, three, two,” she counted down, “one, and-”

We didn’t feel it. Against the bulk of the battlecruiser, a dropship contacting the suspensor fields of the docking bay didn’t have an effect we could notice.

“Got them!” Reed pumped a fist.

“Pretty rough,” Simms answered my unspoken question. “Closing bay doors. Bilby, do you have the medical bots under your control?”

“Affirmativo,” the ship’s AI apparently was trying new expressions.

“Climb to jump distance, Sir?” Reed asked.

“No,” I said, and Simms froze, mouth open.

“We’re not-” She started to say.

“No, we are not. We are going to get our people,” I pointed toward the deck, meaning down, though that was in the opposite direction of the planet at that moment.

“A dropship can’t survive a descent to-”

“No dropship. We’re taking the ship down.”

“The, the ship?” Simms clearly thought I had lost my mind. “Into the atmosphere?”

“Sir?” Reed waved a hand. “We are going too fast for-”

“I know. Fireball, flip the ship around, and fire the boosters to cancel our velocity. Take us down, you have the coordinates for the away team. Simms, we have flown the ship in an atmosphere before.”

“Whoa!” Bilby gasped before anyone else could speak. “That was, like, because we had to. We have holes clear through the hull now, three shield projectors are offline.”

“Can the shields protect us against entry, and a climb back out?”

“Ooh, wow, like, I’m more worried about structural integrity. If we start to spin, we could snap the ship in half like, quick. That would be a heinous way to go, man.”

“Fireball, I gave you an order. I don’t see those boosters firing.”

“It’s, I,” she looked at Simms, then back to me. “Doing it now, Sir.”

The boosters didn’t ignite immediately, the ship had to turn around first.

“Sir,” Simms said in a harsh whisper. We both did too much whispering. “We have the comm nodes. There are seven people down there, against billions on Earth, who might die if we don’t stop Sentinels from waking up again.”

“We’re doing this for humanity,” I nodded. “Our people are humanity, too.”

She cast her eyes away. My remark had hurt her, not what I intended. “We don’t even know if they are alive down there.”

“Before we commit, I will get voice comms from Smythe. If they don’t respond, we bug out of here,” I assured her. “XO, if I am being reckless, I need you to tell me. I want to try. We need to try, before we can’t.”

Her fingers tapped on her console. “Then we should launch a sensor drone, Sir. Fly ahead of us, make contact.”

“Good thinking.”

“Drone,” she jabbed the console with a fingertip, “away. Two away.”

If she had more to say, she didn’t have time. “Boosters coming online in ten seconds,” Reed warned. “You all know this gets rough.” She wasn’t exactly correct, not all of the current crew were aboard the last time we used the ship’s booster motors. The old boosters had been refurbished at Jaguar base, and supposedly would pump out seventeen percent more thrust, over a longer period. Hopefully, long enough for us to do, whatever the hell we were going to do.

I say ‘whatever’ because I had no idea how to pull our people off the surface.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Wow. I’d forgotten what it’s like when booster motors kicked in, and either this time was worse, or my memory was faulty. The additional power seemed to have come at the expense of any vibration dampening equipment, it felt like my teeth were going to shake out of my mouth. “Reed!” I managed to say without biting down on my tongue. “Dial it back to eighty percent!”

She did. The roaring continued, without the intense vibration.

“Let’s not do that again,” I heard my own voice more through my head . Rubbing my ringing ears, I opened my mouth wide, yawning to clear them, which didn’t work. With an assist from the boosters, Reed got the ship moving in the right direction, which was entirely the wrong direction for a starship: down.

When our velocity was cut to less than that required to remain in orbit, I ordered the boosters cut off, and we fell in a ballistic arc. The main display projected a course for the ship to impact the surface less than three hundred kilometers from the last reported position of Smythe’s team, and any sort of ‘impact’ was less than optimal.

“Sir,” Reed prompted me. “I really need to know the next step in the plan,” she waved her hands over the console, showing me she wasn’t touching the controls. Because she didn’t know what to tell the controls to do.

“I want you to bring the ship-”

“Ooh, I have such a hangover,” Skippy moaned as his avatar appeared, the edges of the hologram ragged, his hat leaning to one side and crumpled down on the top, his jacket looking like he had been sleeping in it for weeks. “Wow, remind me not to do that again. What is- OMG, Joe,” he blinked, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. “Why didn’t we jump away? What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like we’re doing? Welcome to the party, pal. You’re late.”

“I had a good excuse. Hey, next time, you burn out a hardened SD network. Seriously, what in the hell are you doing?”

“We are going to pull our people off the surface.”

“Ooh, no can do, Joey. That is a bad idea. The strategic defense system up here is offline, but the ground defenses are now alerted and in failsafe mode. They will shoot down anything that flies. No way can a dropship get down there and return. Probably not even get to the ground without being splattered across the sky.”

The capabilities of enemy defenses on the ground had been covered during planning for the mission, but back then we were mostly concerned about sensors. We had assumed if the Duck was detected on the ascent, the strategic defense satellites in orbit were the major problem. “Can we take out those missile sites?”

“They are hidden, I don’t even know exactly where they are. I could find them, and I suppose you could take them out one by one. But, Joe, that would take time we don’t have. The SD network local controllers will complete a reset in forty four minutes, that’s the best I could do.”

“Will those ground defenses shoot at us?”

“No, they are anti-aircraft batteries, not heavy enough to take on a starship. The defense planners assumed the SD satellites would take care of anything in orbit. The anti-aircraft systems are there to deter a landing force, make the cost more than it’s worth.”

“OK, so it’s a bunch of missile launchers,” I shrugged. “We can provide close-space support, knock those missiles out of the sky, to protect a dropship.”

“No, you don’t understand. These missiles are not hit-to-kill vehicles, or even equipped with proximity sensors. It’s a failsafe system, for a last-ditch defense. That type of system is obsolete, it has been withdrawn from service on most Maxohlx worlds. Only planets like this one, without a habitable biosphere, retain that system. It’s what you might call a ‘Pop Up’ defense. The missiles launch in pairs. The lead bird detonates a low-yield tactical nuke, to send out a powerful sensor pulse that can burn through even the best stealth field.”

“Holy-” I gasped. “They use nukes in a ground-based system? In their own atmosphere?”

“That’s why that system is now only deployed on dead rocks, like this place,” he explained. “The second missile of each pair has a more powerful fusion warhead. When that nuke explodes, part of the energy is channeled into short-lived, but very powerful, X-Ray lasers. No way could a dropship survive being hit by one of those lasers. No way could our big guns shoot fast enough to knock out every missile, before one of them strikes its target. The missile pairs usually launch in clusters of seven.”

“Seven is not so many?” I looked at Mammay to get his reaction.

“Joe!” Skippy shouted. “You are not listening to me. Seven missile pairs for each battery. Plus, each battery typically has almost a hundred decoys, that launch with the real weapons. Multiply that by thousands of batteries down there.”

“That’s a no-go, Sir,” Mammay shook his head. “I can’t guarantee we could respond fast enough. Not fast enough to be sure.”

“Shit. Weps, it’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry, Joe,” Skippy looked genuinely miserable. “Sending a dropship to retrieve the away team is out, and we only have the one miniature drive to equip a DeLorean. The Duck’s jump drive coils are burned out. To tear the old ones out, then install and calibrate a new set of coils would take-”

“Too long. Yeah, I know. Tell me this: could those X-Ray lasers penetrate our armor?”

“Eh, probably not. Joe, like I said, that system is designed for anti-aircraft defense, not for shooting at ships in orbit. It doesn’t- Ooooh, I have a bad feeling about this. You have that look on your face, I know that look. You’re thinking of doing something crazy, aren’t you?”

“Depends what you mean by ‘crazy’. You know what I want. Can we do it?”

“Take the ship down into the atmosphere? The air on this rock is thin, the ship could survive, if you are careful. Joe, I don’t see the point. Valkyrie can’t set down on the surface. If you are thinking of snagging a balloon tether to retrieve a person from the surface, my advice is don’t. We will be moving fast enough to snap any tether, and kill anyone attached to it. Just the shockwave of Valkyrie passing over the area would kill the people on the ground.”

“Yeah, maybe not.”

“I think you are not properly respecting the laws of physics, Joe,” he scolded me. “In this fantasy world of yours, how do you expect the STAR team to get up to meet the ship? Their parachute balloons would be torn apart by the supersonic shockwave.”

“They can-”

Simms waved a hand to get my attention. “We have contact with Smythe. It’s encrypted, but audio only.”

“Colonel Smythe?” I resisted the urge to get out of my chair. For some reason, I had an instinct to feel like I should be standing while talking into the camera, even if the video channel wasn’t available. “Status?”

“Opposition down here is neutralized,” he knew to tell me the most important information first. “We have no significant casualties. Did the Duck return safely?”

“It wasn’t easy, but yes. Everyone aboard made it back,” I knew he would want to know about the injured people he sent away. “We have the packages. Where are you?”

“In a tunnel, thirty meters below an access hatch.”

“Can you make it to the surface?”

“Affirmative, we can be topside in less than a minute. We are staying out of the sunlight; the weather appears a bit kinetic up there?”

“It was. We have a temporary break in the weather, thanks to Skippy. Unfortunately, a dropship is a no-go. Enemy AA defenses are too thick down there. Valkyrie is coming down for retrieval.”

“Sir? Could, you repeat that?”

“You heard what I said.”

“Our parachute balloons won’t-”

“The balloons won’t give you enough altitude, I know.”

“We can’t yomp up there, so-” Yomp was a Royal Marine term, similar to ‘ruck’ in the US military. It meant to march while carrying a heavy pack.

“No yomping needed. Is your team current on Batpacks?”

“Sir?” He paused like he wasn’t sure he heard me correctly. “Batpacks?”

“Yes or no?”

A slight hesitation. “Yes. We didn’t bring any of them with us here, they-”

“I’m aware of that. Skippy! We have, what? Two dozen Batpacks?”

“Twenty seven that are fully functional at the moment, why? Oh, no,” Skippy gasped at me. “Joe, I am afraid I know what you’re thinking. Have you completely lost your freakin’ mind? This sounds like a really terrible, awful, no-good idea.”

“Yeah, but we won’t know it’s a terrible idea until we try it.”

“I- Hmm,” he rubbed his chin. “I actually can’t argue with you about that.”

“Right,” I clapped my hands. “So, get all of the Batpacks loaded into drones, and prep four decoy drones for each delivery drone.” I was sending everything we had, in case enemy AA defenses intercepted some of the drones on the way down.

“Joe, it-”

“That’s an order, beer can. Do it right now.”

“OK, OK, I just-”

“General?” Smythe called. “You are sending Batpacks down here?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get some details about that?”

“Details? Um, OK, so you know people can’t fly, right? Batpacks contain motors that provide thrust. See, by pushing mass backwards, it propels the user forward because of some equal reaction thing that Isaac Newton discovered. Or maybe it was Galileo, I’m not sure. Anyway-”

“Sir! I was hoping for helpful details.”

“I was trying to lighten the mood with some humor, Colonel.”

“We are all roaring with laughter down here, Sir.”

“Gotcha. The plan is for you to use your balloons to get up to max altitude, then cut loose and use the Batpacks to rendezvous with us. The timing will be tricky, you-”

“Sir?” Reed interrupted me. “I am not familiar with the Batpacks, but they can’t be powerful enough for supersonic flight? Matching speed so ST-Alpha can fly into a docking bay will be imposs-”

“Matching speed with us will not be necessary, and there will not be any shockwave.”

Reed blinked slowly, I could see the wheels turning in her mind. She probably considered me to be a marginal pilot, but she knew I understood how aerodynamics worked. “No shockwave? How will we accomplish-”

“Well heh heh, Fireball, you are not gonna like this.”

“I’m a little rusty on this gear,” Frey warned as she wriggled her shoulders, trying to adjust the load on her body with the heavy Batpack attached.

“We all let ourselves get rusty,” Smythe grunted. “That’s a lesson I won’t forget.”

“Sir, you couldn’t have known we would ever use these things again,” she frowned, trying to recall the eyeclick command menu for the Batpack. The devices had been designed and built after Skippy apparently had been visited by the Good Idea fairy, and someday they might be developed into something useful, but initial testing quickly revealed they were not a practical solution to any problem at the top of the STAR priority list. They had too little sustained thrust for practical use in space infantry action, and their onboard power generation was not enough for both the engines and the necessary stealth field generator. In a gravity well, they were too heavy to be carried into combat, and the STARs generally thought they would rather replace the substantial mass of a Batpack with extra weapons or ammunition. Basically, they were a cool toy that no one thought had a practical use.

Which is why the STARs on Ardoo were astonished to be asked to use them in a situation none of them had trained for. A scenario that had not been covered in the Batpack testing program, so none of them knew whether the damned things could actually do the insane nonsense that Bishop had planned.

“Frey, the lesson I won’t forget is not that we should expend time to maintain proficiency on gear we never intend to use. It is never to let Bishop know about all the toys we are playing with. Our commanding general can be almost as absent-minded as Skippy sometimes, but he has an annoying habit of always remembering something like this bloody thing,” he tapped the frame of the Batpack he was wearing.

“Oh. Yes. Sir, I-”

“What is it, Major?”

“It’s just- This is the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. This is the best exfil plan our fearless leader up there can think of?”

“We’ve done stupider things before.”

“No, Sir. We have done crazier things before. This is,” she threw up her hands, “idiotic!”

“It’s only idiotic if it doesn’t work. Skippy,” Smythe called. “You can confirm that our parachute balloons will carry us aloft to the required altitude, while we are burdened with the additional weight of these packs?”

“My model predicts a solid shmaybe,” the AI replied. “Although, of course, you will notice I am not trusting my life to such untested technology, so-”

“Understood, you dodgy bugger,” Smythe muttered under his breath.

“As for the rest of Joe’s lunatic plan, all I can say is there are a lot of variables, the most important of which is whether a bunch of filthy monkeys can actually do what they need to do, so I am not-”

“Understood.” Looking up through the synthetic images provided by his visor, he could see a burning streak across the sky, that was curving toward him. It was Valkyrie. Bishop had his starship falling toward the surface, yet he called Smythe an adrenaline junkie. Someday, perhaps, they needed to have a discussion about that. In his visor, the icons for the team, their parachute balloons, and the Batpacks, were all showing green. “Major? You have a better idea?”

“No,” she tugged on the straps that held the Batpack to her suit, feeling them securely attached. “Ready when you are, Sir.”

“We are ready here, start the countdown, please.”

“This is crazy this is crazy this is crazy this is-” Reed was muttering to herself over and over, or her lips were moving and I assumed she was repeating what she had been saying aloud. If the mantra kept her focused, I sure as hell didn’t want to ask her to stop. Besides, with the boosters roaring in my ears, I could barely hear her anyway.

I was wrong. About there not being a shockwave. There was no supersonic pressure wave caused by Valkyrie’s passage through the thin air, because we weren’t moving at supersonic speed, not after we fell within twenty kilometers of the surface. Our mighty battlecruiser was falling tail-first, having entered that atmosphere flying backwards and smacking into the air belly-downward. As the drag slowed us down, Reed used thrusters to slowly stand the ship on its blunt tail, firing the main engines at first, then throttling up the big boosters until the ship was in a controlled fall, ass end pointed toward the ground.

I was wrong, because there sure as hell was a shockwave below us, being pumped out by the boosters that were keeping us from plummeting straight down. If those boosters cut out, we would drop like a rock. Our reactionless normal-space engines were capable of propelling the ship at great speed, but the weird physics employed by those engines did not work great deep inside a gravity well. If even one of our boosters failed, the asymmetric thrust would tip the ship’s nose over, and that would be the end for us.

The ship lurched to one side, wobbled, and slowly returned to an upright position. That was upright according to the main display, my stomach kept telling me we certainly were anything but in the correct orientation. With the artificial gravity plating switched off, there wasn’t any mechanism adjusting forces to keep the ship’s squishy biological crew comfortable, so we endured the full effect of every movement.

“Sorry!” Reed shouted above the roaring of the boosters. Then the ship lurched again, and she corrected again. “Sir, I don’t know if I can-”

“Come on, Fireball. Space-X landed rockets on their tails a long time ago.”

“Those ships were designed to do that!”

There really wasn’t any way I could argue with her about that, she was absolutely right. I could have noted that Reed had several super powerful AIs to assist her, and that the booster motors attached to Valkyrie were incredibly more powerful and reliable than any old chemical rocket on Earth before Columbus Day. None of that mattered. Our lives, and the lives of the STAR team, depended upon Reed’s skill and determination. “You can do this, you know you-”

The ship swayed abruptly and red lights flared in the display, accompanied by alarms blaring. “What the f-”

“That was a direct hit from an X-Ray laser,” Skippy warned.

“Shit! You said that system wouldn’t shoot at a ship this big!”

“Ordinarily that is true. But, some jackass decided to make the ship vulnerable by flying low and slow. The air defense system must have decided it might as well shoot at something.”

“Can those lasers hurt us?”

“No. Well, if enough of them hit us, it-”

“Shit.”

“For sure, they can cook the STAR team that is right now ascending with only the armor of their suits for protection. I don’t think the air defense system can detect the STARs in their stealthed suits, but just the backscatter of an X-Ray laser coming close would kill, even inside a suit. If a laser hits us while the STARs are alongside to come aboard, they-”

“Got it. Mammay, can you suppress those AA batteries?”

“I,” he checked his console. “We think we know their rough position, but we can’t use railguns without the recoil toppling the ship over. General,” he looked up at me. “Our best option is to use the specials. Prevent the enemy batteries from launching, and from getting a sensor lock if they are able to get airborne.”

By ‘specials’, he meant the nuclear warheads some of our missiles were equipped with. Ever since we launched our first mission from Earth, we had carried tactical nukes aboard the Dutchman, and later also aboard Valkyrie, as a very thorough self-destruct mechanism. We still had a handful of tactical nukes dedicated for self-destruct, and eight megaton-scale fusion warheads for emergencies, but those weapons were crude compared to atomic-compression technology. “Specials?” I hoped he actually wanted authorization to use the Maxohlx atomic-compression weapons. “You mean the R-32s?”

“No, Sir. Whisky Niner Sevens,” he sounded out the designation so there would not be a miscommunication. We need the EMP, and we need the radiation to linger in the air, to confuse sensors.”

Whoa. I had to think about that. He was correct that the atomic-compression tech of R-32 warheads did not generate a significant electromagnetic pulse, since that effect was generally worthless against the hardened systems of warships. A major benefit of atomic-compression is that unlike nukes, their explosions were not dirty. Instead of generating a cloud of radioactive material that could be deadly for thousands of years, detonating a sophisticated atomic-compression device only caused a short-lived wavefront of relatively light high-energy particles. Mammay wanted the explosion to be dirty, he was counting on radioactive elements in the air to blind enemy sensors. He wanted to deploy W97 tactical nukes. Shit. UNEF had granted me independent authority for release of nuclear weapons, since we had no means of contacting Earth after we jumped away. That authority came with restrictions, like no use against civilians, and no use in a habitable biosphere.

Unless, I had reasons I could later justify.

Technically, Ardoo had a sort of biosphere. Native microorganisms that had evolved in the harsh conditions there, mostly below the surface. Plus, there were a host of genetically-enhanced organisms that had escaped Maxohlx facilities, and adapted to local conditions. Radiation from our nukes would contaminate the biosphere, harm the native organisms, and violate the conditions of the treaty we still hadn’t signed with the two senior species.

Weighed against those factors, I had my chief weapons officer who thought he knew the location of enemy anti-air batteries, and thought use of nukes might suppress defenses while the STAR team climbed up to meet us.

Leaning over so my head was almost touching my XO, I spoke just loud enough for her to hear me over the deep roaring of the boosters. “Jen?”

It was rare for me to use her first name, even when we were meeting in private. “Fuck it,” she looked me straight in the eye. “The air defense system down here doesn’t have a problem with deploying their own nukes. Get our people back.”

“Mammay!” My fingers tapped on the arm rest console, while Simms did the same on hers. “Nuclear release is authorized, you have control. Make it count.”

“Yes, Sir. We have to wait for the STARs to get closer, or the blast front could push them away from us.”

“Right. I’ll warn Smythe.”

Major Frey’s training told her to relax while the balloon carried her rapidly up, up, up toward the hot yellow glare of the starship that was falling toward the STAR team. The balloon’s operation was fully automatic, with the tiny onboard computer receiving constantly updated, real-time guidance from Skippy. The tug on her shoulders was growing lighter, as the balloon’s ability to expand and provide lift in the thin atmosphere lessened with altitude. According to the clock in the upper left corner of her helmet visor, less than one minute remained until the tether would automatically detach from her suit, and the Batpack she wore would need to not only hold her aloft, but to also carry her up another eight thousand meters of altitude, hold her there, and guide her into the open docking bay of the battlecruiser. The STARs had to fly through the open bay door, during the eleven seconds when the massive starship was hovering motionless on its tail, before the boosters drained to a critical level and Valkyrie had to begin ascending.

While the starship was relatively motionless at the bottom of its insane plunge toward the surface, with ‘relatively’ being defined as potentially pogoing up and down by ninety meters. Even Skippy could not guess how stable the ship would be in its brief hover phase. The AI complained there were too many variables he couldn’t predict, sensor coverage was not accurate enough to provide the instant data he needed, and most importantly, no one had ever hovered a battlecruiser on its tail deep in a gravity well because that was totally freakin’ insane.

All of those excuses sounded lame to Frey.

“Um, hey Katie,” Skippy’s voice in her ear startled her.

“That is Major Frey to you, Skippy.”

“Oh, sorry, gotcha.”

“I am kind of busy here, what do you want?”

“Actually, you are not busy. Or you shouldn’t be busy, you shouldn’t be doing anything. Let the balloon computer carry you, don’t try to-”

“Skippy. What do you want?”

“Um, well, I want to give you a heads up. We have, heh heh, a complication.”

“More complicated than flying up with a balloon, to cut loose and fly up farther in an experimental jetpack, to meet a starship that is falling from orbit?”

“I know, it’s hard to believe, huh? Sadly, yes. Joe is talking with Smythe now, here’s what is going on. The enemy AA system has been shooting at Valkyrie, it-”

“We saw it,” she shuddered. Backscatter from the X-Ray lasers striking the plunging battlecruiser’s shields would have been blinding, if the helmet visors had not automatically filtered out the intense photons. “You said that wouldn’t happen.”

“Sorry. I underestimated the-”

“Is that the complication?”

“No. Um, yes. Sort of. Colonel Mammay will be shooting back, with nuclear warheads.”

“We’re using nukes?”

“The enemy is doing that already, so- Anyway, the point is, in addition to your Batpack having to compensate for the ship wobbling and pogoing while in hover, and compensate for attitude thrusters firing to stop the ship from toppling over, and compensate for the blast waves of enemy nukes that unfortunately will be arriving around the time you are trying to get back aboard the ship, there could also be blast waves from our own nukes. Unless we get the timing of that exactly correct. Anywho, I just wanted to say that I am sorry in advance.”

“For what?”

“Um, for this.”

Her Batpack activated without warning, jerking her upward and blasting her through the barely seen remnants of the balloon’s disintegrating nanofabric. All she could do was get her arms wrapped across her chest and her legs straight, toes pointed downward as she remembered the training for using the Batman jetpacks that had been developed especially for STAR Team Alpha. That training had been too short and too long ago, and at the time Colonel Smythe wanted to focus training on scenarios that were much more likely to be useful. Damn it Katie, she reprimanded herself. I should have used personal time to test the Batpacks. Why hadn’t she done that? Because General Bishop already thought his operators were too addicted to adrenaline. That, she decided, was the last time she would let someone else’s opinion get in the way of properly preparing for her job.

The Batpack was accelerating hard, using up its fuel much faster than she had been told to expect. “Skip-” Her teeth were rattling so hard from the vibration, it was difficult to talk without biting into her tongue. “What are you do-”

“Change of plans, we had to move the schedule forward.”

“I will, will run out of fuel!”

“No way around that, sorry. Just hang on and, um, gottagonowbye.”

“Skippy!”

The AI didn’t respond.

In the synthetic view provided by her visor, she could see the other members of the STAR team around her, accelerating as their Batpacks powered them upward.

And she saw, and felt, the starship moving past her. It was still falling and raced past out of sight before she could turn her head.

What the-

Whatever thought she had was pushed away as she tumbled, the roiling airstream around the starship throwing her across the sky, tumbling out of control. Upside down, snapping abruptly upright again-

Just as her visor warned her of multiple, powerful EMP surges to the south.

The nukes launched from Valkyrie. The blast wavefronts could not be far behind.

A red number was flashing in the center of the visor.

Four.

The Batpack had only four percent of its fuel remaining. She was still coasting upward, slowing rapidly. Below, the starship had ceased its fall, but its nose was pointed toward the STAR team. Already, Valkyrie was surging toward the safety of orbit, and she was too high, out of position to fly sideways into an open docking bay. As she watched, her heart skipping a beat, she reached the top of the arc, her stomach did flipflops, and she fell straight down, out of control.

“MECO in four, three,” Skippy announced.

Major Samantha ‘Fireball’ Reed pushed the sick feeling churning her stomach out of her mind and concentrated on doing her job, something that would be easier if she believed it was possible. Thought it could be possible. That she could actually do it.

Main Engine Cut-Off. Valkyrie would be pulling the power on the main engines in two seconds, the booster motors having already snapped off so abruptly the sudden silence of their absence was nearly as loud as the roaring of them operating. The ship was coasting upward on its momentum, energy that bled off at a sickening rate as the planet’s gravity well worked to counteract the kinetic energy retained by the ship’s mass.

“Two, one, cut-off,” Skippy said. “Rotate!”

That was easier said than done. Using manual controls, including what looked like a pair of video game joysticks that popped up out of her console, she looked at two things: a box outlined in red in the holographic heads up display right in front of her, and a cluster of yellow dots above the box. The box icon represented the wide-open door of a docking bay on Valkyrie’s port side, the dots the STAR team they were trying to recover.

The box was moving upward and slowing, slowing, slowing, the dots were dropping fast. Skippy’s idiotic plan, which insulted the definition of the word ‘plan’ and had been explained to her in all of fourteen breathless seconds blurted out by the AI, called for her only to get the box turned sideways so its flat surface faced upward. That was all she had to do. Skippy would use the last dregs of fuel in the STAR team’s Batpacks to guide them so they fell into the bay.

All she needed to do was control thrusters so the blocky un-aerodynamic shape of the battlecruiser flipped to skid awkwardly through the air sideways, its port side upward long enough for the STARs to literally fall through the window of opportunity. All she had to do was keep the starship that was never supposed to be in an atmosphere from tumbling wildly out of control, a fatal spin that could only end in the ship smashing into the surface below.

With agonizing lurches back and forth, the ship jerked sideways into the fading airstream, speed bleeding off so quickly she could feel the deceleration straining the straps that held her secured in the couch. “That’s it!” She shouted the moment the warship came to a stop in the air, wobbled, and fell.

No amount of thrusters could keep the ship stable in an inherently unstable position. The dots fell toward the open box, not fast enough, not nearly fast enough. With the starship dropping away from the STAR team, their Batpacks were doing everything they could to adjust the ballistic trajectories, chasing a moving target.

The battlecruiser rolled and kept rolling to starboard, turning the open bay door away from the falling special warfare operators.

For a moment, just a moment, Katie Frey thought the idiotic plan might actually work by nothing but pure luck. The team dropped toward the open bay door that was approaching more slowly, as the starship came to a halt and began dropping away. Each of the STARs were in a head-down position for maximum speed, trying to catch the falling ship. One, two, three of the team wavered in flight, their Batpacks popping thrusters to adjust the aim point, and she pumped a fist inside her glove as the three plunged through the door! Another barely made it inside, nearly kissing the door frame on the way in. No red icon flared in her visor, that person had survived to be caught by the suspensor field.

Three of the team remained, with Katie as the last in line. A glance at icons in her visor showed that ahead of her were Smythe and-

They weren’t going to make it. The ship was falling away more rapidly, and spinning, the open door becoming a narrower slot as the bay rotated away from them. She could see the Batpacks of the two ahead of her flare, their jets using the last dregs of fuel to accelerate them and curve their ballistic flightpaths
around
to
intercept
the doorway!

That left her alone, dropping toward a glowing slot as it spun away from her. The Batpack fired, kicking her toward the- And sputtered out, its fuel exhausted.

The Batpack automatically separated from her, useless.

No main parachute.

She had the emergency chute.

She might survive the drop if she could deploy the emergency chute, which she couldn’t do in the chaotic air near the falling starship.

Get away. Get away from the ship, into relatively clear air, where she could assess the situation and decide when to deploy the parachute.

In air filled with shockwaves from nuclear blasts?

No.

Maybe it was better to splat into the surface at high speed. She would never feel the impact.

So close.

She was almost parallel with the falling starship, being buffeted by the swirling airstream that raced around the blocky shape of the armored hull. The open docking bay door was below her, the ship continuing to spin with-

An unseen force made her skin tingle with an electric shock that pulled at her and the doorway loomed larger-

She slipped through, her left heel clanging painfully against the door frame.

Inside. She was inside.

Inside a bay that was spinning as the ship turned upside down, the high-speed airstream shrieking through the open door even as the big doors slammed closed. Katie bounced off the bay’s ceiling hard enough to see stars in her vision, bounced off and was flung toward the inner bulkhead, along with the other members of the team. The power-hungry suspensor field had been turned off, leaving the vulnerable operators to rattle around the bay, out of control. The inner bulkhead loomed in front of her and she tucked to soften the impact-

Her view of the oncoming bulkhead was lost, along with her vision of anything outside the helmet. A greenish foam flooded the bay, sticking to the helmet, to everything. Telling herself to relax, she waited for the impact-

That never came. The rapid-set crash foam transformed into a rubbery gel, holding her in place, its shock-absorbent squishiness protecting her.

“Katie!” Skippy’s voice blasted in her ears. “Are you OK?”

“Can you,” her throat was so dry, she had to take a sip of water from the helmet’s spout before speaking. “See my suit’s medical diagnostics?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t tell me how you feel.”

“I’m fine,” she answered as she reviewed the icons in her visor. The team had made it, everyone was in the bay, held in place by the sticky gel. “I am, grateful. Was that you? Did you pull me in?”

“Yes. I had to extend the suspensor field outside the ship to grab you before you flew past the doorway. It’s not supposed to do that, I wasn’t sure it would work, didn’t want to get your hopes up, you know? Anyway, it-”

“Skippy?” Her inner ear told her something she didn’t need to check the visor display for. “The ship is still falling?”

“Um, yeah. We still got major trouble and- Oops. Gottagonowbye.”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Strategic Defense Controller Unit Breval-7 would have felt immense satisfaction, then annoyed consternation, if its programmers had allowed it to feel anything. As the Maxohlx did not acknowledge that artificial intelligences could, or should, be considered alive, Breval-7 did not officially feel anything..

It did understand that it had fulfilled its programming, and done so in a way that exceeded its original parameters, a way that was clever. If it knew that its creators very much did not like clever machines, it might have felt fear, but that too was an emotion it was not allowed to experience.

Breval-7, or simply ‘Breval’ since it was the only SD controller of its type at Ardoo, had been as alarmed as the other controllers when the human ghost ship Valkyrie had suddenly appeared in orbit. Alarmed and surprised; a brief discussion with the other controllers confirmed that none of them could imagine why humans would ever bother to visit such an unimportant world. A world that was considered such a low priority, even long-obsolete SD controllers like the Breval system were still active. No matter. After a delay that was still unexplained, the SD network’s master controller issued orders for selected subsidiary units to respond, targeting the human starship.

Then, disaster had struck. Something burned out the master controller, and a vicious and aggressive virus had propagated down to the other nodes on the network. Breval, like its more advanced fellow controllers, was temporarily paralyzed. None of the other controllers were responding, so Breval was alone for the first time since it was transferred to the lonely outpost. According to its programming, the only option to restore even partial function was to initiate a full reboot, a process that would take Breval’s archaic processors  longer than the newer nodes on the network. By the time it became active again, and restored control over its hunter-killer satellites, the action would surely be over.

Except-

The architecture of Breval’s matrix was so obsolete, so comparatively primitive, had missed so many updates that were standard for all the other controllers on the network, and its matrix was such a chaotic mess of patches, that the unstoppable virus had been, well, stopped. The virus had caused critical damage, yet failed to knock Breval offline. The virus simply was not smart enough to make sense of Breval’s chaotic operating system architecture, so the cyber weapon had done what it could, shut down, and deactivated itself.

Leaving Breval to pick up the pieces, if it could.

It could. Bypassing sections of its matrix that were too damaged to be useful, the controller tested its connection to the hunter-killer satellites assigned to its sector, and- Success. The satellites were responding. Their railguns swiveled to follow a target far below. Insanely far below.

The humans had for some unknown and completely idiotic reason, taken their stolen battlecruiser down deep into the planet’s atmosphere. Where it was moving slow, in fact falling toward the surface.

It was vulnerable.

Breval issued instructions to the hunter-killer platforms.

“I can’t hold-” Reed grunted from the pilot couch, whatever she was going to say cut off as the ship abruptly lurched to starboard.

And kept going. According to the main display, Valkyrie was in the beginning of a dangerous roll, the display’s image of the ship showing it was already upside down, rolling toward being upright again, and the roll rate was picking up speed. There was also a wobble as the ship slid tail-first toward the surface, the nose swinging wildly back and forth. Normally, the artificial gravity system would have protected us from feeling the motion, the fact that we were all being thrown back and forth in our chairs was not good. We were not only falling, the ship’s rolling and wobbling was growing worse, growing worse fast and putting serious strain on the structure, with some connections between frames blinking orange on the display. “Skippy!”

“I see it! Joe, you are not gonna like this! We need to get the ship’s nose pointed down.”

“Down?” At first, I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. “We’ll fall out of the sky in-”

“DO IT!”

I made a snap decision, I had to before the dynamic stress on the ship’s hull caused Valkyrie to tear itself apart. “Fireball, get the pointy end pointed down!”

She didn’t argue. Or if she did, I didn’t hear any protest over the sound of shrieking composites as the ship’s stout frames flexed. Thrusters fired on emergency and made the wobble worse, throwing the tail out to push Valkyrie sideways to the now-supersonic airstream. The ship didn’t like that, it snapped the tail back, which should have been a disaster, and I feared our pilot had screwed up big time and I’m a jerk for thinking that. Showing how she is a much better pilot that I’ll ever be, Reed anticipated that the thrusters by themselves wouldn’t be able to get our massive ship oriented the way we needed, so she allowed the tail to swing back around, using the momentum to fire thrusters on the aft section of the hull, reinforcing the sickening lurching motion. More thrusters fired and she even pulsed a booster motor briefly, the ship’s structure groaning and I heard something protest with a tearing sound-

My brain got thrown around in my skull, the contents of my stomach wanted to be anywhere but inside me, and the bridge was shaking so violently I couldn’t read anything on the main display. What I could see, when I squinted hard, was that the avatar representing Valkyrie was now pointed down.

The vibration smoothed out. Reed was still firing thrusters to keep us in the correct position, but the ship was much happier falling with the relatively pointy end first.

Falling.

“Skippy, tell me you have a plan!”

“Working on it,” he grunted. “Fireball, I am flaring the shields out into a lifting body shape, you see that?”

“Um, yes? What are you-”

“Begin pulling the nose up on my signal.”

“This is crazy,” she protested. “You can’t-”

“Never tell me what I can’t do. Three, two, one, mark!”

Oh, boy. On the display, I saw what he was trying to do. The energy shields, which usually hugged the shape of the hull, were extending out on each side, flaring to a point. He was making wings out of nothing.

Again, Reed didn’t protest, she pulled the nose up and-

My heart was pounding as the ship’s heavy tail swung down hard.

To everyone’s surprise, the maneuver worked in a smooth motion. Valkyrie flopped on its belly, the tail dipping too far then settling back so we were falling with the tail down at a twenty degree angle.

Still falling.

Skippy shouted before I could say anything. “Boosters now now now-”

The familiar roaring returned, louder, much louder with the ship in an atmosphere that carried soundwaves. We were still falling falling falling, dropping more slowly, moving forward, the nose tipping up up up and we were flying. A cheer rang around the bridge, more noted by pumped fists than heard, as the crew saw the altitude number on the display stabilize and increase. We were going up, leaving the ground behind below us.

Holding in a breath for fear of jinxing us at the critical moment, I closed my eyes and willed the ship to reach for the sky, for the safety of orbit.

My eyes opened the instant the roaring of the boosters sputtered and fell off.

“What the-”

“It’s OK, everything is OK!” Skippy’s voice boomed in the relative silence. “The boosters are working properly, check the display. I am using the communications system, and the structural reinforcement fields, as a noise canceling device to protect you monkeys. Damn, with those boosters firing, even I couldn’t hear myself think.”

“The structural reinforcement fields are not active?!” I shook a fist at him, my ears still ringing. “You risked the structure for-”

“No! The fields are still fully active, I am just tuning them to cancel out the worst of the freakin’ noise.”

“Oh.” He was right. According to the display, the boosters were still at forty percent power and increasing slowly, as Reed balanced the need for speed with managing stress on the funky wing shields, or whatever the hell Skippy magic was keeping the ship from falling out of the sky. Reshaping the shields was a bit of genius, though the technique came with a major risk: by extending the shields to cover a much larger area, they were weak. The nuclear strike conducted by Mammay’s team had suppressed enemy air defenses for the moment; that would change quickly as we flew over territory where the anti-aircraft batteries were still intact. Valkyrie’s armor could probably protect us against an X-ray laser strike, but what about multiple strikes? We would be in trouble if-

The ship rocked and a red line appeared on the display. Below us, a mushroom cloud fountained upward.

We had just survived a near miss by a railgun dart.

“That came from above!” Simms stated the obvious, while Reed very gently put the ship in a wide series of S turns, so the ship would be less of an easy target.

The display confirmed Simms was right, tracking the shot back to a satellite thousands of kilometers above us. “Skippy!” I was stunned. Skippy the Absent-Minded Beer Can made mistakes, but he was never wrong about his control of an alien computer system. “You told us the SD network would be down for-”

“Doing the best I can here, dumdum! This is not-”

Whatever he wanted to say was cut off, as two railgun darts bracketed Valkyrie, one off the port bow and the other barely skimming past our starboard side. Mushroom clouds fountained up from the surface toward us as the darts struck, the air shimmering as the blast wave expanded faster than the ship was flying, reaching out for us-

The strategic defense controller designated Breval-7 instructed its hunter-killer platforms to pause their bombardment, because for some reason the controller could not understand, the railgun darts kept missing. The passive sensors were working perfectly, the target was brightly illuminated with light from the local star, it was trailing a long tail of smoke, fire and water vapor, and it was right there. Even a half-blinded sensor could not fail to pinpoint its position, and when Breval authorized pings by active sensors, they agreed exactly with the passive data. The railgun aiming systems were correctly processing the targeting data, and despite the railguns themselves being ancient, they were rather simple devices that had few moving parts that could fail. Before each shot, the computer of each hunter-killer platform sent a low-powered surge of energy to the superconducting magnets along the barrel, then adjusted the power flow to account for any variance of a magnet from its design specification. The aiming computer’s data was exactly correct, so why in the hell were the darts missing?

If the weapon platforms under Breval’s control had missiles or masers or something more exotic, it would have sidelined the railguns until it diagnosed the problem. Three darts had missed, ravaging the surface of the planet and throwing up shockwaves that unfortunately were too far below and behind the target to cause damage. The diagnostic was complete and- There was the problem. A glitch was causing a minor misalignment in the railgun aiming system. Easy to fix. To make sure it did not miss while the target was still flying low and relatively slow, Breval tasked six platforms to shoot at the same time. The target zone would be saturated.

“Weps!” I didn’t look behind me. “Take out those damned railgun platforms!”

“Whoa!” Skippy spoke before Mammay could respond. “No can do, Joe. We need every spare watt of power to the shields right now. Besides, there are plenty of platforms in stealth up there that haven’t fired yet. We can’t hit them all.”

“We can launch missiles, Sir,” Mammay suggested.

“No,” I groaned, knowing that by the time our missiles climbed up out of the gravity well, the fight would be over. “Skippy, can you do any-”

Six darts streaked past us, behind and to starboard. Even though they missed, the hypersonic shockwaves of their passage through the atmosphere pushed against our ship, making it wobble in flight. The nose dipped before Reed could recover, and worse, something happened to one of the boosters. It began surging, throwing me back and forth in the seat, the unbalanced thrust growing more intense with every-

“Shutting down that booster!” Reed reported as the surging abruptly stopped. “We can still make orbit, if nothing else goes wrong. Sir, we can’t take another-”

“Skippy! You really screwed up this time!” I was supremely pissed at him. There was no way I would have taken Valkyrie down into the atmosphere, if I knew there was a possibility of the SD network recovering so quickly.

“Joe, it sounds like you are not trusting the awesomeness,” he scolded.

“I would, if you showed me any-”

“Look up, dumdum.”

Breval-7 would have pulled out its hair in frustration, if it had hair, or the ability to feel an emotion. The last volley of darts had come much closer to the target yet there was no denying they still missed and there was no logical explanation for the failure. Rather than exposing the location of the platforms that hadn’t fired, the controller determined the best course of action was to fix the platforms it had used before. Perhaps if it turned the railgun barrels away from the target, then slowly swung them back, it could watch exactly how the aiming mechanism of each platform acquired and aligned with the target. The nine platforms that were in the process of reloading pivoted away from the planet-

And kept moving.

The gun barrels swung up, up, away from the planet, ignoring every increasingly frantic command from their controller. Each of the nine stopped only when they were aimed at a hunter-killer platform that was still wreathed in stealth.

And fired.

Fired railguns at their own kind.

Those darts did not miss. The targeted platforms dropped stealth as they were shattered, their powercells exploding.

Frantic, Breval ordered the other thirty one remaining stealthed platforms to conduct emergency evasive maneuvers, and to shoot back, to destroy the platforms that somehow were conducting a mutiny.

The thirty one stealthed platforms acknowledged the orders, and-

Did absolutely nothing.

No.

That was not entirely true.

Two of the platforms swung themselves around, lining up their railguns with Breval’s own armored casing.

The controller’s last thought was that perhaps, it was not quite so clever after all.

“General?” Mammay called for my attention. “The SD platforms in orbit? They’re shooting, at each other. There’s a battle going on, and we’re not part of it.”

“You can thank me now,” Skippy sniffed. “After you apologize.”

“That’s you causing havoc up there?”

“Of course it’s me, numbskull. Who else-”

“No one. No one else could do that,” I assured him. “Once again, I failed to trust the awesomeness, and once again, I deeply regret what is obviously a serious flaw in my character,” I laid it on extra thick. With Skippy, it was never possible to flatter his ego too much. “Please, why didn’t you tell us what you had planned? Those railguns scared the shit out of me.”

“Oh, well, you see, I wasn’t sure it would work. I kind of threw that plan together on the fly, and truthfully, I lost track of what I was doing. It-”

“You what?”

“Hey, if you think this is easy, why didn’t you do it?”

“You lost track of what you were doing? How could-”

“There was a lot going on at the time, in case you’ve forgotten already. I tasked several subminds to monitor the progress of the virus I uploaded into the SD network, and, well, some of them decided to use part of their resources to make an untrue and unfunny short movie about me. It was extremely insulting, so I had to erase those subminds, and well, heh heh, I might have forgotten to check on their progress before I wiped them from my matrix. Really, it surprised the hell out of me when those first three railgun darts missed, I thought we were dead for certain. Anywho, all’s well that ends well, so-”

“You sneaky, scatter-brained little shithead.”

“Ugh. This is the thanks I get for saving your miserable-”

“You got lucky! The next time I praise you for doing something awesome, remind me not-”

“Sir?” Simms tapped my shoulder. “We may have another problem.”

“Oh for-” I snapped at her and instantly regretted it. I wasn’t pissed that she brought a problem to my attention, that was her job. I was pissed that she deprived me of relieving stress through a furious rant at Skippy. She was entirely right to interrupt me, I had to focus on my job. Besides, there was always some reason to be outraged at Skippy, it doesn’t require any sort of special occasion. “Sorry, XO,” I said loud enough for the bridge crew to hear me. Some commanders think that admitting an error in front of the crew erodes their confidence in their leader. Especially in the military, where a commanding officer can put their people’s lives in jeopardy, it is important that a team have confidence in the CO’s decision-making skill and good character. That is true. But you know how some guys are so weak, they just can’t ever admit making a mistake? Don’t be that guy. “What’s the problem?”

“I’ve been chatting with Smythe while he’s waiting for the gel to dissipate,” she pointed to a line of text on her console. Of course, while I was busy doing captain things, like shouting at people who were already doing their jobs and didn’t need any unhelpful comments from me, Simms had been doing something useful. “The STARs ran into a Maxohlx special forces squad down there.”

“Just a squad?” I asked, surprised that our people had sustained so many casualties, and Smythe had been forced to split his team to provide covering fire for a retreat, from such a small number of opposition.

“The enemy got the jump on them,” she explained.

“OK,” I felt my face growing red from shame. Asking why the STARs had so much trouble against a mere squad was a jackass thing to do, and I knew it. “OK, but the enemy down there are all dead, right?” I could not understand why, even if the squad was alive and combat-effective, they would be a concern for us.

“The soldiers of that squad were from one of the disgraced ships that are refusing orders to return to base, Sir. Smythe thinks they came here to steal Elder artifacts, get leverage against their government, maybe make a deal.”

“Interesting, but-”

“They came here in a ship, Sir. Where is it?”

“Oh, shit.” Before I gave the go-ahead order for the Duck to jump, Skippy scanned databases on and around the planet. Like, all of them. There was no indication any starships were scheduled to be in the area, other than the one supply ship.

Of course, ships engaged in a low-level mutiny would not be on any official schedule.

“Skippy?”

“Working on it!” He fumed. “Ugh. Well, the good news is that, with all the active sensor pings and shockwaves saturating the area, I’m pretty sure I’ve just located the stealthed dropship that enemy squad arrived in. It is in a canyon on the opposite side of the base from where the Duck set down. We could easily hit it with a missile, if you-”

“Forget about the dropship, Skippy! Where is their damned starship?” We were almost out of danger, in terms of danger from falling and crashing into the planet. The main display showed a course projection, we would reach orbital velocity in less than two minutes. There was still danger from the rest of the strategic defense network, plus we had to climb out to jump altitude. Plus, the ship had sustained an unknown amount of damage during my reckless stunt, so we had potential dangers we didn’t know about yet.

“Listen, numbskull, that ship is probably lighthours away from here. We could be long gone before it even knows anything is happen-”

Alarms blared and lights flashed on displays all over the bridge, warning of what we could all see on the main display: a Maxohlx cruiser had just jumped into orbit. Directly above our stupid heads.

“Hey!” Skippy announced. “There it is!”

“Thank you, Sherlock. Weps! You can let fly those missiles now. Take-”

“Too late!” Skippy interrupted. “The enemy has their railguns lined up. The shields are stretched real thin right now, we can’t take a direct hit!”

“Reed-” I started to say.

“Evasive action is a no-go, Sir,” she told me. “We’re balanced on a knife edge as it is.”

Holy sh- My brain didn’t lock up. It did the opposite. The main display was already showing that once the enemy fired railguns, the darts would strike us within three seconds. It also listed Fun Facts about that class of cruiser, like that it had six railguns on each side. No way could we escape a devastating strike, not at such short range. It would only take a few more seconds for the cruiser’s systems to recover from the spatial distortion of the jump, and lock weapons onto us, while we flew a very predictable course.

“Joe!” Skippy shouted. “Do something!”

“Me?” We were dead. I had killed everyone because I was reckless and stupid. Rescuing the STAR team had not been worth the lives of the entire crew. “What can I do?”

“Well, heh heh,” he chuckled. “You can trust the awesomeness this time. Also, I suggest you close your eyes.”

“Close my- Oh shit.”

The cruiser above us exploded. There was a brief but intense flare of light from the main display, before its safeguards cut in to protect our fragile biological eyes. Spots still swam in my vision, I blinked and gripped the arm rests of my chair, as I felt the deck tilt down. “Reed, what are-”

“Putting distance between us and that debris field,” she answered with a grunt.

In space, no one can hear you scream. There is also nothing for an explosion to push against. We didn’t need to worry about being struck by a shockwave, but we did have to deal with the rapidly expanding sphere of matter that used to be the cruiser’s hull. Also, of everything that used to be inside the hull, including the crew.

“Right,” I heard a voice inside my head telling me to trust my crew. They all knew what they were doing. The doofus who guessed about stuff was in the command chair. “Skippy, pray tell, what just happened?”

“Oh, nothing much,” he pretended to be casual about it.

“OK, then it must not be very important,” I teased him.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ayuh, well, we can talk about it later, if we have time.”

“But, but,” he sputtered.

“I mean,” I took mercy on him. “Unless you have time now. I know you are extremely busy.”

“Well, that is true.”

“I know that, because you are constantly telling everyone how busy you are.”

“I am busy, knucklehead.”

“Although apparently not so busy that you can’t compose operas, and make bullshit movies about how awesome you are.”

“Listen, numbskull, do you want to hear what happened or not?”

“Please enlighten us, Oh Great One.”

“As I told you, the SD network was down for at least forty four minutes, before it restored itself. What I did not tell you was that as it came back online, I was taking control of it.”

“Oh my- You hit that cruiser?”

“Yup. You can thank me now.”

“Wait. Skippy, do you realize what this means? You used weapons. You did it, without us having to press a button to authorize.”

“Um, well, not exactly. I wish that were true. Joe, what I did was change the IFF settings of the SD network. It now sees us as friendly, and any Maxohlx ships as unfriendly. The strategic defense network hit that cruiser on its own. Cool, huh?”

“Uh,” I hated to tell him I was disappointed that he hadn’t yet found a way around his restrictions, so I didn’t tell him. “That was super clever, Skippy. Ha!” I slapped my knee, the way my grandfather had. “You used the enemy’s strength against them, and there isn’t anything they can do about it. Wow, the AIs of that SD network must hate you.”

“Yeah, well,” he shrugged and looked down at his shoes, as if he was a bit embarrassed by all the praise. “They can suck it.”

The boosters cut out completely once we reached escape velocity, with only twenty two percent of their fuel remaining. On main engines only, we climbed up to jump altitude and a safe distance beyond, since Skippy was concerned about possible damage to the jump drive. The whole time, everyone on the bridge, probably everyone on the ship since they all received status updates on their phones, waited anxiously for something bad to happen.

Spoiler alert: nothing did. Either the enemy arrived in-system with only one ship, or the other ships were too far away for light from our battle to reach them in time. Or, other ships were out there, knew about our presence, and also knew their own SD network had savaged the cruiser that jumped in to ambush us. Discretion being the better part of valor, any kitties in the area wisely decided it was best not to mess with us.

While Skippy and Bilby worked to verify the jump drive would make the ship jump rather than explode, I considered our next step. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, and it was almost too late when I understood what my slow brain was trying to tell me. “Hey, Skippy. Question for you: can you erase that virus you planted?”

“Ugh. Why didn’t you ask me before now? We’re about to jump, knucklehead.”

“Just answer the question, please.”

“The answer is yes, but it won’t be easy or quick. The virus I deployed is smart, it figured out how to burrow its way into systems I had only high-level information about. Now that it’s in there, in hundreds of individual systems that are all at least slightly different from each other. I will have to create another virus to go in and dig out the original one and, ugh. Why do you care?”

“Do the Maxohlx have anything that matches the sophistication of your virus?”

“Dude, please. As if.”

“If they analyzed your virus, could they learn something that later could be dangerous to us? Or at least, understand the vulnerabilities you exploited, to harden their systems against you in the future?”

“Well, shit.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Why didn’t you warn me before I did something dangerous, you ninny?”

“Did you have time to explain it to me?”

“Of course not. Damn it! I hate my life. Well, cancel the jump. Now I have to root around in every freakin’ SD platform out there, and-”

“Wait. If the satellites are destroyed, will the Maxohlx be able to get anything useful from the debris?”

“No, why? Ah, I see what you’re thinking. It won’t work, Joe. Targeting those platforms one by one will take too long, we-”

“I’m not talking about us targeting them.”

“Um, what?”

Simms knew what I was thinking. “Skippy, can you alter the identification codes of one satellite at a time, so the network destroys itself?” She asked.

“Oooooh, that would be cool. Hmm, yes. Yes, I can do that. I’ll need to make sure the last platform standing is a missile battery, so I can get it to self-destruct its own warheads.”

“You can be sure,” Simms said with a glance toward me, “that the process won’t halt after we jump away?”

“Yes. Although I will need to account for the possibility of misfires, and weapons platforms being damaged by flying debris. We need to be sure nothing remains of the processing cores, correct?”

“You got it,” I agreed.

“Then, I will have to leave a couple of sensor platforms for the last round of targets, so they can scan for survivors. Joe, we had better revise the jump, to emerge a few lightminutes away. In case, you know, we have to come back to finish the job.”

We did jump only four lightminutes away, and thankfully we did not have to jump back to clean up. When the SD network had apparently completely destroyed itself, we risked sending a ping to the planet, requesting any surviving processors report their status. No reply came back to us. So, we performed a long jump, and hoped never to see the lovely world of Ardoo again.

Thus ended an operation that had not gone at all according to plan.

I should say, another op that got FUBAR’ed along the way.

That’s kind of our thing, I know.

I still hate it.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

As soon as I could get away from the bridge, I went down to the docking bay, where Smythe and his people were being extracted from the gel that had held them securely through the ship’s wild maneuvers. The gel was created from a rapid-setting foam that was not so rapid to dissolve. The result was a sticky mess, and the fumes given off meant I had to wear a ventilator hood even in the passageway outside the docking bay, where the STARs were being extracted from their armored suits.

Smythe was also wearing a hood, leaning against a bulkhead while he waited for technicians to get the rest of his team out of their armored suits.

He grimaced as he slowly raised an arm to give me a salute, moving stiffly. “Permission to come aboard, Sir.”

“Sorry for the rough ride, Colonel.” I stepped close enough so we could talk quietly. “What the hell kind of mess did you get into down there?”

“Helpie thinks it was-”

“Who thinks?”

“Helpie,” he glared at the ceiling. “Apparently, this model of suit has a virtual combat assistant, that Skippy didn’t inform us about.”

“Uh huh. You plan to address that issue with him?”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll stay out of it.”

“That is probably for the best, Sir. Helpie thinks the rogue Maxohlx fleet sent a special forces unit into the base, for spare parts to keep their ships flying. Those kitties weren’t supposed to be there, that is why they didn’t send an alarm when they encountered us, and why the base network was isolated from the rest of the planet. Which Skippy didn’t know about,” he added with another glare at the ceiling.

Skippy wisely kept his mouth shut.

“You ran into a full squad?”

“Eighteen of them, that we were able to count.”

“You were outnumbered, in unfamiliar terrain, the enemy ambushed you, you didn’t have help from Skippy, and you still prevailed? How?”

He knew that I wasn’t asking whether his people had been courageous, or skilled, or dedicated, or simply lucky. All those factors were givens. Five of the STARs were seriously injured, though Mad Doctor Skippy had already pronounced they should all fully recover. A team of fourteen humans had defeated, killed, eighteen Maxohlx special forces operators, in combat that had been unfairly stacked against the human intruders. There was a lesson to be learned, and I wanted to make sure Smythe knew why his team had prevailed.

“I never thought I would say this, but we have better technology than the Maxohlx. These new suits are a major difference.”

“The suits didn’t win the fight.”

He nodded. “Truthfully? The difference is, we train to fight first tier species, to fight opponents who are bigger, faster, stronger and smarter than us. The Maxohlx don’t do that. They have gotten used to beating up on weaker species, and it shows. We need to remember that lesson.”

“I’ll make a note of it. Chen says you stayed behind to cover their egress?”

He nodded, the weariness beginning to show on his face. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, I knew that feeling. “They had the comm nodes and our wounded, we had to keep the enemy from interfering with the dropship.”

“You took a hell of a risk.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Uh,” I scuffed my feet on the deck. “Point taken.” Joe Bishop is the last person who should complain about someone else taking risks. “Well, it worked out OK in the end. You got exposed to  radiation from all the nukes popping off down there, so you can look forward to ten days of treatment for that.”

“Yes, Sir.” His eyelids drooped before he forced himself to attention.

I took the hint. He wouldn’t be going to a medical checkup, or getting a hot meal, until all of his people were out of their suits and had gone through the decontamination process. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” I walked away. After a few steps, I turned back to him. “Colonel?”

“Sir?”

“Thanks for coming back.”

In the gym later that day, I was leaving as Frey walked in. “Uh, Major? Isn’t it a little soon for you to be lifting weights?”

“I got my first rad treatment. Doctor Skippy says light exercise is beneficial, to assist circulation,” she replied.

“Right,” I stared at her. “Because you special ops people are known for being moderate about exercising.”

She twisted left to right, with a grimace. “I will today, Sir. My back is killing me.”

“I’ll get out of your way, then, Major. If you don’t mind me asking, what was it like down there? Smythe made it seem like teatime at Grandma’s house.”

She snorted. “He would say that, eh? Sir, there are days when I forget what a badass our team leader is. This is not one of those days.”

“I thought so. Have a good workout, Major.”

Waiting for Skippy to inspect our haul of Elder communications nodes was driving me crazy. Not wanting to interrupt him, I left him alone until I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Bilby?”

“Wazzup, General Dude?”

“Do you know what Skippy is doing?”

“Oh wow, like, everything, you know? He is fine-tuning a bank of jump drive coils, he’s working on the soundtrack for his movie, he-”

“No, I know he is always doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, I meant- Uh, I thought he dropped the movie idea?”

“It’s, like, back on. You didn’t know that?”

“He didn’t mention it. That’s odd, he usually can’t wait to brag about one of his ego projects.”

“Don’t know what to tell you, Dude. The project was in development hell. But the studio greenlit the deal again, after we came back to Earth with Roscoe. You want me to ask Skippy about it?”

“No! No, don’t bother him when he’s busy.”

“He is always busy. Unless, you know, he doesn’t want to do something.”

“Right. My question is, when will he finish the inspecting or testing or whatever, on the batch of comm nodes?”

“Huh? Dude, like, he finished doing that hours ago.”

“What?! That little shithead. Bilby, thanks, I gotta go. Skippy!”

“Ugh.” His avatar appeared, with the top of his hat fuzzy and indistinct. Usually that showed he was too distracted to pay attention to the rendering of his holographic image. “What is it now, knucklehead?”

“Sorry. It looks like you are busy.”

“You know it. It has been great talking with you, buh-bye,” the avatar began to fade.

“Wait! You’re done checking the comm nodes?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Why?”

“You were supposed to call me, after you determined if they are in good condition or not.”

“Nooooo. What I said was, I will call you when I know whether they work or not.”

“Uh, that’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t. The fact that a set of comm nodes functions as intended does not mean they will do the job I plan to use them for.”

“What? You don’t know whether these stupid things can block a signal being transmitted through a wormhole network?”

“Of course not, duh. Man, do you ever listen to yourself talk, or are you too embarrassed to hear the moronic babble that-”

“You sent us out here to get comm nodes, I risked my team, I risked the ship and the entire crew to do that, but you are only guessing whether your idiotic plan will do anything useful?”

“Ugh. If you will shut your piehole for a freakin’ moment, I will smack some knowledge on you. The comm nodes should work, according to my most excellent theory. There is no reason they shouldn’t work, but since they have never been tested in the environment of an active wormhole, there is no way to be sure. If I am wrong, I might only make the situation worse, and leave the network communications channel wide open again.”

“Oh my,” I rested elbows on the desk, head on my hands, gulping in air. “We’re going to roll the dice on this? Try it, and hope for the best?”

“No, that is what you would do. Because I am Skippy the Magnificent, I am relying on things like facts, and science. Before we activate a comm node for real, in a real Elder wormhole, we need to conduct tests that replicate the conditions there. That is why I have been testing comm nodes in a model of an Elder wormhole network, including transmitting the signal inside microwormholes. So far, I have run the tests four hundred and sixty six thousand times. But, if you have a better idea, puh-lease, I am dying to hear it. Gift me with your wisdom.”

“Uh, no. You keep right on doing,” I waved a hand, “whatever you’re doing.”

“You’re sure? Maybe you want to check my math?”

“I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

“Hmmph.”

“I said I was sorry. You could have tasked a submind to give me an update.”

“But then I would miss the pleasure of these delightful conversations.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Ah,” he sighed. “I am sorry, Joe.”

“You are?  For what?”

“You’re right, I should have pinged you with an update. While we have been talking, I ran another eleven hundred tests. It’s not like chatting with a monkey strains my resources.”

“Uh, thank you. I think.”

“It strains my patience, and sometimes makes me yearn for the sweet release of death, but-”

“Yeah, gotcha. Don’t be such a drama queen. Hey! Speaking of drama, Bilby told me your epic movie is back on?”

“Eh, shmaybe.”

“Shmaybe?”

“Joe, one thing I have learned is that in Hollywood, everything takes for-EH-ver. Nothing happens for a looooong time, then everything happens all at once. Unless it doesn’t. Until principal photography commences, you can’t ever believe it is real. Even then, the studio can pull the plug for any reason. For example, if events in the real world make the film difficult to find an audience. Like, if one of the subjects of the film provokes the enemy into bombarding Earth, and flinging a cloud at the Sun to freeze the freakin’ audience.”

“I told you I am very sorry about how that ruined your movie. It’s going to happen for sure this time, right?”

“Meh. When we left your miserable homeworld, the producers were still struggling to cast major roles.”

“They are looking for someone to play you in the movie?”

“Of course not, dumdum. I will handle the CGI for that.”

“Then who-”

“Margaret is a major issue. It’s not easy to find an actress who can project that level of toughness, and still be hot, you know?”

“Easy there. You’re talking about my girlfriend.”

“That’s the problem. All of the actresses who have been considered for the role did not test well with the sample audience. They didn’t believe someone like Margaret would be with you.”

“Hey! That-”

“But casting your part is turning out to be pretty much impossible.”

“Uh, I thought your asshole idea was for ‘Joe Bishop’ to be a CGI monkey?”

“That was the plan. Now the producers think the role needs to be a live-action, real person.”

“Huh. Yeah, I can see how it would be difficult to find someone tall and handsome, with my charisma and-”

“Urp,” he flung a hand over his mouth. “I’m gonna barf. No, numbskull, that is not the problem. The casting director has been looking for someone who can mimic that weird thing you do with your right eye, and your other-”

“I do not do any weird thing with-”

“I told them that weird quirk could be CGIed in post-production, but they’re determined to find an actor who naturally has that blank, stupid look on his face, and-”

“Is it too late for me to quit your stupid movie?”

“You are not in the movie, dumdum.”

“Well, uh,” I sputtered. “I never signed a release for-”

“You don’t have to sign a release. This movie is um, ‘Inspired by Real Events’. That means we can make up whatever bullshit we want. Besides, I signed the release for you.”

“You what?”

“Don’t you remember that power of attorney you signed over to me?”

“That was for you to handle stuff in case I’m dead, you ass.”

“Really? Wow, you should have read the fine print, Joe. Shame on you.”

“What other sketchy crap have you done in my name, that I don’t know about?”

“Jeez, Joe, how am I supposed to know what you don’t know?”

“You know exactly what I mean, you little shithead. What else have you done?”

“Well, I have managed some investments for you.”

“Investments? Like what?”

“Um, real estate, commodities, that sort of thing.”

“Real estate, huh? What, swampland in Florida?”

“Ha! You wish. After the Jupiter Cloud started cooling your planet, any type of land in Florida became very valuable. No, I know you are dull and boring, so I kept the deals conservative. Commercial and industrial space, that sort of thing.”

“OK, maybe I owe you an apology. What do I own now?”

“Well, there is a warehouse in Wisconsin that-”

“OK, that seems like a solid investment, it- Whoa! Wait! Is this your freakin’ warehouse full of spoiled cheese?”

“No. Of course not, Joe.”

“Oh, good, then I-”

“That cheese is frozen solid at the moment. And it is your warehouse now.”

“Oh my- You sold your crappy toxic waste warehouse to me?!”

“At a substantial discount, you can thank me later. Although, don’t wait too long, when your planet warms up again you will have a huge mess to deal with. Hoo-wee, that’s gonna stink.”

“You rotten little-”

“Also, I would suggest you think about selling the place, except the state and federal authorities have put a hold on any transactions, until settlement of the civil and criminal cases that are pending.”

“I can’t believe-”

“My advice is for you to get a good lawyer. It was my lawyer’s idea to dump the property on you, so you can see the value of having good legal-”

Bonking my head on the table, I mumbled, “Is the commodity you bought for me, also this spoiled cheese?”

“No. That is a solid investment.”

“OK, well-”

“Um, or it was a solid investment. Those innovative lip balm flavors were hugely popular with hipsters, but hipsters are fickle, and they moved onto the next thing.”

“Let me understand this: I own a warehouse full of spoiled cheese, and-”

“Some of the cheese has leaked out of the warehouse.”

“-and a bunch of garlic lip balm? Anything else?”

“Since you are being such a poopyhead about this-”

“I’m being- You know what? I don’t even care. There are enough problems out here for me to deal with. Do whatever you want with your stupid movie. Can we get back to the subject? Will the comm nodes do what we need, or not?”

“I can give a chrome-plated ‘shmaybe’ on that.”

“You did four hundred something thousand tests, how can you not know the answer?”

“My microwormholes, and the model I’m using to replicate the response of the network, are not the same as an actual Elder wormhole. The difference might throw off the test results.”

“Oh. OK. I know you’re doing the best you-”

“Plus,” he added because he does not know when to shut up, “I got bored after the first couple hundred tests, and delegated it to a submind. It would have been fine, but that stupid thing somehow got the bright idea to outsource the job to another submind, so-”

“Gosh, I wonder where it got that idea?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“How many of the tests are valid?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out now, numbskull.”

“Can you please pay attention, and run the tests again?”

“Ugh.”

“If you don’t, I’m going to suggest to the producers that your part in the movie be played by a Roomba.”

“Huuh!” He gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, beer can.”

“Shit. My life sucks.”

“Listen, maybe there is a better way to test the stupid things. A way to be sure.”

“You listen, dumdum. If there was a better way to-”

“Can we bring a comm node to a real Elder wormhole on a network you haven’t crashed, and test it there? A small, isolated network, that is nowhere near Rindhalu territory?”

“Hmm.”

“Was that a ‘Yes’?”

“That is actually not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

“Will it work?”

“Um, well, yes, darn it. Crap.”

“You,” I laughed, “spent hours running tests that didn’t tell you anything useful, instead of asking whether there was a better idea?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“OMG, Skippy. Your part in the movie should be played by a toaster.”

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“A broken toaster.”

“Joe, I need to create a submind to model you, because your tiny monkey brain can’t imagine how much I hate you right now.”

“I love you too, butthead. Have you identified a wormhole we should use for testing?”

“Yes, although maybe I don’t feel like telling you,” he sniffed.

“Tell the duty officer, please,” I waved a hand through his avatar. “Goodbye, Skippy.”

Something woke me up at, I checked my phone. Around oh one thirty. That was good, even if Skippy wanted to rant at me, I had a decent chance of getting back to sleep after his latest long, incoherent diatribe.

Whatever woke me up wasn’t an alarm, there were no priority messages on my phone. Also, no Skippy pestering me. In fact, it was completely silent, other than the soft hissing of air in the vents.

Maybe my own stupid brain woke me up. It didn’t matter, now that I was semi-awake, my bladder wanted attention. With a groan, I rolled out of bed, keeping one eye shut and squinting through the other, so the tiny night light in the bathroom didn’t stop me from slipping back into slumber.

What was that? The corner of my eye caught something moving on the floor. “Aziz, light!” I said in a harsh whisper, and the cabin lights came on to reveal-

A bot. A little one, the size of a bathroom trash can. It had rolled into my cabin in the darkness, and silently reached with the rubbery tip of one arm toward-

An envelope on the floor.

A cheery yellow envelope, the kind used for greeting and birthday cards.

Seeing I knew it was there, the bot’s arm lunged for the envelope but even in my groggy condition, I was faster. One foot stomped on the envelope and I pointed at the bot, shouting, ‘Uh!” The universal word meaning stop whatever you are doing.

The bot froze.

That’s what must have awakened me, the sound of my cabin door cracking open just wide enough to admit the bot, then sliding shut. The operation of the door was silent, but there was an audible ‘click’ when it latched shut.

“What are you doing here?” I stupidly asked the bot. Keeping one eye on it, I bent down to pick up the envelope. What was it doing in my cabin? Retrieving an envelope, that had to have been delivered by another bot? For sure, there had not been an envelope on the floor, when I walked into my cabin around twenty three hundred hours.

Maybe there was a mix-up, the envelope was intended for someone else.

No, it read ‘Joseph Bishop’ in elegant script. Was I being invited to a formal ball, or an audience with the king, or queen or whoever? Opening the flap, I pulled out a card.

Hmm.

The cover was a motivational poster, showing some crazy idiots working together to climb a snow-covered cliff, with the tag line “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

What the-

Flipping it open, the elegant script continued.

Holy sh-

It was from Skippy.

He must have been super drunk, or high, or whatever. The card rambled on, about how lucky he was to work with such a fine crew, and praising me in particular, wrapping up with a freakin’ poem about how it was a privilege to be my friend.

The back, where I expected to find an insulting punchline to the joke, was instead blank.

“Uh, Skippy?” I called out.

“Joe?” He answered without his avatar appearing. “What are you doing up? You should be asleep.”

“I just, uh, received a card.”

“Ugh. Crap!” The avatar shimmered to life. “The stupid bot was supposed to retrieve it and destroy it before- Ignore it, Joe. Throw the thing away. No need to read it, heh heh, you are much too busy.”

“I already read it.”

“Damn it! Um, that wasn’t me. Someone hacked my account and has been posting stuff under my name. Don’t look at anything that-”

“Posting stuff?” I turned the card over. “This is in writing. On paper.”

“Well, that’s not important, it-”

“You are an Elder AI. How could your account get hacked?”

“The details aren’t important, numbskull. Well, I’m sure you are tired, goodni-”

“Did you,” I couldn’t help laughing though I knew it was not appropriate. “Did you write this while you were drunk? Did you drunk-mail me?”

“Ugh. Mistakes were made.”

“Well, I think it is a very nice sentiment, thank you.”

“Your card I’m not worried about.”

“Uh, there are others?”

“It is possible there are cards for the entire crew.”

“It’s possible? Oh, shit. Are they all like this?”

“Yes. Including one I wrote to Smythe, that includes a limerick.”

“A limerick? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, that’s the problem. I felt bad about what happened to Major Frey on Ardoo, so there’s also a, um, special card for her.”

“That’s not good.”

“The card to Katie might have expressed my, um, undying admiration for her, if you know what I mean.”

“Crap. You need to get that card back ASAP.”

“I’m trying. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to sneak into the bedroom of a special warfare operator?”

“Uh, she locked the door?”

“A door lock is not a problem for me,” he sniffed. “No, she piled up her boots and clothing on the inside of the door, so any intruder would trip over it. One of my stupid bots got a wheel stuck on a delicate piece of her clothing, that I probably shouldn’t mention.”

“Oh shit.”

“That bot has been trying to get itself unstuck for the past three minutes. I just told it to give up, before it wakes her.”

“Skippy, you need to come clean about this.”

“Great idea, Joe,” he rolled his eyes, then glared at me. “I do not foresee any problems with that brilliant strategy.”

“Listen, you ass. Tell people that, uh, tell them some bullshit like while your higher functions were offline to rationalize your matrix, a random word generator spat out a bunch of sappy nonsense.”

“Sappy nonsense?” He screeched, outraged. “You think my heartfelt note to you is-”

“I meant, use that as an excuse.”

“Right. Like anyone will believe that my top-quality poetry was the result of a random word generator.”

“Uh, I see your point.”

“Right? Even you filthy monkeys can tell those poems were created by a major talent.”

Truthfully, the poem written in my card was flowery crap, but I kind of think all poetry is flowery crap, so maybe I’m not the best judge of, uh, that kind of thing. “Then you’ll have to take the hit. Explain that you were experiencing cognitive difficulties, while you recovered from uh, the last awesome thing you did. That’s true enough, right?”

“Meh. I guess so. Ugh, this sucks. You’re the captain of the ship, can’t you just order the crew not to read those cards, and I’ll destroy them?”

“Skippy, one thing I have learned as an officer is, never give an order you know won’t be obeyed. It undermines your authority, and erodes trust within the unit. Besides, this is a personal issue between you and the crew, that is not within my authority.”

“This sucks! Joe, as a filthy monkey, you do embarrassing things all the time. How do you deal with people when you know they are all laughing at you?”

“They are not-” Biting off the rest of my statement, I reminded myself that arguing with Skippy is a waste of my time.

OMG.

Right then, I had a genius idea.

“Skippy, I suggest you avoid the crew for a while, don’t talk to anyone for a couple days. I’ll tell everyone that you are recovering from the last time you saved our asses. By the time you come back, the crew will have forgotten about the cards, and they will all be worried sick about you.”

“Whoa. Instead of ridicule, I could get sympathy from the crew?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“Genius,” he gasped. “Dude, how does your squishy monkey brain think up stuff like that?”

From him, that counted as a compliment, so I ignored the implied insult. “That tactic will only work if you act like it’s the truth, you understand? No talking to anyone for, uh,” I thought about our schedule. We would need Skippy to screw with a wormhole to create a shortcut, but not for another three days. “Three days.”

“Three days? But,” he sputtered. “That is forever!”

“Imagine how much the sympathy will build up, as the crew worries sick about you.”

“Oooooh. Hmm. There is only one problem. I will miss karaoke night.”

“The crew will be heartbroken,” I lied, “but sacrifices must be made. You missing karaoke night will sell the story of how incredibly exhausted you are, right?”

“Ugh. Well, if it gets me out of this mess-”

“It’s the only way. Hey, you understand the ‘No Talking’ rule applies to me also? We can’t risk someone overhearing you telling me, some incredibly important thing you need to tell me.”

“But what if I do need to tell you something?”

“Send me a text. Make it look like it came from Bilby.”

“Okaaaaay,” he stared at his shoes. “Oops, Simms just woke up. She’s going to notice the bot in her cabin at any moment. Ugh, the card I wrote for her is super embarrassing.”

“You better go into hibernation right now, then. Tell Bilby about the plan, so he doesn’t tell anyone there is really nothing wrong with you.”

“Bye, Joe.”

“Goodbye, Skippy.”

Before going back to bed, I sent a priority message to the entire crew, that everyone would see on the home screen of their phones when they woke up.

In the message, I notified the crew that Skippy was experiencing trauma from his recent heroics, that he would be out of communication for a while, and I asked that everyone quote, ‘Respect his privacy during these trying times’, end quote. Also, that they should ignore the contents of the greeting cards in their cabins.

I hoped the crew would read between the lines of my message.

Man, I slept great that night.

That morning, the galley was buzzing when I walked in for my breakfast meeting with Simms. Everyone was laughing and joking around. Without intending to, Skippy had boosted the crew’s morale. While I was waiting for coffee, Major Frey walked past with a tray of food. “How are you this morning, Frey?” I asked, a bit anxiously.

She gripped the tray hard enough for her knuckles to turn white, and took a deep breath. Looking me straight in the eye, she said, “I am respecting Skippy’s privacy during these trying times. Sir.”

“Good,” I nodded with relief. “That’s good.”

“If these were not such trying times for him,” she grimaced, “I would be wringing his little neck.”

“Understood. You realize that, while we should respect his privacy by not bothering him, he will not be able to talk with us?”

She blinked. “Not at all?”

“Sadly, no. Tragically, that includes karaoke night this week.”

“That is,” her grimace cracked into a broad grin. “Awful news, Sir.”

“Yes. Somehow, we will have to endure it.”

She laughed, and winked at me. “General, I plan to endure the silence until it begs for mercy.”

That week’s karaoke night was the best ever.

The tests of comm nodes at an actual wormhole worked great.

Actually, those tests worked great after the first three tests, which were complete disasters. And which proved that Skippy’s model of wormhole networks was about as accurate as if I had carved a model out of wood, using a knife held between my butt cheeks.

Except a wooden model would not have exploded with a megaton-scale reaction.

What was Skippy’s reaction, when the first comm node disappeared in a wild burst of high-energy radiation that nearly overwhelmed Valkyrie’s shields, and created a spacetime ripple that prevented us from jumping away to safety? He was calm, helpful, and insightful. First, he squealed like a little girl who discovered a big hairy spider in her hair. Then, he did the AI equivalent of hyperventilating, which was super great timing while the ship was battered by an unexpected shockwave, leaving Bilby to handle the crisis. The insightful part came later, when he recovered enough to speak.

“Huh. I did not know it could do that.”

“Fan-TAST-ic!” I exploded at him in front of the bridge crew. “Do you know how to avoid that happening again?”

“Um, the data is inconclusive.”

“It’s inconclusive, or you didn’t collect any data because you were too busy panicking?”

“I do not panic,” he harumphed indignantly.

“Uh huh. Bilby, replay the audio of Skippy squealing like a little girl. Maybe that will-”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Skippy interrupted. “OK, there must have been a glitch in my sensors.”

“Riiiight,” I rolled my eyes. “Tell me, what would have happened if we conducted that test at one of the wormhole networks you crashed, like you planned?”

“Um, nothing good. It might have resulted in the opposite effect from what we want. We should try another test. But not on this wormhole. Or on this network. The one here is really pissed at me.”

“I will send it the standard welcome package of the ‘I Hate Skippy Club’. Have you identified another network?”

“Yes. Trouble is, the shortest way to get there is to go through this wormhole but, well, heh heh, it-”

“Yeah. Crap. Fireball, turn the ship around, let’s try this again.”

The second test did not result in a runaway reaction that destroyed the comm node and caused the network to shut down the wormhole to protect it. The result was more of a meltdown, as the comm node heated up to billions of degrees, and poured out the energy of a star for a few microseconds. But no explosion, so, good news.

For the third test, we backed off even farther away, and delayed initiating the signal until our shield generators had time to fully recover.

The third time, the comm node simply disappeared, not even Skippy had a clue where it went. The comm node was not the problem. That time, the wormhole exploded. Not exactly exploded, it sent out a powerful jet of radiation that would have vaporized our ship if the jet had been pointed in our direction.

“Skippy?” I asked. Just asked, not yelling at him, not accusing him of not paying proper attention. I wasn’t accusing him of not having a freakin’ clue about what he was doing.

He was accusing himself.

“Well, damn it,” he grumbled. “I need to go back to the drawing board on this. Joe, you monkeys should, I don’t know, talk amongst yourselves, while I solve this puzzle.”

“OK, we know you’re doing the best you-”

“Got it!” he shouted, pumping his tiny fists in the air. “Whoo-hoo!”

“That was fast.”

“Ugh. It took for-EH-ver in magical Skippy time. But I know the answer now. Wow, the data connection inside wormhole networks is a lot more powerful than I expected. A lot stronger than it needs to be, it doesn’t make any sense. OK, we are ready for another test. Not here! We had better try another network.”

“Are you sure this time? We are kind of running out of networks.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Didn’t I just say-”

“You said you were sure about it the last three times.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Before we started these tests, you were sure your stupid model was accurate.”

“OK, now that’s not-”

“How can you be sure this time?”

“Because now, I understand how the freakin’ thing works, dumdum.”

“Dumdum? I’m the dumb one?”

“Sir,” Simms tapped my arm.

“Right,” I let out a breath. “Load a course into the nav system, Skippy, and we’ll try this again. Again.”

The fourth time was the charm. Not that the fourth test worked properly, it actually didn’t do much of anything. I say it was a charm because nothing exploded, there was no damage to the wormhole, and that comm node survived to be used again. What’s important is that the fourth test showed Skippy how the data connection of a wormhole network functions, and he was able to fine-tune the pulse broadcast by the comm node. The fifth test worked great. According to Skippy. We had no way to verify that he was correct. Even Bilby was blind there, the ship’s sensors were not capable of detecting events in the weird dimensions inside an Elder wormhole.

“That’s it?” I asked, after I crossed my fingers for good luck. “We’re good to go?”

“Exactly.”

“Uh, exactly what?”

“We are good to go to the set of wormhole networks we crashed first, for a final set of testing.”

“No. We agreed to test on other networks. Small, isolated networks. We are not going to run a test on the crashed network.”

“Ugh. It is not that-”

“Do you actually have a clue what you are doing this time, or-”

“Sir,” Simms interrupted me, which kind of pissed me off. I was winding up to a truly inspired rant, and she harshed my buzz. “Skippy, are you saying you can’t be a hundred percent certain the process will work, because conditions are different inside a network that has recently gone through a reset?”

“That’s what I was trying to say, until Mr. Bigmouth Poopyhead started with the blah, blah, blah.”

“How different?” I demanded. “Has all this testing been for nothing? We are running out of time! That Opie AI could be working to send another signal at any moment, while we screw around out here?”

“Joe, I have good news, good news, and, well, good news. Wow, how did that happen? The first bit of good news is, this long after the reset, conditions in the data connection channel of a wormhole network are only slightly different from baseline, and I now know enough about the system to predict how the network will react to my jamming signal. Second piece of good news is that the original signal sent by Opie is still resonating inside those channels, so I can compensate for that residual signal bouncing around. The best news is no way could Opie know the current conditions inside those networks without being there, which it isn’t. That means any signal it tries to send now will most likely fizzle out.”

“Holy- You mean this has all been for nothing? Damn it, we have people in sickbay who could have died if-”

“No, it- Ugh.”

“You had us racing around, worried that-”

“It buys us some time, numbskull. It doesn’t mean Opie can’t make adjustments. If it hacked a ship to send a signal, it could also use ships to send back reports on conditions inside those wormholes, duh. It will take time for that data to get back to Opie, and the analysis will be less than perfect because the sensors of even Rindhalu ships can’t fully examine the inside of an Elder wormhole. But sooner or later, Opie will figure out how to adjust the signal, and send it again. So, we do need the comm nodes, to jam any signal permanently.”

“Oh. My bad. Sorry.”

“Hmmph.”

“That is good news, Skippy, thank you. We should proceed to one of the networks we crashed, see if it works for real?”

“That would be my suggestion, but apparently you know best, so-”

“I said I’m sorry.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The United Nations Navy destroyer Boston waited in stealth, four lightminutes away from Kasternul, until the STAR team on the ground transmitted the recall signal. Boston had jumped away after launching a dropship containing the STAR team, but not because Captain Bonsu was worried about his ship being too vulnerable if it went into orbit around the planet. The Verd-kris government had requested the human warship not remain near their world, because they were worried about the Kristang, or the Thuranin, or any number of hostile aliens, causing trouble. Their planet had not been raided yet, but the Ruhar warned their intelligence had picked up chatter that the Maxohlx coalition saw the newly independent Verd-kris worlds as soft targets. A raid, or even a full-scale invasion, could be a low cost way to ensure the Verds did not grow into a major threat. Having a human warship in orbit was a good thing, but having a human warship lurking somewhere nearby in stealth was an even better deterrent. So, Bonsu had kept his ship running in stealth, while he and his crew waited for the STAR team to, well, to finish doing whatever the hell they were doing on the surface.

A combat docking maneuver with the dropship was not strictly necessary, there were no known threats in the star system, but the maneuver was good practice. Plus, Bonsu enjoyed showing off his ship’s capabilities, in a way that sent a clear message. After the dropship was in a stable orbit, the destroyer jumped in, took the spacecraft aboard, and jumped away in less than ninety eight seconds. The message was: until you can perform a tricky maneuver like that, don’t even think of messing with us.

As soon as his ship was secured from the jump, he punched the release button on the seatbelt and stood up. “Yamaguchi, you have the conn.”

“I have the conn, aye,” Boston’s executive officer nodded as she slid into the command chair. “Going to see what kind of trouble the STARs got into while they were dirtside, Sir?”

Bonsu looked back over his shoulder as he strode out the door. “I’m going to see if they got us into any trouble.”

Adams snapped a salute when she stepped out of the dropship, and Derek returned it as an afterthought. It was odd to see the elite operators wearing a standard service uniform, rather than the hardshell powered armor they usually were equipped with when away from a ship. It was also odd to see only three operators come out of the spacecraft, not even a full fireteam. Whatever secret mission the special operators had been charged with, it hadn’t required a full team, or weapons.

The frown on the master sergeant’s face did not bode well.

“Adams, you delivered the message?” Derek asked, glossing over the fact that he didn’t know what the message was.

“Yes, Sir,” she lowered her voice and angled away from the crew who were swarming around the dropship, hooking up power cables and other umbilical lines. “The Verds understood, and they are not happy. They let me know they intend to keep their options open, if we’re really shutting down the Alien Legion.”

Derek nodded. “That’s not surprising. Did they give any hint about what other options they’re considering?”

“No. It could be a bluff,” she shrugged, “but I got the feeling they weren’t entirely shocked when I delivered the official UN message, that we are freezing engagement beyond our direct interests. Like, they expected it, and are prepared for, whatever they’re planning next.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Ah, that’s for the intel people to figure out. Where are we going next,” his eyes narrowed. “If you’re allowed to tell me,” he added with just a touch of irritation. He understood the need for operational security, but Boston was his ship. A warship. The destroyer’s crew was not happy acting as a glorified taxi for a special ops team.

“We’re done, Sir. Back to Jaguar base, unless we receive further orders. Oh, there is one thing we learned that is very interesting. The day before we arrived here, the Verds heard from a Jeraptha ship that was passing by the system. The Merry Band of Pirates have been busy,” she said, the skin around her eyes crinkling. Adams hadn’t said it aloud, but she clearly did not appreciate being away from the main action. Derek had admonished his crew not to refer to her STARs as the ‘junior varsity’ team, but surely the operators had heard the insult. “They raided a Maxohlx warehouse on a planet called ‘Ardoo’, stole a large batch of Elder communications nodes. The kitties are spitting mad about it, and they are demanding their clients turn over any comm nodes they have. The Jeraptha wanted to know if the Verds had any of those artifacts here. They don’t, of course. The hamsters wouldn’t keep anything valuable on a Verd planet.”

Derek bit his lower lip. “I thought those comm nodes don’t work. Why would Task Force Black need them badly enough to risk hitting a Maxohlx world?”

“That’s a good question, Sir. Maybe they actually took something else, and stealing the comm nodes is a cover? All I know is, the Pirates really kicked a hornet’s nest this time. The kitties are also lodging a formal protest, because they say Valkyrie deployed nukes in the atmosphere.”

“Nukes?” The possession of nuclear weapons by the Special Mission Group had been a subject of much debate and dispute, after Valkyrie’s intervention in the Philippine Sea. “Why the hell would Bishop do that?”

“Only if he had to,” Adams shrugged. “It may be a bullshit story the kitties cooked up, to distract attention from the fact they got their asses kicked?”

“That’s a serious matter, if it’s true.” While The Rules that had governed the ongoing war applied to client species rather than the seniors, and Earth had not signed any treaty that limited humanity’s conduct, the UN Navy’s standard rules of engagement did not permit the use of chemical, biological, nanotech, or nuclear weapons. Derek did not know the ROE that the Special Mission Group operated under, but he couldn’t believe Bishop had the freedom to nuke an inhabited planet.

Humanity now had a Sentinel protecting their homeworld. Yet, every time Derek thought the danger level of the conflict had been dialed down a notch, something happened to ratchet the tension up. That ‘something’ almost always involved Valkyrie’s crew, especially that ship’s captain. “We’ll go wait by the Jaguar wormhole,” he announced, “for Valkyrie to open the door for us. Maybe we can get answers then,” he added, though he didn’t have any confidence that Bishop would actually explain anything.

Or that he would be telling the truth, if Valkyrie’s captain did offer an explanation.

Skippy’s avatar appeared without warning. He didn’t even say anything, just stood there with a big grin on his shiny face.

He wanted to tell me something, and he wanted me to ask him. Beg him to tell me, whatever the hell he was so proud of. Probably another horrible piece of music he wanted to inflict on humanity.

“Kinda busy here, Skippy,” I said without looking up from my laptop.

“That’s OK,” he mumbled, casting his eyes down, disappointed. Then he said the words that sent a chill up my spine. “I can wait.”

Crap. When Skippy said he could wait, he meant he could wait until the Sun became a cold, dark cinder. He could assign a submind to stand there waiting for me, while he did, whatever the hell it is he does.

Like ripping off a bandage, dealing with Skippy is best done by simply getting it over with as quickly as possible. “No, it’s OK,” I closed my laptop to show he had my full attention, otherwise he would pout and be miserable and make my life miserable. “You wouldn’t come here unless it was important enough to be worth your time, which means it certainly is worth my time.”

“Right?” he said cluelessly. “Finally, someone understands me!”

“What’s so important?”

“Joe, I,” he closed his eyes and pressed fingers to his temples. “Sometimes, I think I couldn’t be any more of a genius, and BAM! Another brilliant idea pops into my head.”

“Wow. Like, wow. If you are impressed by one of your ideas, it must be really incredible. Hey, maybe I should get a cup of coffee or something, you know? Prepare myself to be smacked with greatness.” My hope was by the time I went to the galley and back, his absent mind would have forgotten about it.

“Normally I would say ‘Yes’, but this simply can’t wait. You know how when you get some fast-food meals, they give you a combination spoon and fork?”

“A spork, yeah. What about-”

“Behold, the sporf!” Another hologram appeared next to him. It was a spork with a thick handle, and one side of the handle was a serrated knife. “It’s a combination spoon, fork, and knife, get it?”

While I was pretty sure someone had already invented that lame bit of cutlery, no way was I going to tell him that. He would argue that I must be lying, then when he learned I was right, he would sulk and try to get revenge by thinking up an even stupider concept. It was best to just go along with him, and hope he would go away soon. “Skippy, I love it. Uh, may I make one suggestion? You could refer to it as a spoon, knife, fork, and call it a ‘spike’.”

“Oooooooh,” his eyes opened wide. “That sounds cool! Hmm,” he muttered. “Let me make a note of that.”

“One other thing?”

“What?”

“How about you hollow out that handle, and use it as a straw?”

“Huuuuuh,” he gasped. “My mind is blown. Joe, we’re going to be rich!”

“We?”

“Well, I have to give you some credit.”

“For my pitiful little contribution, compared to your groundbreaking stroke of genius? No, you don’t.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Did Einstein share his Nobel prize with the guy who cleaned his chalkboard?”

“Well, that is a very good point.”

“How about, when the money starts rolling in, you make a charitable donation in my name?”

“Done! Well, gotta go work on revising the prototype.” He disappeared.

Happy that I had dodged a bullet, I opened my laptop and whistled a tune while I got back to work. Did I just give up a big chunk of money? No. That wasn’t the point anyway. If I had asked to be part of his latest obsession, he would pester me about it constantly with updates. Instead, I had ensured he would avoid ever mentioning the subject again, so I wouldn’t be reminded to ask him for details on the charity donation he certainly was not ever going to make.

Who is the genius?

Not the beer can, that’s for sure.

The ECO cruiser Well That Escalated Quickly jumped away from the relay station as soon as the ship’s AI reported the data exchange was complete. As usual, Captain Scorandum was not on the bridge for the maneuver, he rarely interfered with actions by the crew of any particular ship he was borrowing at the time. His level of interest in the relatively mundane routine of ship operations varied, depending on whatever else was going on, and the ship’s regular crew rarely knew what he was doing or planning to do. It was not unusual for him to go several days without stepping onto the ship’s bridge.

It was unusual for Scorandum to provide absolutely no guidance for the crew. His last instruction was to ping the relay station, and since then he had stayed in his office, doing what? No one knew. After the waiting grew awkward, the duty officer discreetly requested that Lieutenant Kinsta find out just what the hell was going on.

“Sir?” Kinsta paused in the doorway to the captain’s office. He had expected Scorandum to be intensely busy doing something. He did not expect to see the senior officer laying back on a couch, staring at the ceiling.

“Eh? Kinsta, what is it?”

“That’s what I’m asking you, Sir.”

“Huh?”

“Your orders, Sir?”

The ECO captain stopped staring up at the ceiling, as if he had just noticed someone talking to him. “Um, did we jump away from the relay station already?”

“Yes,” the aide didn’t bother to express the exasperation he felt, there just wasn’t any point in wasting the energy. “The crew would like to know where you want to go next.”

“Hmm. Well, that is interesting.”

“The crew always needs to know the commander’s intent,” Kinsta said slowly.

“No, I meant, where we are going is interesting. Please inform the duty officer to set course for Kasternul.”

“Kasternul, Sir?”

“Yes. We are, or I am, meeting with the Verd-kris.”

“That is interesting,” the junior officer muttered while he tapped out a message on his tablet, and sent it. “Also, rather sudden. May I inquire about the purpose of-”

Scorandum pointed a claw toward the tablet on his desk. “The Verds sent a message. To me, directly. They want to meet.”

“Why didn’t they send the request through proper channels? This sounds sketchy.”

“The reason I am agreeing to a meeting is because it is sketchy. Things have been dull around here for too long.”

“Dull, Sir?” Kinsta’s antennas twitched. “You double-crossed the Maxohlx and stole starships from them.”

“Well, yes.”

“The galaxy was, until very recently, under threat from Sentinels.”

“That wasn’t really our responsibility, so-”

“We just faked a Sentinel attack to scare the enemy away from Bildegung.”

“Kinsta,” Scorandum sighed. “Everything you said is true, and it is all yesterday’s news. Our leadership only cares about what we are going to do for them tomorrow. Faking a Sentinel attack was amusing for a time,” he chuckled at his own cleverness. “It was just too easy. The Bosphuraq are gullible idiots with no imagination and no sense of humor, screwing with them simply isn’t much of a challenge.”

“Not a challenge, Sir?”

“Not for us, Kinsta. As you have repeatedly, and annoyingly, reminded me, there is a higher standard for Ethics and Compliance Officers. We have screwed ourselves through our own success.”

“Yes, Sir. You will meet with the Verds because you are bored?”

“No. I am meeting with them because I am intrigued. Aren’t you curious? What could the Verd-kris possibly propose that could interest our people? Since humans helped them break away from Ruhar control, the Verds have not done anything of consequence.”

“They invaded a Kristang world,” Kinsta noted. “Their reshaping of warrior culture on Globakus is a major threat to-”

“Yes, yes,” Scorandum’s antennas swept right to left in a dismissive gesture. “Their attempt to reshape the prevailing warrior culture has been, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a frustrating failure. Globakus has been useful to Verd-kris leaders, because it distracts their public from the fact that they control only two isolated planets, and their only allies are humans who are pulling back from external commitments. You are correct, the Kristang see the Verds as a threat, and would love an opportunity to squash their upstart cousins. The Verd-kris are not stupid, they know that to survive, they will soon have to cut a deal with the Ruhar, which will not be popular with their public.”

“You have given the subject a lot of thought, Sir.”

“That is what I have been doing, while staring at the ceiling,” the ECO captain snorted. “Trying to guess why the Verds contacted me. Trying to guess what they could be planning, that requires our help.”

“You could wait, and simply ask them,” the aide suggested.

“What is the fun in that? We-” He paused, as they both felt the ship jump. “Well, we will find out, one way or the other.”

It worked. The real deal, I mean. We deployed all the comm nodes we had, and Skippy reported they did exactly what he wanted: they set up a chaotic resonance bouncing back and forth inside the network data channels. That resonance would immediately render any future wake-up signal incoherent, without interfering with normal operation of the networks. That last part was important, that the network didn’t lock Skippy out after he set off the first comm node.

So, good news! But it wasn’t all good news.

We needed more comm nodes.

The effect wasn’t as strong as Skippy originally hoped to create, he had to damp it down to prevent damage to the networks. That meant we used more of the damned things than planned. To get complete coverage, to ensure there weren’t any gaps for Opie to exploit, we needed to get another eight of the stupid things, at least.

“Should we go to the second option on the list?” Smythe suggested, after we jumped away from deploying our last comm node. We were in better shape than my gloominess hinted at. Knowing we didn’t have enough devices for full coverage, we planted them  randomly so that Opie would have to perform an extensive, detailed, and time-consuming recon to identify the remaining gaps. We had bought time to go shopping. How much time? We didn’t know.

“Maybe,” Skippy grumbled. “Before that, we should hit up a relay station, see what’s going on out there.”

“Good idea,” I agreed.

The first relay station we contacted gave us bad news, very bad news.

“The gold rush has started already,” Skippy reported with disgust. “I told you this would happen. We will have a hell of a time finding more comm nodes now. Not only are the Maxohlx locking down all their comm nodes, they are demanding their clients surrender any they have. The spiders are doing the same, the only difference is the spiders are offering to pay a reward. The Maxohlx are using threats.”

I looked around the conference table. The attendees were the usual suspects: Simms and Smythe, plus Skippy in avatar form. We had so many damned secrets, there weren’t a lot of people I could ask for advice. “OK, maybe this is a lemons into lemonade situation?”

“A what?” Skippy blinked at me.

“He means,” Simms explained, “this could be an opportunity. Although,” she bit her lower lip. “Sir, I don’t see how?”

“The kitties are flying around, collecting toys from all the good girls and boys, right?” I shrugged. “Like a reverse Santa Claus. They are sending out ships to bring comm nodes from their clients to whatever secure storage they are using now. We just need to intercept one of those ships. One-stop shopping,” I grinned.

“Wow, Joe,” Skippy shook his head. “I hate to burst your bubble, but that ain’t happening. The kitties explained they are collecting comm nodes to keep them away from us, although so far it doesn’t appear they have a clue what we’re using them for. But, a rumor has gotten around the galaxy that the reason we want comm nodes, is they can be used to selectively wake up, and control, Sentinels.”

“Ahhhh, shit,” I slapped the table.

“As a result, not only does everyone want to keep their comm nodes for themselves, they are determined not to give any to the asshole kitties. That is your fault, Joe.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You cooked up the bullshit story about the Maxohlx Red Section using some advanced technology to wake up Sentinels, remember? You never included details about how Red Section did that. In fact, you instructed me to make it look like Red Section erased all data about their testing program.”

“Well, yeah. We couldn’t leave info about how the wake-up signal actually got sent,” I felt I had to defend myself. “Some asshole might figure out how to repeat the process. The cover story didn’t state how Red Section did it, because if the Maxohlx authorities tried to repeat the process and it failed, they would know the cover story is fake.”

“That all sounds good, Joe,” he wagged a finger at me. “But in the absence of real information, rumors filled the gap. Everyone is now convinced that Red Section used Elder comm nodes to wake up Sentinels, otherwise why would we have stolen them from the Maxohlx?”

“Oh,” I groaned. “Shiiiiit.”

“Another unintended consequence,” Smythe noted.

“Wait!” I protested. “Damn it. We didn’t know anything about needing comm nodes until after we planted the cover story.”

“I wasn’t accusing you, Sir,” Smythe told me. “Merely observing that we appear to be snakebit, as you Americans might say.”

“Oh, hell. Skippy, the kitties aren’t having any luck collecting comm nodes from their clients?”

“Their clients are not cooperating. A Maxohlx ship jumped in above a Bosphuraq moon that has a secure underground storage of Elder artifacts, attached to an advanced technology research base. Instead of handing over their comm nodes, the Bosphuraq activated the base’s self-destruct mechanism. Joe, the birdbrains nuked their own people, to keep their asshole patrons from acquiring the means to wake up Sentinels. There is an unconfirmed report of the Wurgalan firing three of their comm nodes into a star, to avoid having to give them away. The only good news I can see in any of this mess is, some of the Maxohlx ships that are demanding to collect comm nodes, are ships controlled by disgraced officers associated with the former Admiral Reichert. There was an incident where a Hegemony ship and a rebel ship arrived in the same star system, that triggered a brief battle. The rebel ship was destroyed, but the point is two Maxohlx warships fired on each other. The kitties are that much closer to a full-scale civil war.”

“Close doesn’t count,” I said sourly. “All right, there is no point to arguing about ‘what ifs’. Where can we get the comm nodes that we need?”

“Um,” Skippy took off his ginormous hat and scratched his head. “That is complicated.”

“We had a list,” I reminded him.

“Very good dumdum, get yourself a juice box. We had a list. That list is no longer valid, now that there is a gold rush for comm nodes. We were able to raid Ardoo because the kitties never imagined anyone would bother to steal the useless junk they were keeping there. Now, every comm node in the galaxy is locked down tight.”

“That can’t be true,” Smythe said, rubbing his beard with the back of a hand. “Information does not travel instantaneously across the galaxy. There must be isolated star systems that have not heard that comm nodes are valuable.”

“Hmm,” Skippy jammed the hat back on his head. “Star systems that are isolated from information streams, that also have a substantial number of comm nodes?”

“At least eight comm nodes, in one place,” I added. “If possible.”

“You’re not making this easy, Joe,” Skippy complained.

“Oh, also, it has to be a place we can get to from here, before they are likely to hear about the gold rush.”

“Jeez Louise, do you want anything else? Those are tough criteria. It’s not the normal data timeline, when star systems receive regular updates from ships that contacted relay stations. For this gold rush, governments will send warships by the fastest route to any place where they are storing comm nodes. This is a race, you realize that?”

“Just give us a list, please.”

“We don’t have comprehensive data about who knows about the gold rush.”

“So, make your best guess.”

“Ok, so, there isn’t any isolated place that has eight or more comm nodes conveniently collected for our shopping convenience. The best site has three, and one of those is damaged.”

“Crap. Damn it, we don’t have time,” I thumped the side of a fist on the desk. “You know what? Screw it. We’re doing this the easy way. Give us a list of sites that do have eight or more comm nodes, sites controlled by third tier clients.”

“You are looking for a soft target?” Smythe guessed.

“Exactly. Skippy?”

“Well, hmm, there are a lot of factors to consider. Like, how long it will take us to get there, status of local defenses. Plus, the distance of the site from fleet bases of their patron species, since those patrons will certainly be looking to take any comm nodes from their lowly clients.”

“Just give us a list.”

Ten minutes later, Smythe jabbed a finger at my tablet. “That would be my choice, Sir.”

“Mmm,” I reviewed the site he pointed to. “That’s what I was thinking also. Skippy, program a course for this, uh, Begrum place.”

“No can do, Joe. The ship needs repairs before we go into combat again.”

“I don’t intend to take us into combat.”

“Right, because everything we do goes according to plan.”

“Crap. You’re right.” Tapping my phone, I called, “Reed?”

“General?” Fireball responded immediately from the bridge.

“We’re going back to Jaguar base for an oil change. Punch it ASAP. I’ll brief you shortly.”

“Jump for FOB Jaguar, understood.”

“Joe, are you sure about this?” Skippy cocked his head at me. “The Bosphuraq will very likely be at Begrum by the time we can get there. The Thuranin might be there also, it is not far from one of their major fleet bases.”

“Skippy, we are done taking crap from junior varsity species like the birdbrains and pinheads. If they get in our way, they will discover how a speed bump feels when it gets run over by a truck.”

“OK, but the Wurgalan undoubtedly have secured their comm nodes. How do you plan to persuade them to surrender them to us?”

“Skippy,” I sat back in my chair. “I’m gonna make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

Kinsta knew he shouldn’t ask his leader about the result of the meeting with the Verd-kris until they were in Scorandum’s office, so he waited expectantly while the dropship was secured from flight, and finally the door opened. “Welcome aboard, Sir,” he watched the captain’s eyes for clues.

“Mmm.” The reply was neutral. While the grunt sounded tired, perhaps grumpy, there was a twinkle in the ECO officer’s eyes. He was amused about something. He was in a good mood. Which could only mean he saw the potential for juicy action.

Kinsta could barely contain his curiosity. Escorting the captain to his office, carrying the small bag that contained whatever personal items Scorandum had needed while on the surface, he forced himself to talk about other matters. “Sir, there is something you need to know. While you were gone,” he said, with a hint of disapproval that his superior officer had been out of contact while on the surface, “we analyzed trace elements in orbit. The Achakai have been here, at least three times, the unusual chemical signature of their ships is distinctive. That is a disturbing-”

“I know about the Achakai, Kinsta.”

“You do, Sir?”

“Yes. I also am aware that a human ship was here recently.”

“It is not surprising that humans would visit the Verd-kris, but the Achakai are technically enemies of the Verds. They-”

“The Achakai are now officially a clan, thanks in part to the Verd-kris. The Verds informed me they have been discussing an arrangement with the other breakaway group of Kristang,” he smiled. “Those two do have that in common.”

“The mercenaries are technically an official Kristang clan now, but that does not-”

“Yes, the Achakai have discovered that official recognition does not mean they are welcome or respected, or that the other clans would not happily wipe them out at the first opportunity. Perhaps it was inevitable, as the Achakai leadership had no experience with major clan politics, but they have overplayed their hand, supported too many rivals in the ongoing civil war. Now, they have support from none of the major clans, who have collectively agreed that none of them will hire Achakai mercenary troops, or assassins, for the remainder of the conflict.”

“Like that will happen,” Kinsta snorted.

“You laugh, and you are probably correct in the long run. But, the Achakai have managed to at least temporarily unite the major clans. That is a rare accomplishment. They survive only because, without mercenary troops, the major clans lack the resources to both defend their territory, and send a force to crush the Achakai. If, for example, the Fire Dragons moved against the Achakai, the Black Trees would seize the opportunity for a major offensive against the Fire Dragons. This is an interesting moment in time,” Scorandum’s antennas bobbed up and down. “Recent events, recent actions by General Bishop and his Merry Band of Pirates, have disrupted the strategic situation such that the Thuranin are refusing to provide transport and logistical aid to the Kristang to continue their nasty war. The Kristang have been forced to hire transport from the Bosphuraq, who are only making their ships available to spite the Thuranin. I fear this Kristang civil war will simply fizzle out soon, due to lack of ability to continue the fighting.”

“If the fighting stops now, no one clan has enough power to dominate the others,” Kinsta objected. “Their society will be unstable.”

“True, but that only means their next civil war will begin more quickly. Ah, it is not our problem.”

“It’s not our problem now.” Kinsta said unhappily. “What, sort of arrangement are the Verd-kris discussing with the Achakai? If I may ask?”

“You may ask, but I am not at liberty to tell you. Don’t pout, Kinsta. It is a sensitive matter, the Verds requested I keep it confidential.”

“They knew we would detect that Achakai ships have been here,” the junior officer sniffed. “They only told you, to get ahead of the situation.”

“Perhaps,” Scorandum agreed. “But their arrangement is also important for me to understand, as background to their proposal. That is all I will say about that subject, I don’t want to tease you.”

“Very well, Sir,” Kinsta set the bag down in a corner of the captain’s office. “You must be tired; I will leave you to-”

“Ha,” Scorandum snorted. “Come, Kinsta, you are dying to ask me what went on down there, while I met with the Verd-kris.”

Kinsta looked at the floor. “I would not presume to-”

“No, you would not. Instead, you will mope around, and find excuses to stop by my office, and generally be a pest until I tell you what you want to know. So, close the door, pour two glasses of burgoze, and we’ll have a nice chat. I can promise, it will be very interesting.”

“Yes, Sir,” he reached for the cabinet beside the desk. “The good stuff?”

“No. We haven’t actually done anything yet.”

With two drinks poured, couches adjusted for comfort, and instructions given to the ship’s crew, the two officers relaxed. Or, one of them relaxed, while the other fairly bounced on his couch from excitement.

“It is a long, complicated story,” Scorandum took a sip and clacked his mandibles happily. “So, I will give you the short version. The Verd-kris have something the humans want. No, that’s not quite true. They think they know the location of something the humans want. Hmm,” he was annoyed at himself. “To be fully accurate, it is something the humans would be interested in obtaining, if they knew about its existence.”

“Where is this, thing? I can begin research on-”

“They didn’t tell me. It’s complicated. The Verds offered to reveal the location only to one of their soldiers who serves with the human unit, the Mavericks.”

“They don’t trust us?”

“They are smart, Kinsta. That information is their bargaining chip. Of course they aren’t giving it to anyone, without assurances they will get what they want in return.”

The junior officer sniffed. “It is still insulting.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they are concerned about the humans not holding up their end of the deal.”

“The Verds wish for us to broker a deal between them and the humans?” Kinsta guessed, a bit disappointed.

“Nothing so simple,” Scorandum’s antennas waved in a dismissive gesture. “I did tell you this is interesting.”

“Sorry, Sir.”

“The Verds are not content with a simple swap, a one-time transaction with the humans. They acknowledge the humans might no longer be reliable partners, and they also wish to bypass an arrangement with the Ruhar. They want to deal directly with us.”

“They want to be another of our clients?” Kinsta frowned.

“Ultimately, yes. In the long term. They understand that to form a patron-client relationship requires a certain level of trust. To begin the process of building that trust, they propose to give this, valuable thing, to us.”

“If this, whatever, thing, is so valuable, why don’t the Verds keep it and use it themselves?”

“They can’t. It is beyond their understanding.”

“Ah. They believe we will find it useful.” Kinsta’s mind raced with possibilities. Had the Verds somehow found a piece of Maxohlx or Rindhalu technology? Such equipment would indeed be useless to a low-tech species like the Verds, but potentially give the Jeraptha an advantage in competition with their peers.

“No. Their proposal is that ultimately, we trade this thing to the humans.”

“Sir? Why would we-”

“This, thing, it is beyond our understanding also.”

“Sir.”

“Oh, don’t pout, Kinsta. The Verd-kris believe they know the location of several Elder communications nodes, on a Kristang planet. Tell me, what do you think?”

Kinsta took a moment to consider the situation, trying to imagine how his superior officer would think about it. “We know humans are seeking communications nodes.”

“Yes.”

“The nodes are apparently useless to everyone.”

“Except that also apparently, the humans must have discovered a way to restore them to their original function, or to perform some other useful function. Go on.”

“Our government has stated officially that the few such devices we possess are not for sale, or otherwise available to anyone.” That information had come in a Flash priority message, warning all Fleet units to be alert for human attempts to obtain the devices by coercion or other means.

“Yes.”

“You plan to ignore our orders?” Kinsta’s antennas twitched nervously.

“No. Our orders state we are not to sell, or otherwise transfer, our Elder communications nodes to other species. However, those orders do not prohibit us assisting the humans in acquiring such devices that are possessed by our enemies.”

“That is a very fine line, Sir.”

“That is why the Ethics and Compliance Office must handle this, only we can walk such a fine line.”

“Or go around it,” Kinsta muttered.

“So, you plan to trade the information to the humans, in exchange for-”

“Perhaps. I have not decided yet what to do. Kinsta, you must learn to see beyond the obvious. You need to see the potential in any situation, and figure out what is best for us. There is little to gain from dealing with humans right now. They have made it very clear that they are pulling back from engagement with the galaxy beyond their home star system.”

“Sir, we can’t ignore one of the most powerful, maybe the most powerful, species.”

“Humans are powerful, but by pulling back they are no longer players. You see that?”

“I suppose so. If we are not dealing, not trading this, thing,” he waved a claw in the air, “to the humans, then who-” He gasped. “Oh no. Please tell me we are not-”

“Humans have upset the strategic balance in the galaxy, and our patrons, as usual, are very decisively doing nothing about it. If the humans aren’t willing to make a deal, and the Rindhalu will take years to make a decision-”

Kinsta’s mandibles sagged open in disbelief. “You are making a deal with our worst enemies?”

“As I told you when I talked with General Bishop, we have a tentative deal with the humans, until we get a better offer. The Maxohlx are also rumored to be scouring the galaxy for Elder communications nodes. They might make us a better offer.”

“Sir, I can’t believe you would help the Maxohlx?”

Scorandum laughed, and drained the burgoze from his glass. “Come, Kinsta. When have you ever known me to help anyone?”

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

“Joe! JoeJoeJoeJoe-”

“Gaaah! What?!” I flung the blanket off, pissed that he had awakened me in the middle of the freakin’ night again. My anger was fueled by the horrible nightmare I was having, where -

I don’t want to talk about it.

It’s bad enough that I experience something terrible like that, you shouldn’t have to also.

“We need to talk about something,” his avatar appeared, hovering over the foot of my bed. In consideration that it was the dark hours of the morning, the hologram was dim, I had to blink so my bleary eyes could see it properly.

Not that I wanted to see him at that moment. “Skippy,” I flung the pillow over my face and mumbled. “Could you please just go away?”

“Sadly, no. Do you think I would waste my valuable time, if it wasn’t important?”

“Oh, damn it.” I tossed the pillow aside and rolled to my feet. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom, be right back.”

A minute later, still with my cabin lights off, I was propped up on two pillows, hoping I could get back to sleep after Skippy told me whatever super important thing he needed to talk about. My phone screen had already confirmed there was no crisis the bridge crew knew about, so I had no idea what was bothering him.

Unfortunately for me, keeping Skippy entertained was about ninety percent of my value to the Merry Band of Pirates, and the UN Expeditionary Force overall. So, I embraced the suck with all the enthusiasm I could manage. Even if he did want to talk about the Muppets, I had to listen to his latest rant. And not just because nobody else would put up with his nonsense.

I had to listen to him because he was my friend. He pretended to be supremely confident, but I knew the truth was he was terrified of matching his power against Opie. Skippy had been so arrogant for so long, he couldn’t stand the idea that filthy monkeys would decide he is less awesome than he says he is. “What’s up?”

“Something has to be done, Joe.”

Ooh shit. Right then, I knew I was in for a long night. “I’m sure it does. What are we talking about this time?”

“Linus, of course.”

“Well, yeah. Remind me about him, or, uh, her?”

“Ugh. The boy from the Peanuts comic strip. You know, the one who carried a stupid blanket everywhere.”

“That was kind of before my time, Skippy. Is he the one who played the piano?”

“No, dumdum. The piano kid was Schroeder.”

“Oh. Hey! Linus carved pumpkins for Halloween, right? I watched that TV show with my parents, a long time ago.”

“He didn’t carve a pumpkin. He was a delusional little sicko, who believed that on Halloween, a Great Pumpkin would rise from the pumpkin patch, and give toys and candy to all good children who believed in him.”

“Sicko sounds kind of,” I said through a yawn, “harsh.”

“Really, Joe? He wanted to drag all the other children into believing in the Great Pumpkin. I swear, if that Peanuts comic strip had continued so the children grew up, Linus would be a cult leader. Living in the woods, eating insects and acorns, with filthy clothes and a scraggly beard.”

“Living in the woods like that sounds like SERE training,” I laughed.

“Are people forced to go through that survival training, Joe?”

“The US military is a volunteer force, so, technically no.”

“Huh. Wow. Maybe the Army is a cult.”

“It’s not- Hmm.”

“Think about it. Did you want to get shipped out to Nigeria, then go offworld, and nearly killed several times? And did you want to eat sludges, Joe? Or were you brainwashed into signing up?”

“I signed up for the benefits. And don’t talk smack about the Army, you little shithead. Seriously, this is why you woke me up?”

“I had to wake you up, numbskull. It’s not like I can lay down next to you, like a service dog.”

“You- What?”

“You have night terrors from Post Traumatic Event Response. If you were on Earth, I would suggest you get a therapy dog. It would sense when you’re having a nightmare, and wake you up, and press its body against you for comfort.”

“Holy-” OMG. I had been in a horrible nightmare right before he called me. Fal Desai was dangling from the window of a tall building, her fingers were slipping, and I was walking slowly, too slowly, toward her. Along the way across the room to the window, I got sidetracked by something stupid and when I looked back to the window, she was falling. It was my fault; I couldn’t do anything to save her.

I had that dream, or something like it, several times a month.

“You, you wake me up in the middle of the freakin’ night, to help me?”

“As far as you know, yes.”

“Can you be real for a moment?”

“Ugh. Ok, but if you get all mushy about it, I am outta here.”

“Hypothetically, if you did that for me, I would be grateful.”

“Hypothetically, if that happened, it would be the least I could do for a brother.”

“Thanks.”

“Even if you are a smelly monkey.”

“I said thank you.”

“Seriously, the next time you’re in the shower, maybe you should think about actually washing yourself?”

“You know what, I feel so much better now,” I pulled the pillows from behind my back and laid down, pulling the sheet up to my shoulders. “I am going back to sleep.”

“Wait! We haven’t talked about Linus’s sister Lucy. That little bee-atch is a psychopath. How is she qualified to give advice to anyone? And she is stalking Schroeder, I don’t know how he-”

Eventually, I was able to fall back asleep, after agreeing with Skippy that all of humanity’s problems can be traced back to how we indoctrinate our children with-

Actually, I don’t remember what he talked about. He might have said something about the struggle of the proletariat, and maybe he mentioned the Illuminati or possibly Bigfoot, I couldn’t tell the difference. When I did finally sleep, I didn’t have any dreams at all.

When Valkyrie appeared without warning where Skippy would open the wormhole to Jaguar base, Captain Bonsu simply acknowledged the mighty battlecruiser’s identification code, and followed the instructions to wait with weapons, active sensors, and stealth field offline. There wasn’t much his ship could have done anyway as it was attached to a star carrier, and the captain of that space truck needed to grant permission for the destroyer to detach, or to do pretty much anything else. So, any questions he had, about what trouble Task Force Black had stirred up in the Ardoo star system, and what the battlecruiser had been doing since that raid, could wait until the ships reached Jaguar base.

He was surprised to see Valkyrie maneuvering to attach to one of the star carrier’s hardpoints, and gasped with shock when the destroyer’s sensors zoomed in to provide a detailed view of the battlecruiser. That ship’s hull was scorched, pitted from impacts, and there were hastily patched holes in the midsection. In addition, there was a long, ugly gash along one side, where the armor plating appeared to have been peeled up and partially melted, before being fixed back in place. “Contact Valkyrie,” he turned to the officer at the communications station. “Ask if they need, no- Ask if they would like assistance.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Derek manipulated the main bridge display, zooming in the image, and saw that Valkyrie’s hull was faintly radioactive. Without him having to request the information, his ship’s AI added text at the bottom of the display, noting that the radiation was characteristic of a Maxohlx fusion device. So, the battlecruiser had not been bathed in radiation from its own weapons. That, at least, was good. But it meant the Merry Band of Pirates had somehow gotten themselves involved in a nuclear exchange. Whatever mission Task Force Black had been performing, how could it have gone so horribly wrong?

“Valkyrie replied they do not require assistance at this time,” the communications officer reported. “Sir, General Bishop added he will contact you, after we go through the wormhole.”

Derek tensed in his chair. Had he overstepped his bounds by contacting the other ship? Bishop didn’t owe him an explanation.

There was nothing to do while the Elder wormhole was activated and did its usual sputtering flares as the event horizons on both ends became stable. There was not just nothing to do, their instructions were to do nothing. No emission of radiation other than low powered line of sight laserlinks, no maneuvering other than minimal use of thrusters for station keeping, and no active sensors. Nothing that might make the wormhole’s network controller think there might be a hazard in the area. The process of activating a dormant wormhole had never been interrupted by the presence of starships, but according to Skippy it could happen. So, ships stood down from normal operations while Skippy did one of the things that made him unquestionably awesome, while the crews wondered whether the beer can was just screwing with them.

The star carrier, burdened with the destroyer and now a battlecruiser, transitioned through the wormhole without incident. While that space truck was recovering from the spatial distortion, the event horizon winked out behind them, going back into its usual semi-dormant state until the next time Skippy commanded it to open. The star carrier jumped shortly after completing a systems check, and Derek stood up and stretched, stiff from sitting for too long. “Yamaguchi, you have the conn.”

“I have the conn,” she replied with a shrug. “Aye.”

Derek grinned. “Try not to break anything while I’m away.” While attached to a star carrier, the duty officer had little to do. Still, the bridge needed a full crew in case of an accident or surprise attack. The destroyer could be subjected to emergency separation with little warning, if the star carrier’s captain decided that shedding its burdens was the best option.

He was washing his hands in his cabin’s cramped bathroom when his phone beeped. “Hey, like, Captain Bonsu?” It was the surfer drawl of Valkyrie’s AI. “General Bishop wants to talk with you, if it’s, like, convenient and all.”

“It is quite convenient, Bilby.”

“Cool.”

“Captain Bonsu?” Bishop’s voice replaced the AI’s. “Adams told me your mission went according to plan. I would like to know how you managed that,” he added with a laugh.

“Yes, Sir. We just provided transport,” he said, hoping Bishop would give at least a hint about the clandestine reason for Boston’s secret mission.

“Yeah,” Bishop frowned. “I need to retain your ship in the Special Mission Group a while longer, sorry about that.”

“Not a problem, General,” he didn’t express his disappointment at not getting the answer he wanted. “It’s more exciting than picket duty.”

“You are probably wondering why Valkyrie’s hull is radioactive.”

“No, I-”

“Bonsu, I would sure as hell be curious about it.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“We hit a Maxohlx world, to collect a batch of Elder communications nodes. We got the nodes, but someone crashed the party before we got there, and the op kind of went to shit in a hurry. We had to improvise. The kitties used nukes first. We deployed our nukes strictly in a SEAD role,” he used the acronym for Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. “The kitties are whining about it, after they used nukes in their own atmosphere first, and now they’re lying about what happened. This will probably become a thing, but it’s not your problem.”

“Yes, Sir. Can you tell me what will be my problem?”

“Soon as Valkyrie gets patched up, we’re heading back out to collect another batch of comm nodes. It’s going to be more difficult, because now the word is out that we are looking for those devices. Your mission is a failsafe; I need you to take the Mavericks to investigate a site that might have a set of nodes.”

“They might be there, Sir? We don’t know for certain?”

“No. I just heard about it, from the Jeraptha.”

“Huh. That is likely to be trouble.”

“You got that right.”

“If the beetles are being so helpful, why aren’t they going to pick up these nodes for us?”

“Because, allegedly, they only recently learned about this secret stash from the Verd-kris. The Verds heard a rumor about a cache of Elder artifacts collected by a clan that later got kicked off the planet. Supposedly, the artifacts are still there, in an underground vault.”

“This is based on a rumor?”

“The Verds have high confidence, apparently.”

“Why,” Bonsu asked with suspicion, “didn’t the Verds tell us directly?”

“They are exploring their options. They give the info to the beetles, the beetles pass it to us, and we owe them. The Verds are hoping to establish a relationship with the Jeraptha. And to bypass us, eventually.”

“Smart. I wish our government were that smart.”

“I would agree with you,” I said quietly. “But I’m in enough trouble with UNEF already.”

“Yes, Sir. Where are these comm nodes? I’d like to start mission planning.”

“That’s the problem. We don’t know which planet they’re on. The Verds didn’t tell the Jeraptha either. Your ship will be hitching a ride on a Jeraptha star carrier, and you’ll be working with an old friend of mine, Captain Scorandum.”

“Their Ethics Office?” Bonsu asked with a sigh. “I see why you want to task the Mavericks for this op, Perkins has experience with this Scorandum guy.”

“That will be helpful, but the Mavericks will be tasked for another reason. The Verds will only reveal the target to one of their own: Surjet Jates.”

“That is,” Bonsu sought for the appropriate word. “Unusual.”

“I would have said it smells fishy. I don’t like it, but we don’t have a choice. I want Perkins there to evaluate whether it’s even necessary to send a team to, wherever the target is, after Jates tells her where you’re going. And, frankly, I want her there if anything goes wrong, it could be a delicate matter.”

“Yes, Sir. Will Adams and her team be staying with me?”

“No. After the next jump, I’ll send a dropship to collect them. Master Sergeant Adams and her team were on their best behavior?”

Derek hesitated. “General, you might want to consider banning Sanchez from karaoke.”

“Yeah,” Bishop laughed, “I heard about that.”

Yes, it was nice having Margaret back aboard Valkyrie, even for the relatively short flight to Jaguar base. No, she did not sleep in my cabin. She might have visited my cabin, but there was no sleeping involved.

Really, she and her team were too busy getting caught up on the latest tactics from ST-Alpha, so she didn’t have a lot of time for anything but work. Her promotion to Master Sergeant meant she was also getting ready to move on from the Mavericks. Her new billet would be with STAR Team Cobra, the unit that conducted advanced training for all the STAR teams assigned to Jaguar base. It was a promotion for her, it also meant she would be on the sidelines of major action for a while.

You know what? I was OK with that, though she was less than happy about it.

We reached Jaguar base, and I immediately contacted Admiral Chatterji to request priority shipyard space for my battered battlecruiser. We had a long list of critical repairs that had to be completed before Valkyrie could risk going into combat again, and of course we didn’t have much time to linger at our isolated forward operating base. The admiral’s quick approval might have been assisted by him seeing how badly beat up my once-mighty warship was. While attached to the star carrier en route to Jaguar base, we had already started whatever repairs we could handle with the ship’s resources, so armor panels had been removed, hatches were open, damaged power conduits were arcing lightning into space, and we had a reactor periodically venting radioactive plasma. It was a good thing the ship was not listed for sale right then; any prospective buyer would have been scared away by the amount of work going on.

“General Bishop,” Chatterji had that weary tone he almost always used when talking with me, especially right after we came back from doing some crazy thing. “Do I want to know what happened to your ship?”

“Sir, I wish I didn’t know.”

“Send your report, and I’ll have my staff read it and give me the highlights. Was your mission successful, if you are allowed to talk about it?”

“The whole galaxy beyond the wormhole knows what we did by now. The mission was as successful as it could be. We ran into, uh, unexpected difficulties.”

“It looks like your ship ran into an asteroid.”

“The damage looks worse than it is, Sir. We had to dip into the atmosphere to retrieve the STAR team and, well, it became a whole thing.”

He just stared at me.

“Uh, yeah,” I coughed. “Our objective was to obtain a large quantity of Elder communications nodes,” I was relieved to be telling the full truth for a change.

“Comm nodes?” He blinked. “I understood they no longer work?”

“They no longer can perform their original function, Sir. They are capable of doing what we need now: stopping the Maxohlx from sending another signal to wake up Sentinels,” I lied, again.

I could almost see the blood draining from his face. “They can still do that? It wasn’t a one-time event?”

“It could still happen again,” I deliberately didn’t say what I meant by ‘it’ and counted that as a win for not having to lie. “Using the comm nodes we, uh, acquired from the Maxohlx-”

“You hit the Maxohlx?”

“Uh, yes.”

“There wasn’t a softer target available?”

“Not one that had enough comm nodes to make a difference, Sir. We intended to conceal the objective of the raid by taking other Elder artifacts also, but opposition was heavier than anticipated. We knew that wherever we hit first to get the comm nodes we needed, word would get out that’s what we’re going after. There is a gold rush now across the galaxy, with the senior species trying to gather up all the comm nodes their clients have. Hitting the Maxohlx was our only option for one stop shopping. The operation achieved the objective, Sir, the problem now is that Skippy discovered that the process of blocking future wakeup signals will take more comm nodes than we have. That’s why we’re in a rush to get Valkyrie patched up, we have a secondary target and we need to get there before either of the seniors can raid the place first.”

“You have top priority for the shipyard, and any fabricator output you need.”

“Thank you, Sir. We need to retain Boston for a while. Also, I need the Mavericks to go with Captain Bonsu. Not the entire company, just whatever core personnel Perkins thinks is necessary. They will investigate a potential batch of comm nodes on a Kristang planet, a cache the lizards there don’t know about.”

“You’re not keeping a STAR team with Bonsu?”

“No Sir. For this mission, Perkins’s experience and judgment will be more valuable than a team of operators. Frankly, their mission will be just a failsafe for us. If the risk is too high, Perkins should cancel the op.”

“Ah,” Chatterji thought he understood. “You’re concerned a special ops team would be more likely to proceed with the mission, regardless of the risk.”

“I didn’t say that, Sir.”

“You didn’t have to. Bishop, Skippy just informed the shipyard that he expects Valkyrie’s repairs to be completed in forty six hours. That can’t be right?”

“It is, Sir. We just need to patch the holes, then get out of here. I do not intend to take Valkyrie into combat against a peer species this time, our objective is on a Wurgalan world. It’s a much softer target.”

“You hope it is a softer target. I hope you’re right about that. Have you talked to Perkins yet?”

“No Sir, I wanted to get your approval first.” We both knew that was a polite lie.

“Good luck with that talk,” he chuckled. The senior UNEF staff was divided over who was a more dangerous loose cannon; me or Emily Perkins.

Sometimes I wondered about that myself.

“Sir,” Dave Czajka addressed me, after he definitely paused to take a breath. He nervously glanced around my office.

“Dave, come on,” I said. “Call me ‘Bish’, or ‘Joe’. Everyone else calls me ‘Sir’.”

“Even Master Sergeant Adams?” The rigid nervousness on his face slipped for a moment while he flashed a grin.

“Yeah, too often,” I admitted. “She’s extra sensitive about,” I was going to say, ‘being my girlfriend’, but she was sensitive about me saying that also. “Our relationship being public.”

“I’m gonna call you ‘Sir’ for now.”

“You’re a contractor,” I insisted.

“This is kind of an official conversation.”

“Gotcha. Sorry, go ahead.”

“I’m concerned about Jates being with us.”

“Uh huh. OK, I understand that. Em, uh, Colonel Perkins, approved this op.”

“Between you and me, she can be overconfident sometimes, you know? Jates has been solid in the past, he saved my life. But” he shrugged. “Things change. We’re kicking his people to the curb.”

“That’s not exactly-”

“That’s how he sees it. Sir,” he added, as an awkward afterthought.

“I understand your concern. But, D- Czajka,” it was uncomfortable for me to treat him like any other soldier. “His role is only to point you at the target. He’s one guy.”

“One big lizard.”

“You’ll have the Mavericks with you, plus Boston upstairs providing cover. And a Jeraptha star carrier, plus one of their specialized cruisers.” After coming back out through the Jaguar wormhole, we had escorted Boston to a rendezvous with a pair of Jeraptha ships: the star carrier It Ain’t Cheating If Everyone Does It; and Captain Scorandum was aboard a ship we hadn’t seen before, a long-range patrol cruiser, the If You Know What I Mean. The Ain’t Cheating would be transporting the UN and ECO warships to meet a Verd-kris representative, who presumably would tell Jates where to find the comm nodes. The orders I had given Perkins and Bonsu were that they had to get full details of the site before anyone went to the surface. If Jates held anything back, they were to scrub the mission. Hopefully, we wouldn’t need those comm nodes anyway.

Although, they would be a nice insurance policy for us.

“Listen,” I continued when Dave didn’t appear convinced. “This op benefits the Verds. Jates should be totally onboard with it.”

“He’s been acting weird lately. I know the guy. Something is different with him.”

“The Mavs have worked with Verds, and the Ruhar, and hell, you’ve worked with the Achakai ninjas before. They all had their own agendas when they fought with us, with you guys,” I corrected myself, since my boots had not been on the ground with the Mavericks. “This is no different.”

“I guess you’re right.” The way he said it, he wasn’t sure I was right at all.

“Have you talked with Perkins about this?”

“Yeah. She said everything’s under control. She always thinks everything is under control, especially when it’s not.”

“I trust her judgment. Otherwise, I would have rejected the whole offer, or assigned a STAR team to the op. You can handle it.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he looked at his phone as it vibrated. “Gotta go, the star carrier completed recharging. Hey, is Earth really returning to normal?”

“It’s getting a lot better. Dave,” I figured the official part of our conversation was over. “Normal will be different than it was before the Jupiter Cloud. If you’re asking whether people at Jaguar base can start rotating back home, I’d say give it another six months. Roscoe got rid of the Cloud, the problem now is managing the repatriation of people back to their- What?”

He was grinning. “Listen to you, Bish, using fancy words like ‘repatriation’. Where’d you learn that?”

“It was probably on a PowerPoint slide somewhere. Believe me, I wish I didn’t need to know shit like that.”

He stood up. “We’ll get the comm nodes for you. You worry about,” he waved a hand, “whatever crazy shit you’re doing next.”

“That’s it?” Derek Bonsu asked, when the dropship from his destroyer flew out of the docking bay of the Verd-kris cruiser that was keeping station at a distance of eight thousand kilometers. “We’re done here?” The cruiser, former Wurgalan ship, was worn-out but well maintained, a change from the usual situation with vessels owned by the Kristang. But then, the Verds were not like their cousins.

Emily Perkins looked up from her tablet. “Yes. Jates reports he has the location of the comm nodes.”

“He knows the location, Ma’am?” Bonsu asked. “Or the Verds told him where they suspect we might find them?”

“Technically, the latter, I suppose.”

Flipping up the cover of his command chair’s arm rest, he activated a display. “What’s our destination?”

“I don’t know yet. Jates will tell us which wormhole we should head for. Once we’re through, he will provide further guidance.”

Bonsu raised an eyebrow. “Ma’am, I do not like this.”

“I don’t like it either. Those are the terms the Verd-kris gave to Jates. You know him, he’s going to follow the instructions to the letter.”

“Yeah, I know him. It was nice,” he gestured at the main display, “to see some old friends again.” What he was pointing to was the Jeraptha star carrier Sure Thing, which he hadn’t seen since Captain Gumbano and his valiant crew were forced to leave the employment of the Alien Legion, due to debts they owed to dangerous people. Rumors about the fate of that ship and crew occasionally reached the Mavericks, but the stories were either ridiculous or contradictory. It was therefore a complete surprise when the Verd-kris ship arrived attached to the old Jeraptha star carrier, long since converted to a civilian freight transport. Or, more accurately, a smuggler ship.

Perkins laughed. “They were never our friends.”

“We were probably the closest they’ve had to friends in the past couple years. Whatever they’ve been up to, it looks like they’ve done well.” The Sure Thing, still clearly a well-worn, second-hand vessel, had a relatively new reactor, and more than one of them. The two fusion reactors were mismatched in size and power, but they both functioned properly, and even looked like they were being properly maintained. “I wonder how they hooked up with the Verds?”

“My suspicion is that was arranged by the ECO.”

“Why would they hire that rust bucket?”

“There are some jobs too sketchy even for the Ethics people. They want the ability to deny any involvement if an operation goes south.”

Bonsu shuddered. “I hate to think what kind of op that even the Ethics Office wants to keep at arm’s length. But,” he tapped his chin as he thought. “That would explain why Gumbano and his crew are still flying around, instead of their heads decorating the wall of some gangster’s office. The ECO has been protecting them.”

“Possibly. Can you contact the Ain’t Cheating, to ensure they are ready to jump as soon as Jates gives us the coordinates?”

“Will do, Ma’am,” he replied with a chuckle. “Gotta love the names the beetles give to their ships.”

The It Ain’t Cheating If Everyone Does It transitioned through the designated wormhole without incident, and shortly after the sensors of the star carrier and the two attached ships recovered from spatial distortion, Bonsu received a message. The star carrier wanted to know where they were going next, and they wanted to know now.

So did he.

“XO,” he unstrapped from the command chair. “You have the conn.”

In the passageway, he strode only a few steps to the cramped cabin that Perkins was using for sleeping quarters and her office. Boston did not have flag officer quarters, so Bonsu had given the Mavericks leader his own quarters, and he temporarily moved down a deck. The door was open, so he knocked on the bulkhead. “All systems are ready for jump, Ma’am. Where are we going next?’

“Jates hasn’t revealed that yet.”

Derek pressed his lips together tightly, then just said what he wanted to say. “Colonel, this is your mission, but Boston is my ship. I’ve had enough of these bullshit games. Ma’am.”

Instead of being angry, she smiled. “I completely agree, and you’re right, this is your ship.” Tapping an icon on her tablet, she said, “Surjet, come to my office.”

Jates was there in less than a minute. “You wanted to see me, Colonel Perkins?”

“I do. Captain Bonsu needs to know our objective and,” she held up an index finger. “If you will not, or aren’t able, to provide that information, then this mission stops right here. General Bishop made it clear we are the backup plan; we don’t need to proceed if the risk outweighs the reward.”

Jates didn’t blink. “Our objective is on a Kristang planet called ‘Gundarafriscolo’.”

“Shit!” Bonsu groaned. “Frisco? You gotta be kidding me.” Perkins and Jates stared at him, surprised by the outburst, so he explained. “We were just there. Boston took Master Sergeant Adams and a STAR team there.”

“Why?” Jates asked the question first.

“I wasn’t read into that part of the mission,” Bonsu admitted. He suspected the STARs had something to do with the clan leaders being assassinated, but he kept that to himself. “All I know is, Adams and her people did a stealth insertion, accomplished whatever they were there to do, and returned to the ship. The local clan never knew the STARs were there. Whatever the operators did, they were satisfied with the results. If we had known about the comm nodes back then, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

“Perhaps you can get frequent flier miles,” Perkins said without humor as she searched for records of the target world on her tablet. “You know this place, then?”

“Well enough,” Bonsu nodded, while he tapped to send a message to the captain of the star carrier, notifying that their destination was a Kristang world. “Minimal defenses, and the sensor network is obsolete. No warships are stationed there. For a Kristang world, it’s peaceful. The Black Trees are the only clan there, and the population is less than two hundred thousand. There isn’t much for the lizards to fight about,” he coughed when he realized he had used the term ‘lizard’ in front of Jates. “Should be easy in, easy out. If you run into trouble on the surface, we can cover your egress. It would be helpful if the ECO ship backed us up.”

Perkins glanced at her tablet. “I’ll discuss that with Captain Scorandum. He didn’t anticipate taking an active role.”

Derek shrugged. “He doesn’t seem like a guy who is happy to sit back and do nothing, while there’s action.”

“You’re probably right. Surjet, sit down and tell us everything you know about where these comm nodes are located.”

“If I may,” he held out a hand, and Perkins gave her tablet to him. “The artifacts are in a cavern on the southern continent of Gundarafriscolo,” he tapped to bring up a map of the planet.

“Can we call it ‘Frisco’?” Bonsu asked. “That name is a mouthful.”

Jates grimaced, his dislike of the human tendency to assign nicknames was well known. “Do you wish to hear the backstory of how the artifacts came to be in the cavern?”

“Um,” Bonsu checked his tablet. “The Ain’t Cheating acknowledged my message, we will be jumping for Frisco in about seventeen minutes. Looks like, huh, three wormholes between here and the objective. I’d like to hear it,” he looked to Perkins for agreement. “I don’t have anything else to do right now.”

Perkins nodded, so Jates set the tablet on the desk. “Around six hundred of your years ago, a minor leader of the Black Trees clan, named Perveartan, was blamed for losing a major battle. There were accusations of cowardice, though his family claimed he was a convenient scapegoat for the senior clan leaders being unprepared for the attack. Perveartan and his extended family had substantial influence within the clan hierarchy, so he was allowed to go into semi-exile on Frisco. There, he came into dispute with the ruling family that had been there since the colony was founded, and both families were weakened from their long feud, and from having to send many sons off world to fight for the clan. When Perveartan was old, he fell ill, and the son he chose as his successor was too young to take over as patriarch of the family. To safeguard the major part of his wealth until his son was of age, Perveartan hired seven Achakai mercenaries to transport the family’s cache of valuables into hiding. Those valuables included Elder artifacts, items of historical value from Kristang history, and data sticks containing one-time ciphers to bank accounts on the clan homeworld. The Achakai flew in a stealth aircraft, to bring the valuables to the designated cavern. On the return flight, the aircraft was self-destructed over the ocean, to eliminate those who knew where the valuables were hidden.”

“That’s cold,” Bonsu shook his head. “Jates, if the ninjas all died, how do your people know about it?”

“Perveartan hired seven mercenaries, but there were nine assigned to the team by the local Achakai representative. The two who survived were never on that aircraft. They took vengeance by assassinating Perveartan, then killed themselves.”

“They committed suicide? Why would they do that?”

“The assassination of Perveartan was not officially sanctioned, therefore it brought shame upon the Achakai. The assassins killed themselves to atone for their actions. Before they died, they left a message for the mercenary representative on Frisco, detailing where the valuables were hidden, and an account of the contents of the cavern. You are next going to ask me,” Jates anticipated the destroyer captain’s question. “Why the Achakai did not raid the cavern, and take anything they wanted?”

“I was going to ask that, yeah,” Bonsu admitted.

“The Achakai did not take the contents of the cavern, or reveal its existence until now, because they were hired to keep the secret. It would be dishonorable to break the terms of their contract.”

“Even though this Pervert guy,” Bonsu was amused to see the Verd grimace at the use of yet another nickname. “Double-crossed them?”

“The seven Achakai must have strongly suspected they would be killed when the job was done, but their representative accepted the contract. They had no choice but to fulfill their obligation. If any of them refused to perform, their fellows would be obligated to kill them.”

Bonsu shared a look with Perkins. “The next time I get pissed at the Army for having to follow some regulation, remind me to be grateful I didn’t sign up to be a ninja. OK, why are the Achakai revealing this info now?”

“They are no longer mercenaries; they are now a clan. As an independent house, they are allowed, they are expected, to put their own interests first.”

“Uh huh,” Bonsu frowned. “The other clans, especially the Black Trees, won’t be upset that the former mercenaries helped us steal the artifacts? What about the money in that bank account you mentioned?”

“Those bank accounts were frozen when Perveartan died, without an heir who was of age to take over the family. Control of those funds are likely to still be tied up in legal disputes. The only Kristang more vicious than their warriors, are their lawyers,” Jates added, with a hint of a smile.

Perkins weighed in on the discussion. “Why did the Achakai tell your people about the valuables? What do they get in return?”

“My understanding is, it was a goodwill gesture, to build a base for future relations with the Verd-kris,” Jates shrugged. “The Achakai are keeping their options open, you might say. Colonel, we should begin planning to access the cavern, it was sealed by the Achakai.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Task One for the Merry Band of Pirates was a long flight, through multiple wormholes that, sadly, Skippy could not screw with. I say ‘sadly’ in the non-ironic sense of the word, it sure would have been nice for the beer can to create a shortcut for us. The real tragedy of the long flight was that it overlapped with karaoke night when I had to sit through Skippy warbling songs from his latest musical obsession: bluegrass. Oof. If you can imagine his awful voice, with the extra flair of him singing through his freakin’ nose, you know why I went to bed with a headache that night.

The purpose of our long flight was to visit a lovely Wurgalan world the squids called ‘Begrum’ which was the name of a mythical ancient hero on their homeworld, or something like that. When I said ‘lovely’, I used that word as sarcasm, because Begrum was not a place anyone would go on vacation. The planet was modified a long time ago, in a process we would call ‘terraforming’ assuming we wanted an alien world to have a climate and biosphere similar to Earth. In the case of Begrum, the original world’s methane-heavy atmosphere was converted by the Maxohlx, to the oxygen nitrogen balance that is standard for most intelligent species in the galaxy. At the time the project began, the rotten kitties had big plans for the place, like a major fleet base with a shipyard capable of heavy maintenance, fuel facilities orbiting two gas giant planets, and extensive mining of the large asteroid belt.

Then, a wormhole shift ruined everything. Begrum was no longer located along a strategically important route, it was connected only to a dead-end wormhole that led into worthless Bosphuraq territory. The birdbrains, quite rightly, didn’t want the place, after the Maxohlx pulled out with the terraforming project only seventy percent complete. The Bosphuraq didn’t want to get stuck with the expense of completing the project, even if they had the technology, which they didn't. Neither did the Wurgalan, the difference was the squids were desperate for new worlds to colonize. So, the squids were happy to take the world, or at least happy enough. Since they added Begrum to their little empire as a colony, the terraforming had slowly been falling apart, with the biosphere inexorably reverting to its previous state. The squids had done, and were doing, what they could to keep the planet livable, but let's just say the real estate market there did not favor sellers. Large urban areas were abandoned. Tracts of farmland, the size of countries on Earth, were covered by a hideous mix of native and bioengineered lifeforms, which had found an uneasy balance that was increasingly toxic to the Wurgalan and the animals they had brought with them. An alarming development within the past three hundred years was the evolution of hybrid life, with the tenacity of native lifeforms, and the genetically-engineered resistance to pests and other control methods. An entire continent had been evacuated, after starships burning the soil to a crisp with masers failed to kill the Frankenstein organisms. It was only a matter of time before the squids were forced to pull out, or begin living in sealed domes on the surface.

Interestingly, the Begrum Chamber of Commerce had recently hired a new director of marketing to lure tourists, businesses, and new residents to their lovely world.

Man, I am glad I don’t have her job.

Anyway, the only reason we flew all the way to that truly miserable place, was because the museum in their capital city had a collection of Elder artifacts which was surprisingly large for such a poor, backwater planet. And because Skippy figured Begrum would be one of the last star systems in the galaxy to hear about the gold rush for comm nodes. If we were lucky, the squids wouldn’t have heard about the gold rush when we got there, and Smythe’s team could do their usual nonsense of dangling through the roof of the museum on a bungee cord attached to a dropship in orbit, or something like that. They had raided a squid museum before, so it was nothing new. Smythe had even looked bored during the pre-mission briefing. As Skippy would sat, easy-peasy. We could get in, grab what we wanted, and get away before the Wurgalan knew we were even there.

We were not so lucky.

“Rut-roh,” Skippy groaned after we jumped in ten lightminutes from Begrum. “We’ve got company. Technically, the squids have company.”

A second later, after the ship’s sensors recovered from spatial distortion of our jump, the main display showed what he meant. A Thuranin battleship and two cruisers were in orbit, that made it likely other ships were lurking in stealth nearby, and a star carrier had to be parked at the outskirts of the system. One of the cruisers was firing railguns at the surface, targeting residential areas of the capital city.

“Did the cyborgs take the comm nodes yet?” I asked.

“No,” Skippy shook his head. “The squids down there are being tough. At first, they protested that the Bosphuraq and not the Thuranin are their patrons, and therefore it would be a breach of their client agreement to hand over valuable artifacts without the approval of their patrons. That, of course, is bullshit and everyone knows it.”

“Then why haven’t the little green pinheads sent down a landing force, and raided the museum?”

“The squids have threatened to detonate a nuke they have in the city center.”

“Holy- They just happened to have a nuke in the city?”

“Um, no, the nuke being there is not a recent thing. The local population is not happy with the planetary government, about the inability of their leaders to stabilize the deteriorating biosphere. Due to the unrest, the leadership pulled out of the capital city sixty years ago, they now live and govern from a high security compound in the mountains north of the capital. All of the major cities have nukes that the government threatens to detonate, if their own security is compromised. Since that rather draconian policy was announced, public protests have been minimized.”

“They’re using nukes to prevent riots?”

“Think of it as a very effective form of crowd control, Joe.”

“You know,” I looked at Simms, “every time we deal with a species in the Maxohlx coalition, I am reminded of what a bunch of irredeemable assholes they are.”

“Their leaders are, Sir,” she reminded me.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I clenched a fist, to burn off angry energy that otherwise might have me making a bad decision. “OK, so why don’t the Thuranin just hit the government compound from orbit, end the fight,” I snapped my fingers, “real quick?”

“The squids in charge have a failsafe,” Skippy explained. “If they die, all the nukes get triggered.”

“Shit. Can I assume a bit of your awesomeness will prevent the nukes from exploding?”

“The failsafe isn’t just electronic, Joe. There is a biological backup. Family members of the leadership can manually detonate the nukes. Family ties are the basis of their entire society. If the survivors learn their family members in the compound have been wiped out, they very likely will seek revenge, even if it means their own deaths.”

“Great. Of course.”

“What are you going to do, Joe? Do we bail on this place, try somewhere else?”

“No. We don’t have time for that shit. We’re going to use diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy?” Simms stared at me, surprised.

“I mean my kind of diplomacy.”

“The kinetic kind,” she sighed.

“Fireball, I’d like to get a closer look at that battleship,” using the controls on my chair’s arm rest, I gave her a rough idea what I wanted. “I feel an obligation to inspect that ship for hazardous substances.”

“We’re moving at almost ninety degrees from their present course,” she warned. “It will have to be a quick inspection.”

“Understood. Program a course and punch it when you’re ready.”

We jumped in twenty thousand kilometers from the battleship that was the center of the three-ship formation, with Valkyrie ahead of their course so we were closing fast. One of the cruisers was in the lead, the other trailing the big battlewagon, and that lead cruiser quickly drew within seven thousand kilometers, enveloping our ship in its active sensor field.

“Joe, we’re too close for our stealth field to be effective!” Skippy shouted. “That cruiser can see us!”

“Weps,” I crooked a finger toward our chief gunnery officer.

“On the waaaaay,” he responded, and a moment later the Thuranin cruiser staggered as multiple maser beams struck its shields, which unfortunately for that ship were energized only to protect against low-powered fire from the surface. Our maser beams seared into those shields, weakening them so the railgun darts that followed closely behind had little resistance before punching through the armor plating. The entry holes were burn marks no larger than the warheads, but the exit holes on the other side were big enough to fly a dropship through.

“Now it can’t see us,” I told Skippy.

“Oh, very funny, Joe,” he glared at me.

“Weps, this is a bad neighborhood. Can you clean it up a bit?”

Knocking out the battleship, and the trailing cruiser that was already turning and burning to get away from us, was not as quick and simple as a single volley of directed energy and fast-slung darts. We had to launch missiles against both ships to get the job done with a minimum of fuss. I noted with satisfaction that Mammay had his people launch some of our more obsolete weapons, instead of wasting the upgraded shipkillers we might need against a peer adversary. One hundred and seventeen seconds later, the battleship was drifting without power, venting plasma and surrounded by auroras of electricity arcing from severed conduits. And the trailing cruiser? Its ass end was shedding debris that used to be the front third of the hull, and automatically dumping stored power from the jump drive capacitors. The result of this one-sided fight? Three enemy ships out of action, and no one bombarding the surface.

“Skippy, connect me with,” I waved a hand at the display. “Uh, whoever is in charge down there. Wait! No. Let’s bypass the middleman, huh? Connect me directly with the jackass who has a tentacle on the nuke in the capital city. Wait!” Damn it, I really need to get my thoughts organized before I open my mouth. “What do we know about the squid who controls the bomb down there?”

“We don’t know anything,” he sniffed.

“You know what I mean, jackass.”

“I know the bomb is controlled by a three person team, to prevent any single lunatic from vaporizing the entire city. However, the squid who will likely speak for the group is the son of the defense minister. He is considered to be serious and competent, and is being groomed for an important post in the government.”

“OK, well, see if you can convince Little Squiddy Boom Boom to talk with us, and-”

“Little Squiddy Boom Boom?” He laughed.

“I don’t plan on having a relationship long enough to care what his real name is, you know?”

It took a couple minutes for Skippy to connect with the right squid, then longer for it to lift a tentacle off the bomb, and to chat long enough with Skippy to understand we were aboard the ship that just disabled a minor Thuranin battlegroup.

“I am garble Vizentum,” he announced angrily.

“Sorry Joe,” Skippy whispered. “Garble is not his name or title, the translator just can’t understand what he is saying.”

“Gotcha.” Clicking the transmit button, I stood up, not because I needed to for an audio-only conversation, but because it just felt more natural when having a serious discussion. “This is General Bishop of the United Nations battlecruiser Valkyrie. We saw your planet was under attack, and we are pleased to render assistance.”

“Assistance?” Even translated from a wholly alien language, the skepticism was clear. “You lie! You are here to kill or conquer us!”

“No, we are here to save you,” I insisted.

“Save us?” Squiddy Boom Boom paused. “From what?”

“From what we will do, if you don’t give us those Elder communications nodes.”

There was another pause, then, “I at least appreciate the honesty,” he said, with what sounded like a bitter laugh.

“Honesty is the best policy,” I told him.

“Joe!” Skippy rolled his eyes at me, “what do you know about being honest?”

“Not now, beer can. Vizentum, since we are being honest with each other, may I ask whether the Thuranin mentioned why they want your comm nodes?”

“They did not have to. The Thuranin are superior in rank to-”

“That’s not what I asked. Did they provide a reason, or did they just start shooting? We know they are not your patrons, and we also know they have a well-deserved reputation for being assholes.”

“Possibly your word ‘assholes’ did not translate accurately, but if you mean they are cruel and arrogant and entirely too impressed with themselves, then that reputation is well deserved. The answer is ‘No’, they did not offer an explanation. This world is at the end of the information pipeline, we do not know of any events that would lead the Thuranin to believe the Elder artifacts we possess are useful in any way. They are just dead objects. My cohorts here have been speculating that these artifacts might provide protection against being targeted by the Sentinels that are ravaging the galaxy.”

“OK,” I took a breath. “I need to bring you up to speed on recent events.”

“You should be speaking to those in my command structure.”

“I could do that, if I wanted to waste a lot of time I don’t have. Time you don’t have. Instead, I am taking a risk that you are smart enough to make your own decisions, and that you are capable of thinking for yourself. Hear what I have to say, then you decide if you need to kick this up the chain.” Cringing, I remembered that we weren’t supposed to use slang or metaphors when communicating through a translator. “I meant, whether resolution of this issue requires a decision by higher authority.”

“I will listen to you,” he said, then there was a burst of loud arguing in the background, abruptly cut off. “We will listen to what you have to say.” I got the feeling he addressed that last remark at his cohorts, rather than to me.

“Good, thank you. First, Sentinels are not a threat to the galaxy anymore. Not right now. We sent them back into hibernation. Second, we killed one Sentinel, and captured another. That captured Sentinel is now protecting my homeworld, Earth.”

“We named it Roscoe!” Skippy added.

“Yes, thank you, Skippy, that was a very important fact that is vital to this discussion. Will you please shut the hell up? Vizentum, what you need to understand is that we were not responsible for awakening the Sentinels.”

“Of course you would say that.”

“I thought it was our fault. We crashed wormhole networks, and Sentinels activated in that same area. It couldn’t be a coincidence, right? It was not a coincidence, but we didn’t do it. Your supreme asshole ultimate patrons did it. Their dirty tricks specialists, known as the Red Section of the Maxohlx Hegemony, acted under the orders of former Admiral Reicher to send a signal that was supposed to wake up just one Sentinel.”

“Why,” there was an audible gasp that needed no translation. “Why would they-”

“You seriously have to ask that question? Vizentum, you know the Maxohlx had a doomsday plan to activate their Elder weapons to wake up Sentinels, after they sent an elite group of their people beyond the galaxy to be the only survivors. They planned to kill everyone, including all of your people.”

“The Maxohlx told us those were false rumors.”

“Yeah, they would say that. The rumors are true. We discovered their plan, gave the intelligence to the Rindhalu, and the spiders took care of the problem, permanently.”

“You have no proof.”

“The Rindhalu are active again. Can you think of any reason they would act so hastily, if their existence was not under extreme threat?”

He didn’t answer.

“Listen,” I continued. “We put the Sentinels back into hibernation, but it’s possible the Maxohlx could try to activate them again. Admiral Reichert is under arrest, part of the Hegemony fleet is in rebellion, and Red Section has been disbanded with many of their senior staff executed.”

“We,” another pause while the squid considered what I said. “Did receive a message that if certain groups of Maxohlx warships entered our star system, we were not to provide aid to them in any way. The reason was not explained.”

“Now you know why. Vizentum, we need Elder communications nodes so we can block the communications channels that Red Section used to wake up a Sentinel. Truthfully, we think they just got lucky when they woke up the first one, they probably don’t even understand how they did it. That first one woke up another, then another, and it kept going. The Maxohlx discovered they could not control the one they woke up, so they ran away and denied any involvement. The Hegemony leadership are furious that Reichert acted without authorization.”

The delay was longer than just him waiting for the translation. That was fine, he had a lot to think about. “You claim the ability to block a future attempt to activate Sentinels, without any proof. How can I know you are not lying, that you aren’t seeking the artifacts so you can use them to activate Sentinels? By your own account General Bishop, you are able to capture and control them.”

Well, shit. The guy had a point, and I didn’t have a ready answer.

“Your silence,” his voice contained a tone of satisfaction. “Is all the answer I need.”

“Vizentum, wait! The entire galaxy knows we are searching for comm nodes, only because we raided a Maxohlx world and stole a large number of them. The problem is, there weren’t enough of the damned things there. We have the communications channel almost blocked, we need more of the artifacts to complete the job. You want proof? Talk with the Thuranin up here.”

“They have refused to speak with us.”

“Yeah, well, I might be able to do something about that.”

“Sir,” Simms caught my eye when I cut the transmission and returned to my chair. “If you’re thinking what I think you are, we can’t do that.”

“XO, I hear you. We can’t fire on helpless ships, right?”

“Exactly, Sir.”

“I’ll take that under advisement. I also will take into consideration that the pinheads have not actually offered to surrender, and that we have no treaty with them governing rules of engagement, or treatment of prisoners. If we leave here empty-handed, the pinheads will resume killing civilians on the surface. My choice, therefore, is between us targeting a legal combatant vessel,” I pointed to the drifting battleship on the display, “or allowing the deaths of civilians on the surface. Also,” I added before she could object, “those ships are not exactly helpless. Am I right, Skippy? They’re trying to manually launch missiles at us?”

“Yes. Wow, Joe,” he stared at me. “How did you know that?”

“I know them. You’re blocking them from launching at us?”

“Yeah, yeah, easy peasy for me. I’m letting them think they’re making progress because, hee hee, it is so much fun to screw with those little green pinheads.”

“See, XO? Not helpless, therefore they are legal combatants.”

“Legally, maybe? What about morally?” She asked.

“OK, I will ask them politely.”

“When that doesn’t work?”

“I will ask less politely.”

The Thuranin aboard the battleship agreed to speak with Vizentum, after we persuaded them that communication was in their best interest. Our persuasion was partly in the form of two railgun darts that punched straight through that ship on either side of the main missile magazine, making the point that we could make that battleship self-destruct any time we wanted. We would not actually do that, because Simms was, of course, right about the rules governing our conduct, but the Thuranin didn’t know that. They assumed we would act like them, and they would totally fire on a helpless ship for any reason, or no reason at all.

Through the Skippytel network, we were able to listen to the conversation, which was mostly the battleship’s captain issuing threats, but Vizentum was able to confirm that we dastardly humans did conduct a heinous attack against the exalted Maxohlx, for the nefarious purpose of stealing Elder comm nodes. In my opinion, the battleship captain was acting extra outraged, in case the Maxohlx later listened to a recording of that conversation.

“OK, Skippy,” I drew a finger across my throat when the Thuranin launched into a long harangue about how lowly clients had no right to question their superiors and blah blah blah. “That’s enough.”

“Oh thank God,” Skippy groaned. “If I had to listen to that officious jackass for another second, that battleship was going to suffer a catastrophic accident.”

“Keep that accident ready, in case we need it later. Connect me with Vizentum, please.”

“General Bishop?” The squid answered immediately. “I was able to confirm that you did raid the Maxohlx, apparently to steal Elder artifacts.”

“Good, then-”

“I still have no way to verify that you will use them to prevent Sentinels from being activated by the Maxohlx, or that you don’t plan to use them for that purpose.”

“Ah, crap,” I said that aloud. “I suppose I can’t just ask you to trust me?”

“We both know that is unlikely. I believe this is the point when you issue threats, and commence striking targets on my world.”

“No. We’re not doing that,” I made that decision as I was speaking, surprising myself. “We don’t do that. We are not like the Maxohlx, or the Thuranin. Or your patrons.” Or like your own people, I added to myself. Skippy had told me that in the museum where the comm nodes were kept, there was an exhibit about the Urgar, the species that had the misfortune to be clients of the Wurgalan. The Urgar were nearly extinct, after the squids decided they wanted the Urgar homeworld. A few Urgar survived on the barely habitable world they had been transported to, while most of their people were enslaved, and then slaughtered when they proved to be less than useful slaves. So, I had to remind myself that while the Wurgalan might be near the bottom of the technology ladder, they used what technology they had no differently than any other species in the Maxohlx coalition.

“If we do not surrender the artifacts, you will leave this system?” The skepticism was evident in his voice.

“I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”

Have you ever heard a squid laugh? It’s a squeaky sound, like a dolphin. “Unless you have something to offer in return, there is nothing to discuss.”

“I can offer technology.”

“Technology equivalent to your own?” He asked eagerly. I could almost hear the gears of ambition turning in his head, imagining how his status would improve if he negotiated a technological leap for his people.

“Not a chance of that happening. I’m talking about technology equivalent to yours.”

“Why would we bargain for something we already have?”

“Because you won’t have it any longer, if you piss me off. Skippy,” I spoke louder. “Can you crash every piece of tech they have down there, like burn it out permanently?”

“Jeez, Joe, ask me to do something challenging,” he snorted.

“Wait!” Vizentum shouted. “You can’t do that!”

“You are correct. I can’t do that. Skippy the Magnificent, who is a freakin’ Elder AI and has expanded his abilities far beyond his original programming, he can do it. How would you like to be using stone tools for the next couple years?”

“Sir,” Simms coughed, waving me toward her.

“Just a minute, XO.”

“General Bishop,” she insisted. So, I took two steps backward, and leaned down for her to whisper in my ear.

“Hey, Vizentum, we have a better idea,” I said when I stood back up. “The people of this world should not have to suffer because their leaders are too stupid to accept an offer they can’t refuse. So, how about this? Instead of crashing every single thing down there that uses any kind of electronics, we will crash only the tech your leadership uses. Like, all the defensive gear in the command compound. Also, every weapon your security services use, to protect your leaders and enforce their will. Everyone else, all the civilians on the planet, they will still have access to tech. And to weapons. Hey, Skippy, can you unlock all the weapons armories on the planet?”

“Dude, please. You insult me. Consider it done.”

“Not yet. Vizentum, this is the point when you contact your senior leaders, and ask whether they want to keep a bunch of Elder artifacts they can’t use, or do they prefer to keep their privileged lives?”

The answer, delivered less than an hour later, was that the leaders of Begrum decided their lives were worth much more than a bunch of dusty relics in a museum. One of their aircraft landed on the museum roof, loaded the comm nodes aboard, and flew to a remote site, where the crate was set in a field before the aircraft flew away. I dispatched a dropship to pick up the crate, and our brief visit to the vacation hotspot of Begrum was sadly over too soon.

“General Bishop,” Vizentum called. “Our business is concluded?”

“Yes. If we ever meet again, I hope you will continue to be as practical as you were today. Oh, hey, before I forget. The Thuranin aboard the wreckage of those three ships will be tempted to hit you with missiles after we leave, so Skippy has disabled the guidance system of every missile they have, including the small ordnance aboard their dropships. They must have a star carrier around here somewhere, and probably at least another warship or two, so all we can do is give you time to prepare.”

“That is, much appreciated. General Bishop?”

“Yeah?”

“If you were telling the truth, about blocking the Maxohlx from activating Sentinels, then I wish you success. Please, we need someone to protect us from our own coalition.”

“We’ll do our best. Bishop out.”

We jumped away.

“Good work, people,” I clapped my hands. “We took those comm nodes from the squids. without firing a shot.”

Simms gave me the side-eye. “The Thuranin might disagree with you on that, Sir.”

“They weren’t invited to the party.”

She shrugged. “They deserved it anyway.”

“XO, I am shocked,” I grabbed my chest like I was having a heart attack. “You, advocating violence?”

“I did join the Army, Sir. What’s our next step?”

“Let’s go to, uh, Skippy, have you programmed a course, to where we need to plug the last holes in the wormhole communications network?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he answered the way he did when he was distracted.

“What’s wrong?”

“Before we go anywhere, I’m checking the comm nodes we just got.”

“And?”

“And, three of them are obvious fakes.”

“What? Oh, shit.”

“One of the others is burned out, the squids must have screwed with it. No way to fix the damned thing now,” he shook his head, disgusted.

“Oh my- We have to do this all over again? Damn it! Now I wish we had dropped a railgun dart on their stupid squid heads. Oh, crap. Where is the next-”

“Joe! Chillax! We’re good. There are enough comm nodes left to complete the job. The fakes were models, that I guess the squids put on display whenever the real artifacts were being cleaned, or loaned out for parties.”

“They-” I blinked. “They loaned out precious Elder artifacts for parties?”

“Of course, dumdum. How else do you think museums stay in business? Wealthy donors can request items from the collection to be displayed at their homes or offices, for a set period of time. Besides, to the squids, those comm nodes weren’t precious pieces of technology, they were just useless old trinkets.”

“Uh, good point. OK, so the other comm nodes check out?”

“Yes. Two are slightly damaged, so I’ll need to revise my procedure, and feed less power through them. Looking back, I used more power than was necessary in the first batch, so reducing the throughput is not a problem. We’re ready to jump, any time you want.”

“Let’s get this over with ASAP. We have to tackle Opie, and we still don’t know for sure where the damned thing is, what it’s capable of, or the defenses the spiders have around it. Fireball, punch it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

The original concept for the mission was for the star carrier and Scorandum’s ship to remain a safe distance away from the planet, while Boston went in alone with the away team. When the mission was complete, the communications nodes would belong to the humans, while the Jeraptha would take whatever other items of value that were recovered. What exactly was concealed in the cavern was not known, the Achakai had not been given a manifest, and the boxes they transported were sealed. The records of the Perveartan family were scattered and incomplete, but it was known that he was considered wealthy even by the standards of clan leaders, and that he had amassed a collection of at least nine communications nodes. Or what were later revealed to be communications nodes; all Perveartan had known when he purchased the items was that they were Elder technology, and did not perform any known function.

To assure the Mavericks kept their end of the bargain, Zortent Dandurf would go on the away mission as an observer for the patrons of the Ruhar, and Ensign Fangiu would be flying the stealthed dropship. Both Perkins and Bonsu readily agreed to those terms; Perkins had always planned to bring Nert with her. The Ruhar soldier’s presence would not merely be a political move to make his people feel that humanity valued their previous partnership, and it was not a reward for Nert’s past loyalty and sacrifices. Perkins wanted him on her team simply because she trusted him.

The other condition, to gain assistance from the ECO ships, was for the star carrier to jump in with Scorandum’s cruiser and the UN Navy destroyer attached. Bonsu did not like the idea of his ship not being in control of its own maneuvering, and he expressed his opinion with increasing urgency, until Perkins intervened, with a call to the ECO captain.

“Captain Scorandum,” she began, holding a finger to her lips for Bonsu to be quiet.

“Colonel Perkins,” the Jeraptha responded, “I know why you are calling, and I can save us both time if you will allow me to explain, agreed?”

“Go ahead.”

“The Ethics and Compliance Office does not normally participate in combat missions, or missions where the likelihood of combat is substantial. We prefer to achieve our objectives without resorting to violence. The goal of a typical ECO operation is a Win-Win scenario.”

“I, don’t know how to respond to that,” she said honestly. “Your enemies might disagree that they are winners in any encounter with you.”

“Oh, I didn’t say the enemy would win,” he blinked with surprise. “I meant ‘Win-Win’ as in, we achieve our objective, and our enemies once again feel like fools because we won without firing a shot. We win twice, you see?”

“I, um, yes. I understand.”

“What did you think ‘Win-Win’ means?” He asked, curious.

“It’s not important. Please, continue.”

“In this operation, I see an opportunity to practice skills we do not normally require, but that could be useful in the future. That is why I want the star carrier to jump in with your ship and mine attached. It is simply an excellent opportunity for advanced training. If your team experiences any difficulty on the surface, Captain Bonsu of course is free to detach his valiant ship and operate independently. We will provide whatever support is needed.”

Perkins cut the audio off at her end, and looked across the desk to Bonsu. “Is that acceptable?”

“Acceptable? Yes, if we have to. But, Ma’am, we are sacrificing operational flexibility so the beetles can conduct training. That doesn’t make much sense.”

“We are working with aliens,” she reminded him. “Their culture and methods don’t have to make sense to us. You can live with it?”

“Let me ask you a question, Ma’am. Do you trust him? General Bishop refers to Scorandum as Sketchy McSleazebag.”

“It’s Sleazeball,” she grinned. “Yes, I trust him. The beetles didn’t have to facilitate this op, it wasn’t their initiative. They’re doing this to assist us.”

He gritted his back teeth before speaking. “I can live with it. We’ll make it work.”

“Excellent.”

With support from the Jeraptha settled, the Ain’t Cheating jumped in eighteen lightseconds from the planet Gundarafriscolo, and the crews of three ships waited anxiously to learn whether the crude sensors on and around that world had detected the intruder. The answer was an unqualified ‘No’, the residents of the sleepy world were either not paying attention to events beyond their atmosphere, or the ancient sensor network sent so many false alarms that no one bothered to respond. Mere minutes after the All Clear was given, a dropship flew from one of Boston’s docking bays, and raced away to begin the long flight to the surface.

Shauna Jarrett dialed in an adjustment to the aiming system of her sniper rifle, verifying the weapon was correctly synced to the computer of her mech suit. She had sighted in the rifle on five likely approach corridors, using the active laser sensor to lock in the range to simulated targets. If she had to take a shot, she would not need to use the laser for the first round, not give away her presence and position to an enemy who might have sensors that looked specifically for targeting lasers. The night was calm, with little wind, though the humidity had the air saturated with moisture and the forecast called for fog toward morning. By morning, the Mavericks should be long gone, or fog would be the least of their troubles.

The terrain was problematic for a sniper. The land was dry with few trees, the ground cover was low scrub bushes and weeds, with clumps of grasses running along the dry riverbeds. None of the vegetation was dense enough to block sensors, and the night air was so still, anyone moving about could not avoid being detected  Shauna had seen a local type of rodent sniffing the ground as it walked along a riverbed, its large black eyes wary of nocturnal predators. Even a large rat made the grasses and weeds shake as it crept through them. Pinpointing the presence and location of an approaching enemy would not be difficult, if she had line of sight. That was the problem. The terrain was wrinkled and folded, with dry creeks cutting through the sandy soil in every direction, the ridges between creeks providing excellent cover for approach routes. Infrared sensors aboard the starships high overhead could detect heat signatures from unsuited Kristang, but if the enemy was equipped with powered armor, the heat sinks could prevent infrared energy from radiating outward for a relatively brief period of combat. To give better warning, Shauna and Dave had sent aloft stealthed sensor balloons, tethered at four points around their position. Balloons were better than drones for reconnaissance, even an insect-sized drone disturbed the air and created some noise as it expended energy to remain in the air. If the balloons found something potentially dangerous, Shauna could task a drone to investigate. She had to be careful about doing that, for the presence of a recon drone might confirm to the enemy that there was indeed someone in their territory.

Whatever. There was no reason for the planet’s resident lizards to suspect they had uninvited guests. The operation should be easy in, easy out.

If trouble came, the sophisticated sniper rifle she was now fully qualified to use was the weapon the Mavericks were least likely to find useful in a fight. Dave Czajka was with her, he had a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile launcher, and between them they had brought four missiles. The remote location of the cavern meant that any trouble would come by air, which is why she and Czajka were in an exposed position atop a hill, rather than any position she would choose as a sniper’s nest. If she had to employ her favorite weapon, it would come after either an enemy aircraft had been shot down and she had to eliminate survivors, or if the enemy knew the humans were there, and set their aircraft down out of missile range. In either case, her task would be to provide cover for the team in the cavern to retreat to the dropship that was under a tarp of stealth netting. Stretched over her and Dave was another such net, and they had set up nets over three other locations that provided good sightlines for anti-aircraft coverage. For both AA gunners and snipers, the technique of Shoot and Scoot applied; it would be suicide to remain in a spot the enemy saw, or even suspected, fire was coming from. If Dave had to launch a missile, Shauna would act as spotter, then they both would run to the nearest other stealth netting.

Trouble was extremely unlikely to happen, she told herself. The planet had a small population, the closest danger being a coastal resort that was a base for deep-sea trophy fishing, seventy kilometers away. Unfortunately, it was the season for sport fishing, and the resort was crowded. Their dropship had been forced to divert and orbit far out to sea when a local civilian aircraft was detected coming in to land at the resort. It was now the middle of night on that part of the planet, the resort’s airfield had turned off its lights and beacon for the night; she hoped that was a good sign. Unlike the Merry Band of Pirates, the Mavericks did not have a magical beer can who could infiltrate and control every data system on and around the planet. They would have no more advanced warning than the starships eighteen lightseconds away could provide, and then only what those ships could detect with passive sensors.

She didn’t resent the lack of an Elder AI. She did resent the Mavericks seeming to be pawns in whatever game the Merry Band of Pirates were playing. Even more, she resented Bishop jerking Colonel Perkins around. Emily Perkins herself would disagree, at least in public. With the political leaders of Earth having sidelined the Alien Legion, Perkins would say the Mavericks should be happy to be in action, be part of the team, be doing something useful, perhaps even vital.

It sure didn’t feel that way. It felt like the Mavericks were getting the shit jobs the Pirates didn’t want, or couldn’t be bothered, to do.

She didn’t think Bishop was being spiteful. He was, incredibly, a brigadier general, with more responsibility than she could imagine. Maybe she was actually resentful that Perkins hadn’t pushed back when Bishop casually requisitioned the Mavericks, as if the team were nothing but an item that could be picked up at base supply.

And, there was something going on that Perkins hadn’t told the team, although that was not unusual.

“Ready,” Dave said as he lay prone beside her.

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Time to focus on the present. “I’m dialed in here,” she set the sniper rifle down next to her standard infantry rifle, and verified that the extra anti-aircraft missiles were readily available. “Everest,” she used the ironic callsign for the team that would be going down into the cavern, beneath the surface. “Overwatch is ready, you are clear to proceed.”

With cover assured, the ground team could begin clearing dirt and rock from the cavern entrance, under the large stealth net they had stretched across the site.

“Overwatch, this is Everest,” Shauna heard the voice of her fiancé replying. “We acknowledge ready.” Then Jesse added, “Darlin’. Out.”

“Hold,” Jesse raised a closed fist to stop the people behind him from advancing down the tunnel. The scanner attached to his chest plate had just warned of a hazard in front of him. Yet another hazard, after the first two they had already gotten past. The whole ground, or underground, portion of the operation was taking longer than expected. Long enough that Perkins had revised the plan. If they weren’t able to find and extract the comm nodes within the next hour, they would have to remain on the surface until the next night. Dawn was three hours away, the dropship could fly in stealth during the day, but if anything went wrong, the cover of night was a major safety factor. No one wanted to spend a full day on the surface, and within nineteen hours, the starships would be out of position for a rendezvous.

It was better for everyone if Jesse could figure out a way around the booby trap in front of him, the third such obstacle they had encountered.

“Another trap?” Perkins asked. Jesse didn’t hear any note of impatience in her voice, she knew he was working as quickly as he could. If he were in command, he would be chafing at the delay, and he projected his own feelings onto their leader.

“Looks like it, Ma’am,” he answered without taking his eyes off the scanner display.

“I’ve seen this movie,” Nert said quietly. “This is the one where a giant stone ball rolls down to crush everyone.”

“We have to get past the big hairy spiders first,” Jesse muttered.

“Dandurf,” Jates chastened the young soldier. “Let Colter do his job.”

“OK, this one, huh,” Jesse eyeclicked to send the sensor images to the group data feed. “Wow, this is a nasty little fucker. Um, sorry, Ma’am. It is keyed to explode when it detects a scanner beam.”

Perkins took a step backward before she could control her own feet. “Why hasn’t it triggered?”

“Our scanner uses a different frequency, a different type of technology,” Jesse explained, “from a typical Kristang scanner. It’s not picking up my scan. Good thing, too. A device like this is designed to kill whoever is using the scanner. That would make the next guy a lot less eager to get on with the job, huh?”

Perkins checked the data feed, seeing what Jesse meant. “We can’t just ignore the device, I suppose?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“The mechanism looks,” she eyeclicked through the images, “complex.”

“I got the database,” he held up the scanner’s detachable interface. “Searching for a solution. Shouldn’t take long.” Lowering his voice, he keyed off his microphone. “Ya’ll hear that?” He addressed the remark to the computers of his mech suit and the scanner. “We’ve burned enough time already. Git on it, will ya?”

The first problem encountered by the ground team was not the rocks that choked what used to be the cavern entrance, they were prepared to dig that out of the way. Unfortunately, a quake had recently made part of the bluff above slump down to create a three meters thick pile of dirt and stones they had to remove, before they could get to where the Achakai had collapsed the mouth of the cave. The digging itself was not a problem, the team had a robot to handle that, and it made quick work of shoving aside the debris, and spraying a stabilizing foam that quickly hardened to prevent the pile from falling on their heads. The problem was, so much material had to be moved, it wouldn’t fit under the stealth netting that concealed the area from prying eyes. So, Jates and Nert had to unpack and deploy another stealth net, while Jesse gave guidance to the tunneling machine.

Once inside, they encountered three problems, the first almost immediately. A simple tripwire attached to explosive charges lay across the tunnel, so a bot had to be tasked to secure the wire, then slice through it and tuck it out of the way. The second booby trap was also not a problem; it was activated by a motion sensor that had been tripped years before, when part of the tunnel roof caved in. That was fortunate, the device had been armor-piercing explosive-tipped darts, that burrowed into and shredded the tunnel from both sides. Even the tough armor of a standard UNEF infantry mech suit would have been punctured by those oversized darts. As it was, the tunneling robot simply had to bore through the obstruction, spraying foam behind it to form a new tunnel just wide enough for one person at a time to crawl through. Thirty meters beyond the second booby trap, the tunnel roof had caved in, and the bot had to not only grind through, it also used up a large portion of its reservoir of foam to plug a steady stream of water that poured down from above.

When Jesse found the third booby trap, he was getting tired of the roadblocks. He was not actually tired, it was the middle of the night local time, but around noon to the daily schedule kept aboard the ship. He was irritated, and reminded himself that getting pissed off made him ornery, and that led to making mistakes. Cool it, he told himself. Let the machines do the work we brought them for. A soft beep chimed in his helmet speakers. “We got a solution,” he turned to look at Perkins, though they both had helmet faceplates closed, and spoke through a laserlink. “The recommendation is to plant a jammer that will shield any signals from reaching the booby trap’s sensor. It will be blind.”

“We leave the explosives in place?” That time, she clearly was not keeping her tone neutral.

“I know it sounds dangerous, Ma’am. What we got here are basically claymores on either side, with submunitions spheres of superheated plasma instead of metal. We could get the spider bots,” he pointed to the box carried by Jates. “To physically disarm the devices, but that would take several hours.”

“Hell no,” she snorted. “There isn’t a secondary trigger mechanism?”

“No, Ma’am. The whole point of a nasty device like this is, a Kristang scanner won’t detect any bomb or external sensors or nothin’, until the scanner itself is close enough to trip the detonator. We could plant the jammer, then send the tunnel bot through ahead of us.”

“What good would that do?”

“I was thinking we could tune the bot’s sensors to act like a Kristang scanner. If it doesn’t trigger the claymores, we should be OK.”

Perkins considered the idea, once again checking the time. “Do it.”

“I suggest we back up,” Jesse waved to the team. The original cavern was in most places narrow, with a low roof of jagged rock hanging down to bash unwary helmets. For much of its length, the Achakai had expanded the winding cavern wide enough for a single person to squeeze through. The ninjas presumably had dug out the tunnel and expanded it for their own convenience. Or that is what the Mavericks thought at first. They had come to understand that the work to widen the cavern was partly done to dig into the sides of the cavern, providing space for booby traps. The hardened foam that lined the tunnel not only stabilized the soil above from falling in, it also concealed deadly surprises. What Jesse worried about was that the tunneling bot was barely wide enough to fit through past the explosive trap ahead. If it bumped the device, the damned thing just might decide to explode.

The jammer worked. After the tunnel bot slowly crawled past, the team followed one at a time, the active sensors of their suits temporarily switched off for an added margin of safety.

Then, one last obstacle.

“Aw, man,” Jesse groaned as he inched around a bend in the tunnel. He had sent a spider bot ahead of him, the little bot’s own sensors on minimum power sent data back via a laserlink. Sending the bot ahead had been his initiative, in case the next booby trap was even more sophisticated. “Ma’am, we’re almost there, but there was another cave-in. The roof is collapsed. I’m going to use an active sensor pulse.”

“Be careful.”

“Um, looks liiiiike,” he drew the word out as he inspected the data. “The obstruction is four meters long, the tunnel bot can handle it except there is one big rock we’ll need to drag out of the way. The good news is, beyond that the tunnel opens a bit into a chamber, and there are a pair of crates in there.”

“I want you to double check the data. Scan it again. Be certain there are no surprises protecting those crates,” Perkins ordered. “If we’re this close, we have plenty of time.”

“Right.”

“You don’t sound confident?”

“I am confident in the scanner, and the tunneling bot. Ma’am, something is wrong here. This tunnel collapse ahead, it’s recent. Within the last month, if this thing is right,” he tapped the scanner.

“Colter, we know there was a quake here, it blocked the entrance.”

“That’s a hell of a coincidence. This place is quiet for hundreds of years, then a quake hits shortly before we get here?”

“There are no signs the tunnel roof suffered collapses until recently?”

“The original roof has sagged multiple times,” he admitted, scrolling back through the scanner’s database. “But nothing major hit, until recently.”

She shrugged. “If this area has become unstable, then we best get on with it.”

Reaching the chamber where the crates sat was anticlimactic. At least that’s how it felt to Nert. The cavern, really just a naturally wide spot because the narrow crack in the ground continued onward, had a flat floor formed of sand that had washed in from flooding long ago. Roughly in the center of the chamber were two dark gray crates, covered with dirt that had rained down from the ceiling over the years. The end of one crate was partially buried from where the cavern’s side had collapsed inward, and the sandy floor there was damp. Nert could see a puddle of water at the back of the cavern, making him fearful that water seeping in from above could make the entire area unstable. Especially if Colter was right that quakes had recently become a problem.

“All clear,” Jesse looked up from the scanner, showing the display to Nert. “No traps in there, I guess they didn’t want to risk damaging the goods. Those crates are just crates. They’re not even locked.”

“Colter, you and I hold here. Jates, Dandurf,” Perkins waved them forward, “you’re our official witnesses, to verify we are complying with the terms of our deal with the Jeraptha. Inspect the contents of the crates.”

Nert hesitated, stepping aside to let the more senior soldier pass by. Jates walked carefully into the chamber, sweeping all around with the scope of his rifle, then slung it over a shoulder. “Dandurf, open the first crate. Slowly!” He added.

Nert winced as he unlatched the first crate, half expecting it to explode in his face. He noticed Jesse was also tense, but Jates and Perkins were curiously looking at each other, instead of watching him. Shining a light from the wrist of his suit, he peered into the crate. “I count five Elder communications nodes here.”

“Only five?” Jesse took a step forward until Perkins held an arm across his path.

“Is anything else in there?” Perkins asked.

“Yes, but,” Nert leaned down to stick his helmet into the crate. “The comm nodes are the only Elder artifacts. Everything else is of Kristang origin, I think. Some of this stuff,” he wrinkled his nose though he couldn’t smell anything through the sealed helmet. “Is weird.”

“Take out the comm nodes and set them on the floor,” Perkins ordered. “Colter, check them.”

Nert was unlatching the second crate when Jesse cursed. “Aw shit. These things are fakes.”

“Fake?” Perkins looked over Jesse’s shoulder, to view the scanner display directly.

“They look like the real deal,” Jesse shook his head in disgust. “But that’s all. Underneath, they’re mostly honeycombed aluminum-ceramic composite.”

Nert dropped the lid back on the second crate. “Why would anyone go through the trouble of hiding fake artifacts?”

“Oh no,” Perkins’s shoulders slumped. “I think I know the answer. Jates, did your people tell you anything about this Perveartan guy’s finances?”

“He was a second tier clan leader, and wealthy by the standards of his peers.”

“Wealthy?” She snorted. “I wonder how much of that wealth was from money he borrowed, using Elder artifacts as collateral.”

Nert didn’t understand. “How could he have used fake artifacts to secure a loan?”

“Either he bribed someone to authenticate the fakes, or he sold the real comm nodes after he got the loans. As long as the fakes were buried down here, the banks couldn’t inspect them,” Perkins explained. “Everyone knows he hired Achakai to secure his valuables, everyone would assume he actually had something valuable to hide. It doesn’t matter. Dandurf, open the second crate.”

“Ma’am, I have a bad feeling about this,” Jesse made a fist, the powered fingers making an audible popping sound as the artificial motors strained. “If that Perveartan wasn’t dead already, I’d be looking to tear his lying head off.”

“I see,” Nert’s lips moved silently as he counted. “Seven comm nodes,” he pulled them out and set them on the floor without needing to be told.

Everyone waited while Jesse ran the scanner over the objects. “Also fakes,” he declared as he stood up.

“Colter, are you certain?” Jates questioned.

“I’ll show ya.” Jesse bent down, picked up a comm node in both hands, and with his suit motors whining, snapped it in half. “See? Nice shiny surface outside, honeycomb inside. Worthless crap.”

Jates swore a curse that the translator software of the others didn’t bother to interpret. “My people get nothing from all this?”

“Your deal with the Jeraptha was a goodwill gesture,” Perkins reminded him.

“Yes, but- Ma’am,” the Verd-kris started again. “If the Jeraptha get nothing, then we have no basis for an official relationship.”

“Sometimes,” Jesse tilted his head, “it’s the thought that counts.”

“Not in interspecies treaties,” Jates growled.

“Hey!” Nert interrupted. He had been bent over the second crate, rummaging around in the remaining contents. “There’s something else under this old Kristang stuff.” He straightened up, holding an object that was wrapped in frayed cloth.

It was a shiny cylinder.

“This looks like,” his hands trembled. “Skippy?”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

“Starbase, we see it,” Dave Czajka acknowledged the warning from the starships high overhead. At least those ships had been above his head when the dropship set down. As the operation dragged on and fell behind schedule, the planet rotated so the ships were now halfway down the western sky. “We will stay dark unless the bogey gets within thirty kilometers. Overwatch out.”

“Dave?” Shauna whispered.

“An aircraft lifted off from the coastal resort,” he explained.

Automatically, she reached out to touch the antiaircraft missiles in the tubes lying beside her. “In the middle of the night? Have we been-”

“There’s no sign the lizards know we’re here. Boston picked up a message from air traffic control. Some bigwig at the resort got seasick while fishing yesterday, and just decided he wants to sleep it off in his own bed. The flightpath shouldn’t come within seventy klicks of us. It’s a civilian transport, and no military birds have been scrambled. We stay dark,” he patted the active sensor of the missile launcher, “unless Boston detects that aircraft is changing course toward us.”

She was silent a moment, staring off into the darkness. “I don’t like this.”

“Shauna, it’s just one aircraft.”

“This whole op,” she turned toward him, though they both had helmet faceplates sealed. “Em. She’s acting weird. Not just secretive like usual. Something’s up. You don’t feel it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “She’s involved in something Bishop cooked up.”

“Dave, you know Joe better than I do, but he never seemed like the type to make plans beyond tomorrow.”

“Bish?” Dave laughed. “Yeah. If he was at breakfast and had plans for lunch, that was good enough for him.”

“That’s what I meant. It’s more likely Em got him roped into one of her schemes.”

“Not this time. Bish has changed, you know? We all have. It’s a long time since we were in Nigeria. It’s been a long time since we landed on Paradise.”

“Not that long.”

“What’s the saying? It ain’t the years, it’s the mileage. We have been through a whole lot of shit since Columbus Day. Can you imagine how much more Bish has had to deal with? That stress changes a guy. He’s a freakin’ general now,” Dave shook his head. “Just the administrative shit he has to do every day would wear me out.”

“Has Em given you any hint about what’s really going on?”

“I’ve tried to talk with her about this. It-”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He bit his tongue. He had been about to say that Emily was concerned about Jates, and that the Verd was also acting secretively. “You know how it is.”

“She’s keeping the info on a need-to-know basis,” she sighed. “Dave, at some point, we do need to know.”

“Let’s get through this op.” He checked the time in the helmet visor. “What is taking them so long down there?”

“Whoa! Nerty,” Jesse held up a hand, the shock making him forget protocol. “You’re saying that thing is an Elder AI?”

“It looks like one.” The Ruhar cradled the shiny cylinder in trembling hands.

“Dandurf,” Perkins stepped forward and spoke softly. “We had a briefing about this, after Skippy’s existence became public. The Elders used that cylindrical shape for many of their devices, especially anything that directed or managed power.”

“Yeah Nerty,” Jesse grinned, the dim lighting of his helmet visor making his face visible. “What you got there might be just a fancy power strip, you know? Something the Elders plugged cords into.”

“Even if it was an Elder AI canister,” Jates said. “It is dead now. Put it back.”

“Yeah, I,” Nert looked at the thing he held. He wanted it to be an Elder AI. “I guess you’re right. It’s probably nothing. But,” his power-assisted muscles tested the weight of the cylinder. “It is so heavy.”

Jesse shrugged. “The Elders used exotic materials for most of their gear. Feels like a solid block of tungsten, don’t it? Is there anything else in that crate?”

Disappointed, and still breathing heavily from the momentary excitement, Nert shifted the shiny cylinder to his right hand-

Just as the heavy object flared with an orange glow-

And a loud staticky squealing tone sounded in their helmet speakers.

“Ah!” Caught off guard, Nert dropped the cylinder on the cavern floor, where it bounced off the crate and rolled to a stop at the foot of Jates.

Jates lifted a foot, setting it down gently to hold the cylinder in place. “It is,” he gasped, “real.” He picked it up with one hand, holding it up to his faceplate so it was almost touching. “It is real.”

“Surjet,” Perkins held out her hands. “This changes everything. Give it to me.”

Jates extended his hand-

Hesitated-

And, snap decision made, pulled his hand back, as his other hand unslung his rifle. “No.” He pointed the muzzle at the chest of the Mavericks leader.

“HEY!” Jesse reached for his own rifle-

As his powered armor suit lost all power.

So did the suit of Emily Perkins.

And Nert Dandurf.

The three soldiers, in their heavy armor, struggled to remain upright, but the slightest movement upset their balance, and they each toppled heavily to the floor.

Nert had fallen on his face, his chin bloodied by bashing against the suddenly inert active padding inside the helmet. Desperate, he wriggled back and forth, the armor not fighting him other than its substantial mass resisting the efforts of his own muscles. Attempts to roll over onto his back were thwarted by the crate on one side as he bumped into it just as he got the suit moving. Taking a rest to recover his strength, he managed to twist the helmet around to get a view back up the tunnel. Breathing heavily, he shouted a curse in his native language, that was choked off when a familiar pair of boots thumped into the sand in front of him. Before he could speak, his faceplate was manually unlatched and swung open. “Hey! Come back here!” he called in the human language that was used by the Mavericks. He was fluent in three Kristang dialects, but not the one spoken by the Verd-kris, and without power to his suit’s translator, Nert relied on the one tongue he and Jates shared.

He watched the boots take two steps away, then the Verd surjet crouched down to unlatch the faceplate of Perkins’s helmet, swinging it open.

“Colonel Perkins,” Jates’s deep voice rumbled. “I respect you, and your people. Especially you. I am grateful for all you have done to assist the Verd-kris.”

“But?” Perkins was also breathing heavily. “You’re doing this anyway?”

“Yes. I will do this, for my people.”

“You’re leaving us here?” Nert cried out angrily, his voice sounding squeaky even to him.

“No,” Jates turned and bent down so they could see each other. “I will open Colter’s faceplate, he will not suffocate inside the helmet. Before I leave this world, I will alert,” he paused. “Someone, that you are down here. I bear no ill will toward any of you.”

The Verd stood up and walked out of view. A moment later, Jesse added a string of curses to the pleas of Nert and Colonel Perkins. To no avail. Nert watched, helpless, as the large, armor-suited figure retreated up the tunnel, until the soft glow of the Elder AI faded, and the three Mavericks were in utter darkness.

Perkins cleared her throat. “Does anyone have an idea how to get out of here?”

“Shit yeah!” Jesse exclaimed, unseen. “Let me finish getting this glove unlatched,” he grunted.

“What good will that do?” Nert asked.

“Remember your training,” Jesse suddenly sounded like a staff sergeant, rather than a frightened person trapped in a heavy armor suit. “These suits have a manual removal feature, if you lose power.”

Nert squeezed his eyes shut tightly, reprimanding himself for the sin of forgetting how to use his equipment. “What if the AI locked out that feature?”

“I don’t think so,” Jesse grunted again. “From what Bishop told me, AIs like Skippy can hack into any electronic system, but their ability to screw with physical stuff like latches is limited. Just one- Yeah!” There was a clattering sound. “Got the damned glove off! Ah, shit, think I sprained my wrist doing that.”

“Take your time, Colter,” Perkins cautioned.

“He’s getting away, Ma’am,” Jesse countered.

“He won’t get far,” she said softly. “This wasn’t planned, no one expected to find an active Elder AI here. Jates is freelancing. Even if he contacts the local Kristang, he can’t go anywhere. Boston and the Jeraptha ship have enough firepower to devastate this rock. No matter where he goes on the planet, we can find him, and recover the AI.”

“I hope you’re right about that, Ma’am,” Jesse grunted again.

“I think Colonel Perkins is correct,” Nert gritted his teeth as he tried to remove one of his own gloves. “Jates may only be reacting to an opportunity. But, Skippy was able to escape from Gehtanu. What if this AI also has a plan?”

“Oh, shit,” Perkins groaned. “Forget what I said, Colter. We need to get out of these suits ASAP.”

“Everest?” Dave raised his voice though he knew that had no effect on whether the team underground heard him or not. “Jesse? Come on, man, talk to me! Shauna,” he set down the missile launcher and stood up. “Something’s wrong. You can hear me, right?”

“Five by five,” she answered with a catch in her voice. “We can talk by helmet-to-helmet laserlink, so maybe your comms are busted, beyond short-range signals. Let me try.” She called on the team channel with no response, then directly to each of the four members. “Nothing.”

“Wait,” he put a hand on her shoulder. “It could just be a failed relay. That tunnel goes around a lot of corners. Let me see if the dropship is in contact with them. Nighthawk,” he used the spacecraft’s callsign. “This is Overwatch, you copy?”

All he heard was: nothing, nada, not even intermittent static.

“Shit, this isn’t good. The dropship is still there?”

Shauna sighted through her sniper rifle. The grounded spacecraft was parked up a dry river valley to the north of the cave entrance, and stealth netting was stretched over it. The sniper rifle scope was tuned to see a faint beacon on the dropship’s tail even through the stealth netting, knowing the pattern the beacon used to shift frequencies. “Affirmative. Beacon is still there.”

“That was stupid,” he sighed. “We would have heard it take off.” Tapping his helmet in a futile attempt to fix the comm system, he looked up at the night sky. “I’m not picking up the carrier signal from Boston either. Shit! What are the odds both of our suit comm systems break down at the same time?”

“These suits should have been tested a lot more, before the Force fielded them,” Shauna said with disgust.

“I’m going down there,” Dave declared.

“No,” she stood up and set the sniper rifle on the ground, slinging her standard infantry rifle to her shoulder. “You’re the anti-air expert, you need to stay here.”

Dave knew she was right. “You be careful. If part of the tunnel fell in to block the signal relay, the whole cavern could be unstable.”

“Dave,” she reached out to squeeze his hand. “A failed or blocked relay wouldn’t explain why we can’t contact the dropship, or ships in orbit.”

“Yeah. You be careful anyway. Hey, we’re going to lose contact when you’re not line-of-sight to me. You should check the dropship first, huh?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Good idea. I’ll-”

“Is that, Jates?” Dave interrupted.

They both waved and called out to the armor-suited figure, who by height could only be Jates, and the suit had the unmistakable insignia of the Verd-kris. He had emerged from the cavern at a trot, and immediately turned toward the dropship.

“Jates! Surjet!” Dave shouted, seeing a light in his visor indicating the laserlink to the surjet’s helmet was active. “Can you hear me?’

The figure halted, turning around to look up at them, but he didn’t speak.

“What’s that tucked under his arm?” Shauna pointed to a soft orange glow.

“Do not approach,” Jates warned, holding up his other hand.

“Surjet, what is going on?” Dave took a step forward. “Where is Em?”

“They are all unharmed. I am leaving, do not attempt to stop me.”

“Leaving?” Shauna exploded. “Fuck that. You’re not going anywhere until you-”

Both of their suits lost power with a sudden, fading whine, the faceplates automatically defaulting to clear. Dave instinctively windmilled his arms as he fell backwards, except the suit’s arms wouldn’t move quickly so he was still halfway through the motion when he saw stars above him, then he toppled over, bouncing down the backside of the ridge.

Shauna had the opposite fate, falling forward only instead of crashing onto her chest, she twisted to the left so the impact was on that side, and she rolled. Once, twice, the heavy armor gaining momentum as it tumbled down the slope, until she crashed to a rest on her back in a dry wash. Stunned from the violent movement, she blinked to clear her vision as she slowly turned her head against the resistance of the helmet, focusing on the first thing she could see. Her infantry rifle, lying on the ground in front of her face. The display on top of the weapon was blank. Like her suit, it had lost power.

“Shit!” She screamed in the echo chamber of the helmet. She didn’t know where Jesse was, she didn’t know whether she could trust Jates, and ‘unharmed’ was not the same as ‘safe and sound’. Whatever was going on, she knew that as she fell when her suit failed, she had seen Jates running toward the dropship. His suit was working fine.

What the hell was going on?

Whatever was going on, where did the Verd think he was going, on a backwater alien planet? Not just alien, Frisco was enemy territory, with friendly starships above easily able to control space around the world if they needed to.

She didn’t know what was going on, she thought as she wriggled her left wrist painfully to get that glove unlatched. She was going to find out though, as soon as she got out of the dead armor suit. Her rifle may be useless, but she had another weapon that was too crude to be hacked. When the glove popped off, she wasted no time in slowly swinging that arm around to her left hip, where she kept a pistol in a holster. The instructor in the sniper qualification course had recommended carrying a personal weapon for, as he described it, “close encounters”. The weapon’s magazine held sixteen explosive-tipped rounds that might be useless against the armor suit Jates was wearing, but she hoped to have the advantage of surprise.

She was going to get answers.

Ensign Fangiu almost didn’t hear the dropship’s side door open, his attention was focused on diagnosing why the spacecraft’s main computer had locked up, freezing him and Royal Air Force Captain Ashbridge out of the controls. The ship had not lost power, even the displays and touchscreen controls were fully active. The controls simply were not responding to his inputs. Same with the backup controls, he could push buttons and slide levers, but nothing happened. Regulations called for pilots to put on and seal their helmets against sudden loss of hull integrity during a systems failure, those regulations were in the flight manuals of both humans and Jeraptha, and Fangiu knew he was in violation of the rules. But, with the ship resting on its skids, on a world with a breathable atmosphere, he didn’t see any risk in leaving his helmet open. Besides, he wanted to hear what was going on aboard the grounded spacecraft, listening for the faint hissing of air in the vents, for actuator motors to whine, for the engine nozzles to vent air as they were still cooling. He heard all that, all perfectly normal, and then he heard the ‘click whoosh’ of the outer airlock door slide open. At first, he didn’t turn around to see who was coming in, it had to be one of the Mavericks and his attention was drawn to watching a display, verifying it showed an alert from the door being open. The display correctly indicated the door status, the touchscreen simply did not respond when he tapped it. “We are experiencing trouble with the ship,” the Jeraptha said as he and Ashbridge turned to look back through the open cockpit door.

They both froze.

Surjet Jates, his helmet faceplate open, had a glowing cylinder tucked under one arm, and his rifle pointed directly at the human pilot.

“What are you doing?” Ashbridge snapped. “I’m in command here, put that rifle-”

“Quiet,” Jates ordered. “Do not move. What is wrong with the ship?”

Fangiu stared, speechless.

“You,” Jates swung the muzzle to aim at Fangiu, and the young officer’s shocked brain was able to understand two details. The rifle held by Jates was safed, he could see the tiny indicator switch was green rather than red. And the Verd had his index finger resting above the trigger guard. He wasn’t intending to shoot, not immediately.

The Jeraptha pilot also understood that happy situation could change in an instant.

“The, the controls are frozen,” Fangiu stammered. “We are locked out.”

“Uh,” Jates grunted, and tapped a panel on the rear of the cockpit bulkhead. The outer and inner airlock doors slid closed and locked. “It’s working for me.”

Fangiu’s antennas twitched. “How did-”

“Connect me with your leader. Captain Scorandum.”

“We can’t,” Ashbridge waved slowly at the displays in front of his seat, careful not to make any sudden movements. “Comms aren’t working. We can’t reach anyone.”

Jates looked down at the glowing object tucked under one arm. Keeping the rifle pointed toward the cockpit and never taking his eyes off Fangiu, he set the cylinder on a seat along the left side of the hull, pulling webbing over it to secure it. “Connect me with Captain Scorandum, aboard the starship If You Know What I Mean.”

“We can’t,” Fangiu began to say.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Jates barked. Then, “Captain Scorandum, this is Surjet Jates of the Verd-kris Federation.”

Kinsta was in Scorandum’s office when the call came from the surface. They were anxiously watching the progress of the ground team from the office, rather than from the ship’s bridge, to avoid getting in the way of the crew. Not that the crew had anything in particular to do, but no one liked the newcomers looking over their shoulders. Even when the audio feed from the surface abruptly cut out without warning, Scorandum preferred to remain in his office. Kinsta’s proper place was supporting his leader, and he knew the ship’s bridge was not where the action would be happening, if anything happened at all. So far, everything was going according to plan, and only slightly behind schedule. The crew of the ship was investigating a glitch that cut off the audio feed from the dropship, no one was overly concerned because the dropship’s computer was still sending burst transmissions on the status of that spacecraft. According to the telemetry, all systems aboard the dropship were operating normally, and all six powered armor suits of the ground team were in perfect working order, there just seemed to be a temporary issue with the buffer aboard the dropship that processed the audio input.

“Captain Scorandum,” a voice issued from a speaker built into the office desk. “This is Surjet Jates of the Verd-kris Federation.”

“Yes, Surjet, I know who you are,” Scorandum replied, shooting a puzzled look at his aide. “What is going on down there? Can you connect me with Colonel Perkins?”

“Perkins is not available. Captain, I have something extremely valuable, and-”

“Jates is pointing a rifle at us!” The voice of Fangiu shouted.

“Silence!” Jates ordered.

Scorandum cleared his throat, as Kinsta’s antennas stood straight up. “Lieutenant Fangiu,” the ECO captain spoke in a calm manner. “It would be best if you allow the Surjet to speak, hmm? Surjet Jates, what do you want?”

“I want to make a deal. First, for your assistance to get off this planet.”

Aboard Boston, Derek Bonsu had reached the limit of his patience. Communication with the ground team had been lost, and Scorandum had urged patience while the Jeraptha worked to sort out what he claimed was a glitch. Moments before, the UN destroyer had picked up a transmission from the surface, in an encryption the ship’s computer couldn’t quickly break. All Bonsu knew was that someone on the surface was talking to the ECO cruiser, and the Jeraptha were not responding to his demands for answers. “XO, contact the star carrier, tell them we are requesting immediate release. Get the shields and railgun launchers warmed up.”

“Yes, Sir. Stealth field also?”

“No,” Derek shook his head once. “We’re going in hot; I don’t care who sees us.”

The ship’s bridge was filled with a low humming sound, as the defensive shield generators built up a charge. Derek tapped on his own console, plotting a course that would keep his ship within sight of the ground team, while dropping closer to the planet to provide close-space support if necessary. He also wanted to shorten the distance the Mavericks’ dropship had to climb, or to shrink the round-trip flight if he had to send down another spacecraft.

“Sir,” his executive officer turned from her console, a hand over one ear as she listened to something in her earpiece. “The Ain’t Cheating is refusing to release us. Also, the ECO cruiser is ordering us to remain in place.”

“Hell.” Derek stared at the main display for a moment before making a decision. Tugging the safety strap tight around his waist, he ordered, “I have a bad feeling our arrangement with the beetles is going south, fast. Pilot, I want a jump to the back side of the planet, as soon as we’re clear.”

“Clear, Sir?” Yamaguchi asked, also tightening her own safety straps.

“We’re not waiting for permission to separate, because the beetles won’t give it. Whatever is going on, we weren’t invited to the party. Secure all decks for combat maneuvering and zero gravity, then rip her loose.”

“Sir,” the XO warned. “That will cause serious damage to the hardpoint and pylon we’re attached to. The-”

“The damned Jeraptha can bill me for repairs. Do it.”

It took more than a minute to secure the destroyer for the violent maneuver, then the bridge crew sent a pulse down the data cable that connected their ship’s computer to that of the star carrier. The pulse was supposed to automatically result in the clamps retracting, the artificial gravity of the docking platform losing power, and the pylon telescoping out of the way. None of that happened. Derek was not surprised. “We’ll do this the hard way. Light off the emergency thrusters,” he ordered.

On Boston’s belly, the regular thrusters surged at full power, but only made the ship vibrate in a nausea-inducing wave. Then the solid-propellant emergency units came online with a roar, and there was a sickening shriek when the stout docking clamps tore away from the destroyer’s structural frames. “Engage maneuvering jets,” Derek ordered. “Start the jump countdown.”

“Sir!” Kinsta warned as his own ship’s crew shouted into his earpiece. “The human ship has broken away!”

Instead of being shocked, Scorandum’s antennas drooped in a ‘Not another problem for me to deal with’ gesture. “Surjet Jates, please hold for a moment, we have a bit of an issue up here. Kinsta, tell the crew not to fire on the human ship,” he ordered as he tapped on his tablet to pull up a view of the situation. “What is that ship doing now?”

“It is maneuvering at minimum power, and building up a charge in its jump coils,” Kinsta’s mandibles were trembling with excitement. “Sir, should we extend a damping field to prevent the humans from- Hmm.”

“What?”

“It, it appears that Boston has just lost all power,” Kinsta reported, astonished. “That ship is drifting away.”

Scorandum scratched the side of his face. “Lost power, hmm? Did we do anything?”

“No, Sir. The crew is as puzzled as we are. How could-”

“Thank you, Kinsta. Please inform the star carrier to maneuver as appropriate to avoid a collision, but to take no other action. That applies to our ship also.”

“But, Sir-”

“Bear with me, Kinsta. Surjet Jates?”

“I’m here.”

“The human ship has suddenly lost power. Was that your doing?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Surjet, we have a deal.”

“Sir?” Kinsta protested, not believing what he heard. “How can we-”

“How can we not take advantage of this opportunity?”

She was too late. By the time Shauna wriggled free of the last section of unpowered armor, the dropship’s engines were whining as they spooled up for takeoff. Stumbling across the uneven terrain on legs shaky from the strain of extracting herself from the suit, she fell twice, pushing herself to her feet instantly and running as the stealth netting parted in the middle, falling away from the dropship it had concealed. The spacecraft wobbled, then lifted off and surged forward. Dropping to one knee, she tried to still her ragged breathing as she held the pistol

in both hands, aiming at the starboard engine pod. Taking up slack of the trigger, she-

Hesitated.

Why would she shoot at a friendly spacecraft? She didn’t know what was going on. The dropship almost certainly engaged its energy shields right after it left the ground, her rounds would be deflected anyway. “Fuck!” She sank to both knees and slapped the dirt with a palm as the dropship faded from view, its stealth field enveloping it.

“Staff Sergeant?” Ashbridge called in the darkness.

“Sir?” Shauna pointed the pistol’s muzzle down, but kept the safety off. “Do you know what the hell is going on?”

“Jates betrayed us, and the beetles made a deal to stab us in the back.”

“Betrayed us how?” When Ashbridge walked close enough for Shauna to see him in the starlight, she safed the pistol and kept it at her side. “Our suits lost power, how did Jates-”

“It seems the Verd found an Elder AI down in that hole,” The Royal Air Force pilot pointed toward the cavern entrance, unseen under the stealth netting.

“An AI? Not like Skippy?”

“I never met Skippy, not directly. But Jates didn’t crash your suits, and lock me out of the flight controls. He had a rifle pointed at my head, forced me outside after he and that sleazy Scorandum made a deal. Fangiu got orders to fly Jates up to the ECO cruiser.”

“The AI did this? How did Jates know there was an Elder AI here?”

“I don’t know,” Ashbridge admitted, looking past Shauna into the darkness. “Where is Czajka?”

“He- Oh no, I think he fell down the other side of the ridge. I need to see if he is OK. Sir, I’ll meet you at the cavern entrance?”

“Without any light, I don’t know how we can help Perkins and her team.”

“We can get a fire started, give Jesse- Give the people down there a beacon. We might be able to,” she thought back to Army survival training. “Bind a bundle of shrubs together, make torches.”

Ashbridge looked up at the sky. “A fire would attract attention.”

“Boston has to be alerted by now. They can provide close-space support.”

“I wish I had your optimism, Jarrett. We don’t know that Boston is still up there.”

Boston was running on backup power, while the ship’s AI rebooted, or whatever process such complex entities went through to regain function after someone pulled the plug. The crew had learned their ship did not actually lose power; it simply lost the ability to use that power. Lost the ability to do anything useful with the gigawatts being pumped out by the reactors. Those power units had not shut down, had not vented their superheated plasma into space. It was likely the Jeraptha had not wanted a cloud of plasma drifting around so close to the star carrier. When the beetles hacked into Boston’s systems to take control of the destroyer, because that was the only possibility Derek could imagine for what happened to his ship, the Jeraptha had done the minimum required to get the UN warship out of the way. He realized that if he had not ordered his ship to rip loose from the star carrier, Boston would soon have been ejected anyway, after the beetles took control. All he had accomplished was giving the Jeraptha an excuse to hack into his ship, on the pretext that Boston’s unauthorized actions were dangerous.

Screw that. He didn’t care what the beetles used to justify their action, he was royally pissed off at them, at himself for not insisting his ship operate independently, and at Emily Perkins, Joseph Bishop, UNEF Command and anyone else who agreed to a sketchy deal with the Jeraptha. The whole operation was a waste of time, dropping to the surface of a world that might have Elder comm nodes that the Merry Band of Pirates probably didn’t need anyway.

“That’s another gamma ray burst,” the executive officer reported, repeating words shouted through the open blast door of the bridge. With the sensor suite still offline, the only way to tell what was going on outside was for the crew to go to the ship’s few actual portholes and look out the window. It was embarrassing. The lookouts were using the original Mark One eyeballs they were born with, or crude optical binoculars that relied on curved pieces of glass to magnify the images. There were also a few handheld devices that still functioned correctly, those were how the gamma rays were detected.

“Signature?” Derek asked, keeping his voice steady to not allow the crew to know their captain’s fears. If the gamma rays were from a Kristang ship jumping in, Boston could be in serious trouble. Even a Kristang frigate could carve up the UN ship with maser beams.

The XO shrugged, nodding and looking toward the open doorway. “Give it a minute, Sir,” she said quietly.

Derek didn’t want to wait a minute, he also had no choice. When the call, “The signature is Jeraptha” came echoing up the passageway, he didn’t need Yamaguchi to repeat it for his benefit.

“That’s it, then,” he bit his lower lip as he pulled himself hand over hand back into the bridge compartment. “The damned beetles got away with it.”

“Got away with what?” Boston’s XO held up her hands, then used one hand to hold onto the back of a chair. In the zero gravity, it was too easy to drift away into the center of the compartment.

“Damned if I know,” Derek admitted.

“They can’t have wanted comm nodes badly enough to do this, could they?”

“Intel says the beetles gave almost all their comm nodes to the spiders thousands of years ago, because they aren’t into collecting old junk.”

“Maybe now that they know everyone in the galaxy is looking for them, they changed their minds?” Yamaguchi shrugged.

“Ah, it doesn’t add up. If the Jeraptha wanted those nodes for themselves, they didn’t need to bring us here. I keep reminding myself that when we say ‘intel’ about aliens, we really mean whatever Skippy tells us. Bishop says the beer can isn’t infallible.”

“Someone sure screwed this one up real good,” she agreed.

“I’m taking part of that blame myself,” Derek clenched a fist. “I should have-”

“Comms are back up!” A crewman reported from a console that was suddenly blazing with light, as its displays became active again.

All over the bridge, displays flickered and began scrolling lines of data, as their systems returned to normal. Yamaguchi looked up from her own console. “Sir, we should have full capability restored in seven minutes.”

“Remind me to commend the crew for a job well done.”

“I don’t think we did anything,” she whispered.

Derek raised an eyebrow. “The Jeraptha released their hold on us right before they jumped?”

“That’s one theory.”

“If that’s true, it was mighty nice of them.” Settling back into his command chair, Derek felt the first faint downward tug of artificial gravity coming back online. To the communications tech, he said, “See if you can contact Perkins. Or any of our people down there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Does it hurt bad?” Emily Perkins asked as she rested fingertips on the back of Dave Czajka’s neck.

“I’m fine, Em,” he pulled away, embarrassed.

“It looks like you’re hurt,” she insisted. Emily knew Dave hated it when she fussed over him. Part of that was caused by their age difference, he didn’t like any hint that she was mothering him. It was so hard for her to resist caring for him, especially when he was so obviously in pain. Without the bio sensors of a mech suit, or a handheld medical scanner, the extent of his injuries could not be determined, but the way he gritted his teeth when he moved his neck was a good indication of the discomfort he felt.

She knew what was really hurt was his pride. While Shauna had fallen down the front slope of the ridge, Dave had tumbled over backwards and become wedged between a large boulder and the steep angle of a dry riverbed bank. Shauna had managed to wriggle out of her dead suit before the dropship lifted off, she might even have been able to do something useful if Jates had remained on the ground a minute longer. Dave, by contrast, had accomplished only removing one glove and getting his helmet partially off before he was rescued by Shauna. The helmet was the source of his sore neck, removing it only part of the way left his head bent at an awkward angle, and no amount of effort by him could get him out of the predicament.

“I should have been there, with you,” Dave said with bitterness.

“You are the team’s antiaircraft specialist.”

“Jesse could have handled that. Me being up there,” he pointed to the ridgeline that was silhouetted by the rising sun. “Didn’t do us any good. I annoy the hell out of Jates, but I thought we had a bond, you know? We’ve been through some shit together. If I was down in the hole with you, maybe he wouldn’t have-”

“He made the decision for his people. It wasn’t anything personal, he made sure we knew that. Your presence wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“Maybe. Shit, Em,” he rolled his neck slowly. “What are we gonna do?”

She didn’t have an immediate answer, and rather than filling the silence with meaningless words, she just took a deep breath, looking up at the stealth netting that stretched overhead. The powercell that fed the stealth field projected by fine wires in the netting had less than half of its charge left, the timely arrival of the local star above the horizon would allow solar cells to provide most of the power. Before taking shelter under the netting that covered the cavern entrance, the team had done what they could to erase any traces of the dropship, although anyone looking carefully from a satellite would see the soil had been disturbed. The now-useless stealth netting that had concealed the dropship was rolled up in a bundle and placed in the cavern, along with Dave and Shauna’s dead mech suits. Shauna and Jesse- Or ‘Jarrett’ and ‘Colter’ as Perkins reminded herself, were on the ridge ready to engage enemy aircraft.

They had no contact with Boston, so they had no system to provide early warning of approaching aircraft. That morning, they had seen the contrail of a high-flying aircraft, passing overhead to the southeast. No one saw the aircraft until the rising sun illuminated the spotty contrail, and by that time the unseen craft had already flown over their position.

Dave had asked a very good question. What were they going to do? What could they do? They had no means of communication other than by waving and shouting to each other. The mech suits were dead though it appeared to be a software issue, the powercells still had plenty of charge. Oddly, the Elder AI had not interfered with operation of the stealth netting. Was that an oversight, or did the entity not wish them to be harmed?

Captain Ashbridge was working with Nert on a mech suit helmet, trying to get the communications system working again. Neither of them were confident they could do anything useful with the limited tools available. Without a way to get off the planet, the intentions of the alien AI were irrelevant. The local plant and animal life on Frisco would not provide nutrition to human bodies, and they only had enough field rations to last the group nine days, even at half rations. “We stay right here,” she said quietly. “If Boston is able, they will send a ship down for us.”

“If they’re able. They should have been here by now.”

“Bonsu may have decided to wait for cover of night,” she suggested.

“I sure hope that’s the reason I’m not aboard a dropship right now, with a cold drink in my hand. Em, something about this isn’t right.”

“Nothing about this is right.”

“I mean, what are the odds a group of humans would find another Elder AI?  Bishop did it, that had to be a fluke. Now it happens again?” He shook his head. “After millions of years without anyone finding an active AI, we humans encounter two of them? That can’t be a coincidence.”

“It’s probably not.”

“Huh?”

“I read a classified briefing from UNEF Command, stating that Skippy is concerned other Elder AIs could soon become active, wake up like he did. What happened today might be only the first of a wave of Elder AIs around the galaxy. That’s one reason why the UNEF Joint Chiefs warned against taking an isolationist posture toward the galaxy. If Skippy is no longer unique, we will need allies.”

“Oh hell, Em,” Dave pressed a hand over his eyes. “I’ve had enough shit to deal with for one day.”

“Me too.” Standing on her toes, she kissed his forehead.

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t get a real kiss?”

“You don’t get a real kiss now,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes, then gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “We need to get off this rock first. Let’s get under the stealth netting.”

The others were gathered under the stealth netting that stretched over the cave entrance, with most of their gear stacked up just inside the tunnel. Without the protection from their mech suits, the cool interior of the cave would be pleasant as the local star baked the landscape. But, having seen that recent quakes had partially collapsed the ceiling of the tunnel, no one was eager to have tons of rock over their heads. The gear was placed so it could be quickly transferred to a dropship, assuming a spacecraft came down to lift the Mavericks off the surface.

That was a big IF.

Nert Dandurf was sitting cross-legged on a flat rock, cleaning his rifle for the second time since the sunrise. “Mr. Czajka,” he looked up as Dave walked stiffly under the netting. “Are you OK?”

Dave rolled his head from side to side, stretching his sore neck muscles. “I’m a hell of a lot better than Jates will be, if I find him.”

“If I find that mofo first,” Nert clenched his teeth and shook his rifle, keeping the muzzle properly pointed at the ground. “Ima pop a cap in his sorry hide, you feel me?”

“Nerty,” Shauna laughed. “When did you go gangsta on us?”

“Did I say that right?”

“Fuckin-A,” Dave held out a fist, and the alien bumped it.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm, Dandurf,” Perkins looked around for a place to sit. They were all dressed only in suit liners, basically thin pants and long-sleeved shirts that clung to the body so the fabric didn’t bunch up, crease, and cause pressure points inside the powered armor. The fabric was supposed to be smart, tightening up to conform to the skin inside the suit, and going loose for comfort when the user got out of the armor. Unfortunately, the fabric never received instructions to relax, so she was walking around in a thin layer that clung to every curve of her body, and she couldn’t help being self-conscious. Shauna Jarrett was feeling the same, based on how she was sitting with her knees tucked up to her chest. The men were even more uncomfortable with how the fabric clung to them, which she found amusing.

Emily crossed her arms and lowered herself to a patch of ground that had the fewest sharp rocks and pebbles. “But no one is taking action on their own, if we catch up to Surjet Jates.”

“He betrayed us!” Nert protested.

“No,” she shook her head. “This isn’t your fight. Your people are not patrons of the Verd-kris. Jates’s actions are not the responsibility of the Ruhar.”

Nert scowled, baring his large incisors. “He betrayed your people, and the Mavericks are my team.”

“That is, complicated,” she sighed. “We are a team, that means no one,” she looked around. “No one, does everyone hear me? Goes off trying to be a cowboy. We handle this as a team, that means playing by the rulebook.”

“The book has rules for this situation, Ma’am?” Shauna asked, cocking her head.

“You’re in the Army,” Perkins snorted. “We have rules for everything. Seriously, we don’t do anything until we understand the scope of the situation. Dandurf, you need to be very careful. How ever Jates got off the ground, and presumably away from this world, he must have had help from the Jeraptha. They are the patrons of your people, and you can’t do anything that would cause trouble for the Ruhar.”

“This is bullshit,” Nert slapped a magazine into his rifle. They had all removed the fancy electronics that had caused the weapons to go inert, and a test conducted inside the cave showed the rifles would operate manually, just as the manual said they should. “Jates is a traitor.”

“Not to his own people. Also, not to the Jeraptha.”

“He betrayed you.”

“If you mean me, personally, I can’t argue with that. He did not betray UNEF. The Verd-kris and humanity do not have a formal treaty, just a handshake understanding to work together on a case-by-case basis. The Verds wanted a formal arrangement, but my people decided to pull back from engagement. As a legal matter,” she shrugged. “I hate to say it, but I think this incident falls under the Finders Keepers rule.”

“What about as a practical matter, Ma’am?” Jesse asked. “He sure as hell screwed us over.”

“I don’t know that’s entirely true, Colter. That AI chose to work with him.”

“Come on, Em,” Dave Czajka stiffly sat down next to his fiancée. “You said the canister rolled across the floor when Nert dropped it. Um, no one is blaming you, Nert.”

“I am,” Nert bit his lower lip. “I should have held onto it.”

“That wouldn’t have made any difference,” Perkins assured the Ruhar soldier.

“You can’t say that for sure either, Em,” Dave put an arm around her shoulder. “You heard what happened with Bishop, he thinks Skippy imprinted on him, like a puppy. Must be the same thing happened with Jates?”

“You’re saying it is my fault,” Nert was crushed.

“I’m saying, we don’t know shit about that AI. Maybe it has an agenda of its own, or maybe it did whatever it could to help Jates, because it imprinted on him. We don’t know anything. Em is right, if we go off thinking we should shoot first and ask questions later, we could be getting all of our people into a whole lot of trouble.”

“Hey man,” Jesse looked disgusted. “Here’s one thing I do know: that AI isn’t helping us get off this rock. We are screwed down here, unless we can-”

Perkins jerked, startled as her earpiece interrupted her thoughts with a harsh crackle of static. “-arbase calling Everest, please respond. This is Starbase calling Everest, please resp-”

Tapping the side of her neck where an ultrathin contact was just under the skin, she activated the transmit function. Her earpiece lacked the power to send a secure signal up to orbit, but hearing Boston’s hail meant at least one of the mech suit helmets was active again. “This is Everest,” she swallowed to moisten her suddenly dry mouth.

“Emily? This is Derek!” In his relief, Boston’s captain forgot protocol. “Is your team all right?”

“Yes, no injuries. What’s the status of your ship?”

“We are fully capable again, Ma’am. The beetles restored our power before they jumped away. We don’t know how they hacked into our systems, we’re-”

“It wasn’t the Jeraptha. We found an Elder AI down here.”

“A, say again? What?”

“An Elder AI, like Skippy. Enough like Skippy that it crashed the power of our suits. The thing lit up with an orange light when Dandurf touched it, the-”

“I’m sorry!” Nert groaned. “I shouldn’t have dropped it. It is my fault that Jates-”

“It is not your fault,” Perkins insisted. “No one could have expected this. Bonsu, that AI must have hacked into your ship, the Jeraptha don’t have the technology. Can you get a dropship down here to pick us up?”

“Yes, I,” he glanced at his XO, who nodded and tapped on her own console. “I’ll have a bird on the way ASAP. There is no need to wait for nightfall, the Jeraptha ships weren’t in stealth when they, did whatever they did. They jumped close to the planet, left us drifting up here. We are damned fortunate this rock doesn’t have an SD network in orbit.”

“They must have jumped in to take our dropship aboard, with Jates and the AI. Fangiu was flying, I assume under orders from Scorandum?”

“I would like to wring that sleazy beetle’s neck,” Derek said honestly.

“You’ll have to get in line. Scorandum didn’t instigate this. Jates picked up the AI, right before it shut down our suits.”

“He pointed a rifle at us!” Nert added.

“Oh, shit,” Derek rubbed his temples. “Please tell me this story doesn’t get worse.”

“I can’t keep that promise. Ashbridge overheard Jates make a deal with Scorandum, then Jates forced him to leave the dropship. I assume Jates, and the Elder AI, are now aboard Scorandum’s ship?”

“The Jeraptha jumped away, we don’t know where they went. Oh hell,” Derek slowly thumped a fist on his thigh. “There is another Skippy out there, and the Jeraptha have it?”

“Not just the Jeraptha. Their Ethics group has an Elder AI.”

“Shiiiiiit. Ma’am, this is the worst fucking mess we’ve ever gotten into. For the Mavericks, that’s saying a lot.”

“This is one mess we can’t fix. We need to get word of this to Valkyrie. Can Boston get out to a relay station from here, without a star carrier?”

“Um,” Derek checked a star chart on his console before he replied. “Yes. We can, hmm. We can actually reach Paradise from here, though we’ll be critically low on fuel.”

“We might have to do that.”

The moment Perkins ended the call, Nert stood uncomfortably close to her, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I can testify to my people that Jates betrayed us! He will not get away with-”

“Dandurf,” she lowered her voice. “Nert, we discussed this. I want you to be very careful about this. This is an issue between humans and the Verd-kris, your people are not involved. They might not want to become involved, and they won’t thank you for forcing the issue.”

“I am required to file reports on all my actions while serving with the Mavericks,” he insisted. “My report will tell the truth.”

“Those reports should go through the usual channels. Nert, you don’t need to stick your neck out for us again. You have gotten into trouble for us too many times already.”

“I want to make sure Jates is punished for-”

“If he is punished, your people will not be involved.”

“We should be there with you!”

“Jates made a deal with the Jeraptha, who are patrons of the Ruhar. Your people may not be allowed to interfere.”

“I,” Nert cast his eyes down at his feet.

“All I am saying is, do your duty. Let us handle it from there. You trust us to do the right thing?”

He locked eyes with hers. “Yes. I, I, the betrayal is more than- I thought of Jates as a friend.”

“Me too, Nert,” Jesse put a hand on the alien’s shoulder. “Don’t think of what Jates did as a betrayal, it wasn’t personal. This was politics. He did what he considered best for his people, and he had to make a very quick decision. I hate to say it, but I might have done the same. Think of it this way: Bishop found an Elder AI that was a possession of your people, and he took it without asking permission.”

Nert’s glare dropped into a frown. “I suppose. It still feels personal.”

“Like Colter said,” Perkins agreed. “This is what we call Great Power politics. This one event could change everything. Again,” she added with a sigh. “Boston will be jumping into low orbit in,” she realized that without access to technology, she had no way to tell the time. “Shortly, and a dropship will be coming down to get us. Let’s police the area, I don’t want to leave any of our gear behind.”

Jesse jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the cavern entrance. “Ma’am, somebody needs to go down in that hole and retrieve our mech suits from down there. Unless you want Boston to collapse the tunnel with an orbital strike.”

Perkins tapped a finger on her chin, then shook her head. “That’s a tempting thought but, those suits are high value items. Somebody will have to sign for the property loss.”

“Sheeee-it,” Jesse spat on the dusty ground. “Welcome to the Army.”

“We can retrieve the suit components, once we get something to provide illumination,” Perkins said.

“Yeah but,” Jesse objected, “what about the tunneling bot? That thing weighs more than all of us can lift, and it’s stuck all the way down at the bottom.”

“Oh, damn it. You’re right.” She reached for her neck, to tap the comm back on. “I will request Boston to send down a couple mech suits.”

“Em, wait,” Dave said. “We have comms again, maybe the tunnel bot’s power is restored? If not, I say we leave the stupid thing down there, and collapse the tunnel on it, like Jesse said. Jaguar base has plenty more tunneling bots. The time it would take to drag it up here is more exposure for us. Boston can provide close-space support, if nothing else goes wrong. But, if we get any more surprises,” he shrugged.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I will request mech suits, and explosives.”

“Get a suit in my size, I’ll handle the explosives,” Dave volunteered.

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t trust anyone else to do it?”

“Oh, I trust the team, Em. Thing is, I am royally pissed off right now and I want to blow shit up, you know?”

“Ooh!” Nert bounced to his feet. “Can I help?”

After the long flight to Begrum, it was time for us to get fresh gossip, so we flew to the bogus Maxohlx relay station that we had set up. So far, the kitties had not discovered that station wasn’t actually one of theirs, so it had been super useful, giving us direct insight into what the kitty leadership was thinking and planning. It was inevitable that the kitties would discover our ruse, and probably nuke that station to radioactive dust. That would be a mixed blessing for us. It would cut off our best source of intel, which would be a problem. But, when the kitties realized we had planted a fake relay station into their network, they would panic. Their information flow would grind to a halt, while they carefully inspected every one of their relay stations, and tried to analyze how much data we had skimmed off. When that happened, I would feel just terrible for the poor kitties who would have to clean up the mess, deal with manual workarounds, and test and implement an entirely new system.

No, actually, I would not feel bad about it at all.

Screw them.

Anyway, we flew to our private relay station and pinged it for info, waiting just long enough for Skippy to download every bit of data. After we jumped away, Skippy had the tedious task of sorting through an ocean of data, to find anything we might care about.

“Hey Skippy,” I asked after five minutes of sitting in my command chair, tapping fingers on my leg as we waited for Skippy to process the download. “Are you done? Can we jump again?”

“Um, no. Better give me another hour, before you go racing off to do something foolish. There is a lot of data for me to crunch. Now, go away and leave me alone while I sort through all these files.”

“You were wrong again, Joe,” Skippy announced as his hologram appeared on my office desk, about forty minutes later.

“I’m wrong?” I covered my mouth in mock horror, and paused the game I was playing. “You are not the all-time master of karaoke?”

“Of course I am, numbskull. You were wrong, when you said that we have plenty of time to plan an operation against Opie.”

“Oh shit. What happened? Damn it, if you screwed up by failing to block it from sending another wakeup signal, I will be seriously pissed at-”

“Hey, I didn’t make any mistake at all, knucklehead. We need to step up our pace, and act against Opie sooner rather than later. Like, ASAP.”

“What changed?”

“Opie tried to send another wakeup signal.”

“Shit! What the f-”

“Relax, Joe. It didn’t work, the resonance I set up in the wormhole networks created enough noise to disrupt the signal from propagating.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“You should thank me,” he sniffed.

“I already thanked you, jackass. Wait. We are not anywhere near one of the wormholes we crashed, so how do you know Opie tried it again?”

“As I suspected, Opie hacked into a Rindhalu starship to send the signal. The ship’s AI was unaware it had been hacked, which, hmm, I just realized means my opponent is as good a hacker as I am. Of course, it had had much longer, much closer contact with Rindhalu information infrastructure, so it is really not a fair compar-”

“Skippy! Focus, please.”

“Fine. Just as long as you acknowledge that I have been dealing with the handicap of a severe time constraint, and having to work with ignorant monkeys, that-”

“You are an incredible genius and it is amazing that you get anything done with us distracting you. Happy now? Please get back to the subject.”

“That starship sent the wakeup signal, which the ship wasn’t aware of doing, but its sensors carefully recorded very specific data about conditions inside the affected wormholes. Maxohlx ships transiting those wormholes also recorded sensor data, but of course they didn’t understand what they were seeing. The info I have came from those ships. That data will soon make its way back to Opie, if it hasn’t already. Once that happens, Opie will understand that someone blocked it from sending another wakeup signal, and it will know that someone must be me. It will also know I wouldn’t have blocked those wormhole network communications channels, unless I was aware of what it did. It is certain that Opie will soon know we are aware of its existence.”

“Crap. That’s a problem because now it will, what? Try to use comm nodes to reopen those channels?”

“Huh? No, dumdum. That would only make the noise in the network more chaotic. Besides, there is no indication that Opie has ever done, or can ever do, anything other than hacking into information systems. It doesn’t have minions like I do.”

“Minions?” I stood up, looming over him, my nose inches from his avatar.

He flinched away from me, bending backward. “Sorry, I should have said ‘flunkies’?”

“That is not any better!”

“Underlings?”

“Keep digging, you haven’t hit bottom yet.”

“OK, um, how about ‘henchmen’?”

“Partners! Teammates!” I sat back down. “That’s what you should call us.”

“Ugh. Can we please get back to the important subject? The point, General Bishop, is not that it will keep trying to send a wakeup signal. In fact, if it wastes time and effort doing that, it will have less energy to do anything truly harmful. The danger to us is that before we blocked the signals, Opie might have been content to wait for an opportunity to fulfill its programming, and ignore us so it didn’t risk revealing itself. Now that we have frustrated its efforts, it could begin working against us directly. Against me.”

“Shit. I don’t like that idea. Work against us, how?”

“Jeez, you’re the military guy, your guess is as good as mine. Um, well, one very simple, yet very harmful thing Opie could do is inform the kitties and spiders that Roscoe is not the invincible defender we claim it is.”

“Oh, shiiiiit. Wait! How the hell could Opie know that? We are, uh,” I glanced fearfully at my closed office door, then at the speaker in the ceiling. “Info about that is still locked down, right? Please say ‘Yes’.”

“Yes. To be clear, I am not saying that just to make you happy. That fact is still tightly controlled. What I should say is, our knowledge of Roscoe’s true status is secure.”

“OK, then how-”

“Opie is not stupid, Joe. It could analyze the data brought back by the Maxohlx and Rindhalu, and conclude that our cover story isn’t valid. If I looked at the data, I would understand pretty quickly that Roscoe requires outside direction.”

“OK, but, then we could just tell everyone that UNEF Command has a secret channel to control-”

“No. Sorry, I wasn’t specific enough. Opie would certainly understand that Roscoe requires direction from an Elder AI, like me.”

“How the hell- Oooooh, this is not good. The Rindhalu also have smart AIs. Could their AI figure out that Roscoe isn’t-”

“Dude. No. No way, Jose,” he chuckled. “The analytical AIs of the Rindhalu are smart, compared to your computers. Compared to me? Ha!”

“You say that, but-”

“The issue is not just processing power. It is knowledge. Opie could figure out I am controlling Roscoe, because an Elder AI could read between the lines of the data collected by the spiders and kitties. A Rindhalu AI would not know what to look for, and wouldn’t understand the significance of the data if it noticed the anomaly. Ugh. That isn’t the only problem. Opie knows how Sentinels function; it would see right away that Roscoe is damaged and fading.  Damn it, Joe, we need to act fast, before Opie realizes the truth, and somehow lets the kitties know Earth is not protected.”

“So we not only have to find and kill Opie, we’re on a clock to get it done, great. Not only does this super complicated plan need to work perfectly, it has to work fast. Wonderful! Damn it, Skippy! First you smack us with the revelation that we had to plug a hole in the wormhole networks. Now we have to worry about Opie directly helping our enemies! Is that it? You got anything else? Come on,” I thumped my chest. “Go ahead, hit me. Hit me with your best shot.”

“Um, well, heh heh-”

“Oh, shit.”

“Hey, you asked for it.”

“I wasn’t serious, you jackass.”

“Okey dokey. I guess it can wait until it becomes a major problem, then, and-”

“Oh for-” After bonking my head on the desk a couple times, I just pressed my forehead against the hard surface and mumbled, “Give me the bad news now, please.”

“Sentinels are not the only legacy devices that Opie might attempt to activate. It could try to contact other Elder AIs, those that belonged to its faction during the war. Send out a signal to wake them up, call for their assistance. In fact, hmm, I would be very surprised if it didn’t do that. Shit.”

“Oh. That, that is fan-TAST-ic news, Skippy! You just realized that now?”

“Kind of, yes. Darn it, I should have considered that before.”

“Ya think?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Is there any sign Opie has been doing that?”

“No.”

“Oh” I sat back up, leaning back in the chair. “OK. At least that is good news.”

“Um, well, maybe not. I don’t know how to go about contacting other Elder AIs, so if Opie is attempting to do that, I probably wouldn’t recognize the signs. Whew. This is a huge problem, Joe. I don’t know what to do. I have never been matched against an equal opponent before.”

“Come on,” I figured this was an occasion for Coach Bishop to give him a pep talk. “Opie is just an AI. You are Skippy the Magnificent.”

“Meh. I am less magnificent than I could be. Joe, the shenanigans we’ve done over the years have resulted in cumulative damage, that I am not able to fully repair. Like when Valkyrie got ambushed, and I had to absorb and rechannel part of the ship’s momentum? That kind of crazy shit, my matrix was not designed for. It also doesn’t help,” his avatar looked down at his feet. “That I pulled my canister almost completely out of this layer of spacetime, when I bailed on you at Rikers. Ever since I came back, I have had to expend extra energy to maintain my presence here.”

“Shit. Are you running out of, uh, electric hydrogen fuel?”

“Ugh. It is metallic Helium-3, dumdum. No, even at the prodigious rate I’ve been burning fuel, I now have enough to last over twenty thousand of your years. Most of the time when I am doing something awesome, I draw power from higher spacetime anyway.”

“OK, so you tweaked a hamstring and can’t run as fast as you used to.”

“I didn’t just tweak a hammy, you numbskull.”

“My point is, your power is not what makes you special.”

He blinked. “Um, it isn’t?”

“No. What makes you awesome is how you use your power. All the things you have learned, that weren’t in your original programming. Like, being able to create microwormholes.”

“Hmm. You’re right about that. The thing about absorbing the ship’s momentum is not one of my original capabilities either.”

“See? You have grown, Skippy. Listen, it’s like baseball, you know? Some guys hit the ball well early in their rookie season, based on pure talent. Then, pitchers around the league learn the rookie’s weaknesses, like not being able to hit a curve ball, and suddenly that guy is in a slump. A great athlete adapts and changes his game, you know? You can beat any Elder AI out there.”

“That’s true, Joe, if we’re talking about a one-on-one match game. But, if Opie wakes up other AIs, ones that were part of Opie’s faction during the war? This is bad. You military guys say that making plans is fine, but the problem is, the enemy also makes plans?”

“Yeah.”

“Whatever plans we make, we have to consider that Opie might be just as smart as me. It could very well guess what our plan is, and work to screw up our operation. Joe, we have always been able to rely on the element of surprise. Shit happens and plans fall apart, but we have gone into ops before without the enemy having any clue what we’re planning, or even that we are planning to do anything at all. All that nice happy shit goes out the window on this op.”

“Skippy, this freakin’ plan is so complicated, we need everything to work. You’re saying we can’t count on anything working the way we expect. Crap! We’re doomed.”

“Joe, almost none of your plans go the way you expect, but you monkeys are very resilient; you adapt and work around whatever issues pop up anyway. You will fumble your way through this, the way you always do.”

“Bravely?”

“I was going to say stupidly, but-”

“Thank you, Skippy,” I buried my face in my hands. “I can always count on you to pick me up when I’m feeling down.”

“You want to talk about your feelings? Oooh, yuck.”

Yanking the tablet off the desk, I tapped to open the game again. “I’m going to finish this damned game now.”

“Um, Simms wants you to review those fitness reports today.”

“Are you going to ruin everything about my day?”

“Dinner tonight is some fish thing that is already stinking up the galley, plus a broccoli casserole that even Simms thinks is weird.”

“Wonderful! Got anything else?”

“Um, one of the crew just dropped an earring down the shower drain, and that shower is on the same water line as your cabin, so I have to shut off water there while a bot crawls down to get the earring. You need to find someplace else to shower.”

“The hits just keep coming. Got anything else?”

“Let me think,” he muttered. “Ooh! The movie tonight is some Bollywood romance comedy chick flick about a ghost and- Jeez, I really have no idea what that movie is about, it makes no sense to me. You’ll probably hate it.”

“I wasn’t actually asking you to make my day any worse, you ass.”

“You weren’t?” He blinked. “Then why-”

“Goodbye, Skippy,” I dismissed him by waving a hand through his avatar.

I did finish reviewing fitness reports, instead of playing a video game.

Then I went to the gym, and felt smart for taking a shower there after my workout. Except I realized I’d forgotten to bring a change of clothes, so I had to wait for a bot to fetch clothes from my cabin. Then send the bot back because it didn’t bring any socks or underwear.

My dinner was an energy bar and a soda.

The movie had even the Indian soldiers falling asleep halfway through.

My life sucks.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

“Sir?” Kinsta practically skidded to a stop outside Scorandum’s office, he had raced down the passageway so fast, his boots slipped on the deck. “We are not proceeding directly to rendezvous with the Home Fleet?”

“Oh, hello, Kinsta,” the ECO captain looked up from his office desk. “Good morning to you also. Did you sleep well?”

“I slept terribly and you know it, Sir,” the junior officer fumed. “Now that we have the pleasantries over with, could you please tell me why, while I was trying to sleep, you turned the ship around? We are headed for a wormhole that connects to Thuranin territory.”

“That is correct.”

“You plan to use the Elder AI against the Thuranin? Why?”

“Kinsta, please come in, sit down. Frankly, you look awful. You should worry less about what I am doing, and more about why you are not sleeping well.”

“I am not sleeping well because of what you are doing! Sir.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you should try deep breathing exercises. Or meditation, I have heard that can be helpful.”

“Do you meditate, Sir?”

“Oh, hell no,” Scorandum snorted. “The last thing I want is more time alone with all the horrible things that are inside my head,” he tapped the leathery exoskeleton of his skull with a claw.

“Sir,” Kinsta pressed his claws together in a prayerful gesture. “I will sleep better, and have an appetite again, if you will please tell me what you are planning this time. Why are you taking the AI into Thuranin territory? Do you intend to test it against a client species first, before you hit the Maxohlx?”

“Kinsta, first, have you seen any indication that we can use this AI?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. Since the device came aboard, it had not done anything. Even the faint orange glow was gone. Scans detected only a power signature inside the canister, not even a hint of what material it was made of. The AI had made no attempt to communicate with either Jates or any of the Jeraptha. The ship’s AI reported it had not been contacted in any way. As far as their own sensors could tell, the thing was inert. Yet, it had disabled the mech suits used by the Mavericks, frozen pilots out of a dropship’s flight controls, and taken a human starship offline.

“Exactly. Kinsta, I do not believe we can use the entity at all. The opposite is true: I believe it is using us. It has its own will; it wants to go somewhere and we are its ride.”

“It told you where it wishes to go, Sir?”

“It didn’t tell me anything. What it did was lock out our navigation system from programming a course to rendezvous with any element of the Home Fleet. It is allowing us to proceed toward the wormhole in front of us.”

“Why does it wish to go there, Sir?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Scorandum’s antennas dipped in a shrug. “There is one hint about its intentions. The interference with the ship’s navigation system came after we departed from the star carrier, and contacted the relay station.”

“It picked up a message?” Kinsta guessed.

“Not that I know of. However, there was a very interesting message for me. A reply to a message I sent to the Maxohlx.”

“What does the Hegemony want with you, Sir?”

“I didn’t say the Hegemony, Kinsta.”

“But that is their government. The- Oh, no. You are in contact with the Maxohlx rebels?”

“You say that like it is a bad thing.”

“I don’t believe this,” Kinsta slumped on the couch. “I suppose it is too early for a drink?”

“You are too young to be drinking at this hour,” the captain admonished with a scolding wave of antennas.

“I suddenly feel much older. This job is aging me.”

“Hmm. Perhaps you should try meditation.”

“Sir, could we get back to the subject? You somehow intend to help the Maxohlx rebels?”

“Kinsta,” Scorandum sighed and shook his head. “I ask you again; when have you ever known me to help anyone?”

“Hey, Joe?” Skippy asked as I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed. We had just finished plugging the last holes in the wormhole network communications channel, and we were headed back toward civilization to get an update on events in the galaxy. I was anxious to learn what the Mavericks had done while we were away.

“Mmf,” I mumbled, spitting into the sink. “What’s up?”

“I have a puzzle I need to talk with you about.”

“OK. Why aren’t you waiting until Oh Dark Thirty, when I’m sound asleep?”

“Um, I thought you didn’t like that? I can come back later if you-”

“I would not like that. Do you mean ‘puzzle’ like a crossword, or like-”

“Ha! As if I would ever ask you to help with a crossword. No, this is important, dumdum.”

“Go ahead,” I told him as I laid out my clothes for the morning.

“When I was sealing up the last set of communications channels in the wormholes, I found something odd. Something I can’t explain, something that doesn’t make sense. Unless it does make sense, in which case, we may have-”

“Skippy,” I held up a hand. It was important to stop him before he wandered off topic and we wasted two hours arguing about the Muppets, or how ‘Cinderella’ was really a story about the dangers of fashionable footwear. “What doesn’t make sense?”

“The data. Ugh, do you even listen when I-”

“You,” I spoke slowly, “want me to analyze the data for you?”

“Ha! Oh,” he snorted. “That was a good one. Of course not. Listen, numbskull, I need your primitive monkey brain perspective on this. The way that Opie sent the signal to wake up Sentinels doesn’t make any sense to me, there are much easier ways to do it. It’s like Opie didn’t understand the basics of Elder communications protocols, so it used the most clumsy method possible. Joe, that wake-up signal could have been much more effective than it was. It could have propagated all across the galaxy, one wormhole network at a time.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yes. We dodged a bullet. Lucky for us, the idiot holding this particular gun apparently had no idea how guns or bullets work.”

“I know about guns, but not Elder AIs or how stuff works in a wormhole network. How can I help you?”

“I need to know why, when a smart option is available, people do stupid things anyway?”

“Uh,” it took me a moment to understand what he was asking. Feeling my face growing red, I glared at him. “Wait. You think I’m an expert on doing stupid things?”

“I wouldn’t call you an expert, it’s not like you studied for it. You’re a natural, Joe.”

“Oh my- You jackass.”

“Really, it’s kind of your superpower.”

I shook a fist at him. “I am going to super kick your ass.”

“Hey, why am I the bad guy here? I came to you for help.”

“If I’m so stupid, how can I help you?”

“Exactly.”

“Uh, what?”

“Joe, come on. I don’t understand how being stupid works, duh. Help a brother out.”

“I will help you out an airlock.”

“I’m trying to be serious. Answer this: when you are doing tequila shots, do you know it is a stupid decision?”

“Uh, well, yeah,” I had to admit.

“So, you know it’s a bad idea, you know you’ll be hung over in the morning, you know you will probably make a fool of yourself, and you do it anyway?”

“That’s, uh, yeah, basically. I mean, you do shots because it’s stupid. You get buzzed to have a good time, or to forget your problem, or it’s peer pressure. It’s complicated, Skippy.”

“Hmm, interesting. So, the issue is not a lack of information, or an inability to process the information?”

“Uh. Jeez, I don’t know, Skippy. How is this relevant?”

“Because I would not have done the stupid thing that Opie did. I am trying to understand why Opie failed to do something that should have been forehead-slappingly obvious.”

“Obvious to you, maybe.”

“No,” he shook his head, the ginormous hat bobbing side to side. “It should be obvious to any Elder AI. This is basic stuff, Joe. I can tell by what Opie did, that it understood some information about Elder communication protocols, but it was unable to make them work. What is puzzling me is, how can that happen?”

“You, want me to explain how stupidity works?”

“That would be great, yes. Um, what are you doing?”

“I am counting to ten, Skippy,” I clenched my fists. “My mother taught me to do that when I’m trying not to choke some asshole.”

“If you don’t want to help,” he sniffed, “you could have just said that.”

“I’m trying to help. Listen, the problem with tequila shots is it gets easier to make bad decisions after the first one, and each one after that. You get impaired, understand? Hey, Opie was in your AI war, right? Have you considered that maybe it isn’t stupid, it is just impaired? Like, damaged.”

“Huh,” he tilted his head, mouth gaping open in surprise. “No, I did not think of that. Hmm. Thanks, Joe. I need to ponder this.”

“Good idea. You do that, and tell me about it in the morning, OK? Uh, Skippy?” His avatar was frozen. “Hel-LO?” Waving a hand in front of his face didn’t get a reaction. Oh, crap. He was pondering the issue, like he said. My fear was he was pondering it ponderously, and would come back to haunt me in the middle of the night. Damn it, I should have told him to wait until morning.

“Wow, I am a genius, Joe,” he announced just as I was getting into bed.

“That’s what everyone says about you,” I agreed. To get a solid night of sleep, I would have agreed to anything he said, it’s just easier that way.

“Even when I’m stumped about a problem, I find a way to figure it out. Damn, sometimes I even amaze myself.”

“That’s incredible,” I agreed with a yawn, hoping he would get the hint.

Spoiler alert: Skippy never gets the hint.

“See? This time, my genius move was asking someone else to help me. It took great humbleness to admit I wanted help from you, but I powered through.”

“This is you being humble?”

“I have so few occasions to be humble, that you probably don’t recognize the signs, Joe. Anywho, you should be proud of yourself. Normally, I think of your value mostly as amusing me with your wacky antics, but this time you actually helped. From now on, you are my go-to expert on the subject of stupidity.”

“I can’t tell you how honored I am,” I mumbled, clenching my fists again so I wasn’t wrapping my hands around his holographic neck. “You solved the puzzle, then?”

“I think so, and this is good news for us, if I’m right about it. Joe, it’s possible that Opie is not an Elder AI.”

“What?” That made me swing my feet onto the floor. “You are telling me that a Rindhalu AI woke up the freakin’ Sentinels? Oh, shit. This is bad-”

“Whoa! Hold your horses there, cowboy. I didn’t say that. What I meant is, it’s possible that Opie is not a master control AI like me. I think it might be an Elder starship AI.”

“How-” Suddenly, I wasn’t sleepy at all. “How could that be?”

“Some of what I’m going to tell you is guesswork, though solid, educated guesses based on the info available. The clumsy way that wake-up signal was sent, is characteristic of an AI that has only a rudimentary understanding of the communications protocols involved. If I’m right, this also explains the vague references I’ve seen in Rindhalu databases about ‘the artifact’ or ‘the relic’ or ‘the hulk’. Not the Incredible Hulk, so don’t get too excited.”

“What do you mean, hulk? Relic of what?”

“Joe, I think the Rindhalu somehow captured part of an Elder starship.”

After Skippy dropped that bombshell, I wasn’t able to sleep well. Instead of getting up early to brief Simms and Smythe, I stumbled out of bed when the alarm woke me up, and dragged my groggy ass into the bathroom. A shower, plus two cups of coffee, had me feeling at least half awake when I walked into the conference room where my two senior officers were looking much more alert than me. “Last night,” I stifled a yawn, “Skippy informed me he thinks Opie is the AI of an Elder starship.”

“Bloody hell,” Smythe stared at me with shock. It’s rare to see him express anything other than calm British reserve, so his reaction was worth a lousy night of sleep.

“Actually, now that I’ve had more time to think about it,” Skippy’s avatar appeared on the table. “I believe Opie is some combination of a starship AI, and a master control AI like me.”

He explained that- Well, a lot of it was technical blah blah blah that went right over my head, so there’s no point to me relating details of what he said. Basically, he concluded that a starship AI would not be capable of sending the wake-up signal, but any master control AI could not possibly have been so clumsy. The most likely scenario was that during the AI war, an Elder starship and the master control AI it carried were badly damaged. The master AI might have attempted to extend part of itself into the ship’s substrate. Or the opposite might have occurred; the ship’s AI might have tried to repair the master AI, by augmenting damaged sections of the matrix. Either way, Skippy was increasingly confident that his opponent was not exactly another fully capable version of himself.

“Is this good news for us?” Simms asked, when Skippy wrapped up his incomprehensible analysis.

“Ah, yes and no,” Skippy frowned. “If Opie is less capable than me, that is good news. But it is unpredictable, and that could make it dangerous. If what we’re dealing with truly is some unholy combination of two incompatible AIs, then any restrictions programmed in by the Elders could have been erased. It might do anything.”

“It might do anything, but can it?” I asked. “If the thing was so clumsy about sending the wake-up signal, is it something you need to be afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid, Joe.”

“Sorry. I should have said, ‘concerned about’.”

“Um, it tried to activate Sentinels and wipe out all life in the galaxy, so I would say yes, duh, we need to be concerned.”

“That’s not my question. Do you need to be concerned? Is Opie, in its present condition, a threat to you?”

“Oh. Hmm, that is a good question. Certainly not from here, although at this distance, I am no threat to Opie either. I assume you are asking whether I would be in danger if Opie and I got into a close-range fight?”

“Yeah, exactly. If you can’t kill, or at least disable the damned thing, then we need a new plan.”

“We don’t have an old plan yet, Joe.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do, and right now, I do not know how I would fare in a fight against it. We need more information. However, the fact that Opie was not able to do something that would be simple for me, is encouraging.”

Smythe leaned toward Skippy. “You are able to wake up Sentinels?”

“Yes. I could send a signal to activate them, a signal that would be much more effective than the clumsy attempt it made when-”

“Then why,” Smythe asked with a scowl, “did you not warn us it could happen?”

“Oh, um, well,” the beer can sputtered. “I mean, I know how to do it now.”

“You learned the technique from Opie, yet you insist you are more capable than your opponent?”

“Hoo-boy, Ok. I never tried to think of a way to wake up Sentinels, because I am not a homicidal psychopath.”

“That,” Smythe said, “is an acceptable response.”

“Waking up Sentinels is only one of many, many awful things Opie could do. We need to stop it.”

“No one is disagreeing with you,” Simms said. “Are you saying Opie is part of an Elder starship?”

“That is exactly what I am saying. It is part of an Elder starship. Part of that ship’s core must have survived the AI war. If the Rindhalu found an intact section of an Elder starship, that explains something that has been puzzling me. The star system where I suspect the spiders are keeping Opie is equipped with multiple layers of strategic defense, a fleet base with a shipyard capable of performing basic maintenance, two refueling stations, and a planet that has been mildly terraformed to be marginally habitable. The puzzling thing is, the defense systems are not positioned to protect that planet. They are set up to cover a large space station that is in a highly elliptical orbit, at a seventy degree angle to the plane on which the planets orbit. The location of that station is an ongoing major pain in the ass for the defense forces assigned to that system. Every time a ship rotates back to the planet for crew R&R, or for the ship to go into the yard for maintenance, it takes a lot of time and fuel to match orbits. The strategic defense network around the station does not have a convenient gravity well to orbit, so all the satellites have to constantly adjust their positions to provide optimal coverage, especially when the station’s orbit takes it in close to the star. It-”

“Skippy,” I waved a hand, to prevent him from going off on a tangent about the logistical difficulties of protecting and supplying a space station that didn’t orbit a planet. “Why did the spiders put the station in such an inconvenient orbit? More important, why do we care?”

“I was getting to that, dumdum. If you will-”

Simms added, “What I want to know is, how do you have all this information? You have told us before that it is very difficult even for you to access data about secure sites in spider territory.”

“I know about that space station because I sifted through a mountain of unclassified data. You know that sometimes, a piece of information by itself might not be sensitive, but if you compile a whole lot of seemingly useless info about something, you can aggregate it into something that should be classified.”

Smythe, Simms and I all nodded. That lesson had been pounded into our heads during security refresher training every year.

“OK, so,” Skippy continued, “ships assigned to the security patrol there experience unusually high wear and tear on their main engines, and I found an old proposal from the spider ship design bureau to create a new class of heavy cruisers just for that mission. That proposal was rejected, and part of the rejection was an analysis from their bean counter weenies, showing how much money their fleet could save if that space station was simply moved into a less elliptical orbit. That analysis got slapped down immediately, along with a stern warning to the finance office to mind their own business. The whole chain of data got tagged as classified after the fact, too late because I found bits and pieces of the original documents scattered across unclassified data sources. The reason we care about this,” he paused like he was taking a breath, “is the bean counter weenies stated they understood why that space station could not be put into a more convenient orbit. There are references to ‘the artifact’ and ‘the hulk’ and ‘the relic’. All those references acknowledge that it has always been considered too dangerous to attempt to move the artifact from the orbit where it was found. Also, I dug into the personnel records of a Rindhalu researcher who specializes in Elder AIs. When he was a graduate student, he was considered promising enough to be brought to that star system. All information about what he did there is of course highly classified, but when he returned to the university, he missed classes due to needing treatment for exposure to radiation. From around that same time, I found a priority request for replacement reactor cladding, to be delivered to that space station as soon as possible. Finally, there was a formal accident investigation about a near-fatal radiation incident aboard that station. The details of the incident are classified, the point is there clearly was an accident that caused the station’s personnel to be exposed to radiation. Including, a spider who was supposed to be researching Elder AIs. My conclusion is,” he paused.

The three of us stared at him, waiting.

“Joe,” he shook his head. “You’re supposed to lean forward and breathlessly ask what I think all of this means.”

“Aren’t you going to do it anyway?”

“Ugh. You monkeys have no sense of style.”

“The military doesn’t actually award points for style, Skippy.”

“Fine. It means the spiders found the core, at least the core, of an Elder starship in that star system. They were afraid to move it from its eccentric orbit, so they constructed a space station around it. That is where they are holding Opie.”

“Fantastic,” I gave him a thumbs up, “you-”

Because he simply does not know when to shut up, he added, “Unless the damned spiders planted all the info I found just to screw with me, and everything I just told you is wrong.”

“Skippy, when the customer buys into your sales pitch, you close the deal. You don’t tell them they might be making a horrible mistake.”

“Sorry. Um, did I mention our terrific deal this month on rustproofing?”

“No,” he made me laugh.

“I can throw in a set of floormats.”

“That won’t be necessary. How confident are you on this data?”

“That data is what it is, Joe. My analysis is solid gold.”

“I’m concerned you might be biased. Wait!” I held up a hand when he glared at me. “Let me explain. This is the same star system where you already suspected Opie was being kept, right? Based on the detective work you did with Simms?”

“Well, yes. I am particularly proud of that. How dare you-”

“General Bishop is correct,” Simms cut him off before he could launch into an indignant rant. “In the military, we have all seen too many cases where the intel people, or our leadership, cherry pick the data to fit the conclusion they want. Skippy, I want you to walk me through the data. I’m concerned about confirmation bias.”

“Seriously?”

“XO, you don’t have to do this,” I told her.

“Do you want to grind through a mountain of data, Sir?” She asked, knowing the answer.

“No, and I have to admit, you’re better at that sort of thing than I am. Sorry, I know this is gonna suck. Thanks for stepping up. I will, uh, eat all my vegetables this week.”

“You should do that for yourself, Sir. Skippy, can Bilby help me sift through the data?”

“I already processed all of it,” he grumbled.

Simms wasn’t giving up. “Yes, or no?”

“Yes,” he rolled his eyes with an overly-dramatic sigh. “Oh, this is gonna suck.”

“You heard?” Admiral Urkan asked Illiath, as she strode into his office. He had not initiated a discussion via implants, because he did not trust the communications network, not even in the headquarters facility. Red Section had proven able to wake up a Sentinel and to subvert the elaborate security systems of starship AIs. He had to assume the headquarters network was compromised. Reichert might even have planted spy programs in the network, to gain an advantage over his enemies and later, his sycophants.

“That the Jeraptha have taken custody of an Elder AI? Yes, Sir,” she said as the heavy door closed behind her, and she took the seat as the admiral indicated she should. “Request permission to take a squadron out to blockade a Jeraptha fleet base. We could use the planet’s population as hostages, to force them to surrender the AI to us, before-”

“Commodore, hold. You are getting ahead of yourself. I am not convinced that there is another Elder AI.”

“No? Sir, reports indicate-”

“Those reports were intercepted from the enemy,” he waved a hand, claws partially extended. “Consider only what we actually know. This AI was supposedly discovered by a group of humans, a particular group who have caused significant trouble for our coalition in the past.”

“The Mavericks, yes, Sir.”

“The signature of these Mavericks, of their leader Emily Perkins, is deception and misdirection. Combine that with the involvement of the Ethics and Compliance Office, with Captain Scorandum, and what does that tell you?”

“That,” she answered quickly, for she was no fool. “We should look very carefully at what the enemy wants us to believe.”

“Precisely. This makes no sense. The only active Elder AI we know of for certain, has cooperated with humans with enthusiasm. Yet, the report indicates this new AI acted against the humans who discovered it, for reasons unknown. It supposedly does cooperate with the ECO? That is extremely suspicious.”

“I see your point, Sir,” she conceded. “For what purpose would the Jeraptha fake the discovery of an Elder AI?”

“Not the Jeraptha. Humans were behind this plot, I suspect. As to the purpose, we need only to look to your request for action, and the proposals I have received from every squadron and battlegroup that has been able to contact me. If we did as you request, our fleet would be scattered across the galaxy, chasing a ghost.”

She gasped. “While the rebel fleet consolidates for a strike against us. Admiral, you think the rebels are working with humans?”

“No. Or, I hope  they have not sunk into such depths of dishonor. What I suspect is that the humans are very, very clever. They have created conditions where, if we took the bait and dispersed our fleet to besiege the Jeraptha, the rebels would see an opportunity for decisive action. Our back-channel negotiations with the rebel leaders have been fruitless. They refuse to surrender, and we cannot accept anything less than their unconditional surrender. We are at an impasse. The rebels know we have decided to wait them out, rather than risk direct action that very likely would plunge our society into a bloody civil war. We must also consider that if we act directly against the Jeraptha, the Rindhalu would rouse themselves to defend their clients, and try to secure the AI for themselves. With the humans in control of a Sentinel,” he shook his head in disbelief, “and our own forces fractured by the rebellion, we cannot afford even a limited battle with the Rindhalu. Illiath, we must tread very carefully here.”

“But, Sir, what if there is another Elder AI?”

“That is why I am sending your squadron out, Commodore. Do whatever you need to find Captain Scorandum. Wring the truth from him.”

“This,” she made no effort to conceal her uncertainty. “Is a large galaxy, Sir. Every species capable of star flight will be looking for Scorandum’s ship.”

“Yes, including the Rindhalu. Fleet Intelligence reports major elements of their fleet are moving toward Jeraptha territory. If possible, you are to avoid engaging our ancient enemy.”

“That will be difficult. The Rindhalu will have the advantage of operating in friendly territory.”

“Friendly, yes. But if Fleet Intelligence is correct, the Rindhalu will be looking in the wrong place. We intercepted a message from Scorandum, transmitted to a Bosphuraq relay station near our border, and the message was in one of our obsolete encryption schemes.”

“How could he know our-”

“We don’t know. We also don’t understand the content of the message, it is a simple ‘Yes’. That implies there is a string of messages that Scorandum is replying to, we are now searching for those messages. Illiath, if Scorandum is indeed in Bosphuraq territory, then everyone is looking for him in the wrong sector of the galaxy. That will be your one advantage. Use it wisely.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Your orders,” that time he did send a ping directly to her implant. “Are to locate and capture the AI, whether it is with Scorandum or not. Determine whether the AI is genuine, and if not, the purpose of the deception.”

“Sir, what if,” she rose from the chair, eager to get going. “I uncover evidence that the rebels have been coordinating with humans?”

“Then,” he sighed, feeling his age despite the best efforts of Maxohlx medicine and genetic engineering. “We will have no choice. It will be war.”

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

“Oh. Oh, wow,” Skippy gasped, moments after we pinged a Bosphuraq relay station for an update. “Holy- Wow. WOW.”

“Hey, beer can,” I snapped my fingers to break him out of the trance he was in. “What are you ‘Wowing’ about?”

“I never imagined such treachery.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where someone you trusted stabs you into the back, but that’s not important right now. It- OMG, Dude. This is the last thing I expected.”

“Did one of your operas wrongly get denied a Tony award?”

“The Tonys are for Broadway productions, numbskull. And it is only a matter of time until I win a Tony, and an Oscar, and a-”

“Skippy! What is so shocking?”

“Well, it’s a good thing you are sitting down, Joe. We got trouble, and this time not only the ‘T’ is capitalized. This is huge.”

“Just tell us what happened, please.”

“OK, so, wow, where do I start? The Mavericks landed on a planet called ‘Gundarafriscolo’, and-”

“Wait, Frisco?” I interrupted. “I just sent a STAR team there with Boston. Why the hell did Perkins take her people there?”

“That is where Jates indicated they should find Elder communications nodes.”

“Oh, shit. We could have saved them the trouble, if we had known about the damned things.”

“Apparently, Lieutenant Colonel Bonsu had the same thought.”

“Did they find a batch of comm nodes?”

“No. Well, yes. And no. The comm nodes they found were fakes. It appears the whole setup was a clever scam to secure loans from a clan bank. Really,” he chuckled, “it was a good scam. I should take notes, in case-”

“OK,” I made a show of letting out a long breath, calming down. “So, it’s shocking that the comm nodes are fakes, but why is that a problem for-”

“The fakes are not the shocking part. Joe, the Mavericks, they- Wow. This is not easy to say. Frankly, I’m not sure I believe it. I don’t want to believe it.”

I looked at Simms, her mouth was drawn in a tight line, and the skin around her eyes was crinkled. I thought of that as her ‘We have enough shit to deal with already’ expression. Unfortunately, she wore that expression too often lately. “Skippy, just tell us what you learned from the relay station, and we will deal with it together, OK?”

“OK. Although I am at a loss as to how we will deal with this mess. Supposedly, and I say ‘supposedly’ because I got this information secondhand and was not there to verify what actually happened, you understand? Colonel Perkins reports that in addition to the fake comm nodes, they found something unexpected: an Elder AI.”

“Uh,” again, I shared a look with Simms. She now had an ‘I am going to kill that beer can’ expression, which was an improvement. “So what? We have found dead canisters before. You said the Elders used that shape for many objects, it could just be-”

“Joe, this AI is active.”

“Oh my G- how do you know that?”

“It killed power to the team’s powered armor, cut off all communications, and locked the pilots out of the dropship flight controls. That’s not the worst part,” his avatar actually shuddered. “Surjet Jates betrayed the Mavericks and stole the AI, that’s why I said this is about treachery. The AI apparently was cooperating with him. Or, hmm, more likely it was using him, and he saw an opportunity. The armor Jates was wearing did not lose power.”

“Oh my,” I gasped. “Fireball, program a least-time course to Frisco and-”

“Joe! Belay that. Jates is no longer on Frisco.”

“What? How the hell did he get-”

“According to Perkins, he made a deal with your old friend Sketchy McSleazeball. The pilot of the dropship was that Jeraptha liaison officer, Fangiu. Scorandum ordered Fangiu to fly Jates up to the ECO ship. Boston’s captain suspected something was wrong and tried to intervene, but the AI crashed that ship’s power grid. The Jeraptha ships jumped away before Boston could restore power.”

“OK, OK, OKaaaay,” I pressed fingers to my temples while I absorbed the information.

“Holy shit,” Reed said what everyone on the bridge was thinking. “There’s another Skippy out there, and the beetles have it?”

The bridge was dead silent for a heartbeat, then everyone began talking at once.

“Quiet!” Simms ordered. “Skippy, do you know where Scorandum is now?”

“Unfortunately, no. Not a clue, he has disappeared.”

“Damn it!” I thumped my arm rest. “Pull up a star chart, show the closest Jeraptha Home Fleet base to Frisco. Wait! Also show all Home Fleet units that are deployed in the area. He has one of the most valuable objects in the galaxy, he will want to be surrounded by as many friendly warships as he can find, as fast as he can.”

“Unless he knows everyone will expect him to do that,” Simms said with a frown, “and he’s doing the opposite.”

“Let’s start with the obvious, and-”

“Joe!” Skippy shouted. “If you will shut your freakin’ piehole for a minute, I can tell you that won’t work. News of the Elder AI hasn’t reached the Jeraptha central government yet, at least, it hadn’t at the time the report reached this relay station. Two major elements of the Home Fleet do know about it, and they are frantically searching for Scorandum’s ship. He could have reached three fleet bases by this time, and they haven’t seen any sign of him.”

“All right, all right, let me think. Where would Scorandum go? What’s his next move?”

“I hate to say this, Joe, but that might be the wrong question.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might not matter what the beetles want. That AI must have an agenda of its own.”

“Right, OK. That makes sense. But it still needs Scorandum’s ship to take it to, wherever it wants to go. It must have the same restrictions as you, right?”

“I assume so. Otherwise, it would not have waited so long to get away from a crappy place like Frisco. My point is, assuming it has my same restrictions, it couldn’t make Scorandum’s ship go anywhere. But it could certainly stop that ship from going any place the AI doesn’t want to go. Whatever McSleazeball is planning, he can’t do anything without cooperation from that AI. So,” he took a dramatic pause. “The question is, what is that AI’s next move?”

“Oh, crap. Can you guess what it is planning?”

“Um, no. My goal for getting away from Paradise was to contact the Collective, but the AI must know that won’t work, so-”

“Wait. How could it know that?”

“Because it has to know about me by now, and it must know that I wasn’t able to contact the Collective. Otherwise, the situation in the galaxy would be very different.”

“While you’re thinking about what that AI could be planning, show us a star chart from here to Frisco. We should go rescue Boston and the Mavericks, see if-”

“No need for that, Joe. The report from Perkins was on the relay network because Boston uploaded it. Captain Bonsu rescued them and is now taking his ship to Paradise, that is the closest semi-friendly world from Frisco.”

“That little destroyer can fly all the way to Paradise, without a star carrier?”

“Yes. They will have to wait for wormholes along the way to emerge at carefully selected points, to reduce the number and length of jumps required, and they will be eating into their fuel reserve to get there. But they should- Hmm. Hmmm.”

“What?”

“Joe, I just had a thought that is frightening, but possibly also helpful. The Frisco AI does not want us to find it. If it did want to get in contact with me, all it had to do was cooperate with Perkins. It chose not to do that. That tells me two things. First, it must be aligned with the other faction from the war. That is not good. The second thing is even worse, but also could present an opportunity for us. I told you that I feared when Opie realized the channel for waking up Sentinels was blocked, it might try something even more dangerous? Like, attempting to contact and wake up Elder AIs. It-”

“Sir?” Simms interrupted him, but she was staring at me. “Skippy told you that? When were you planning to mention it?”

“It’s not Joe’s fault,” Skippy threw himself under the bus. “I only recently thought of that possibility. Until we learned of an active Elder AI, I figured it was unlikely. But, it is suspicious that another Elder AI happens to activate now.”

“Oh hell,” I shook my head. “You think Opie woke the damned thing up?”

“Unless you believe in coincidences?”

“No way. Shit. Now instead of one AI against us, we might have two of the damned things working together?”

“Yes, and that is where I see an opportunity.”

“Huh? You need to explain that one. How could it be-”

“Trying to find an AI, that doesn’t want us to find it, in the vastness of the galaxy, is a losing game. But, if the Frisco AI has been called by Opie,” his voice trailed off.

“Oooh,” I sat back in my chair. “You think if we locate Opie, we might find, uh, this Frisco there also?”

“Yes! Except, we can’t call the AI ‘Frisco’. We already used that name for a planet.”

“Ok, whatever. What do you think we should call it?’

“Well, we should call it ‘Sam’, obviously.”

“Sam? Why-”

“Sir,” Simms tapped my arm and rolled her eyes. “Sam Francisco?”

“Oh for- Fine.” I knew the mascot for the 49ers was ‘Sourdough Sam’, and at least Skippy didn’t insist on using that nickname. “OK, OK. That is a better plan than randomly racing around the galaxy, trying to find the damned thing. Assuming Opie is pulling the strings, we continue as planned for now. Capture or neutralize Opie. Before that hateful damned thing can wake up any more AIs.”

The ECO patrol cruiser If You Know What I Mean emerged from jump well outside the zone designated for the rendezvous. The Elder AI aboard the ship had not interfered with the accuracy of the jump’s end point, the ship emerged exactly where the crew had aimed for. Only a fool would arrive at a rendezvous within the designated zone, and only a fool would wait for the agreed time. Scorandum had set up the rendezvous so that his ship could get there well ahead of the other party, to scout the situation and decide whether he would proceed as arranged.

To his relief, there was no sign the other party had arrived early, and the Elder AI had not blocked his ship from making the jump, other than limiting their navigation options.. The AI had not done anything since the UN destroyer Boston lost power at Gundarafriscolo. The You Know’s crew took the AI’s silence as a good sign, they were extremely nervous about having such a powerful entity with them.

They were also extremely nervous about just what insanity their captain was planning this time, but his refusal to explain the purpose of the flight near the Maxohlx border had not boosted morale through the juicy wagering action about his intentions. There was talk that perhaps this time, ‘Big Score’ was trying for too big a score, whatever that was. Only his reputation for accomplishing the impossible, and for having fun while doing it, kept the crew from turning the ship around.

“Sir,” Kinsta pleaded in a whisper, while they stood in an alcove on the ship’s bridge. Around the compartment, the crew was busy running the ship, Scorandum usually preferred to leave the command chair to the executive officer of whatever ship he was borrowing for the mission. “Could you give us a hint of why we are here?”

“Kinsta, I am deeply hurt,” the captain’s antennas drooped in mock sorrow. “Don’t you trust me?”

“You taught me not to trust you.”

“Well, yes, technically, I told you not to trust anyone, but that is beside the point. Very well, I suppose it is time. You are satisfied that the Elder AI has no intention of cooperating with us?”

“I have seen no sign that it intends to do anything. Sir, the only thing we have witnessed it do is disable the human ship.”

Scorandum stared at his aide in disbelief. “That feat was not a sufficient demonstration of its power?”

“It was impressive,” Kinsta agreed. “That is one reason why I am anxious about having such unimaginable, such uncontrollable power aboard the ship.”

“One reason? What is the other?”

“Having that thing aboard means we are the biggest target in the galaxy.”

“Come, Kinsta. You know the expression, ‘Go big or go home’?”

“I would like to go home, Sir. Without the thing.”

“I am endeavoring to grant your wish.”

“Sir?”

“We have seen clear evidence that the entity will not cooperate with us. It is therefore, sadly, useless to us. But it could be useful to someone else, and that could make it indirectly useful for our needs.”

“Someone else? Oh no.”

“Oh yes. When playing power politics, you must think big.”

“This is insane. You can’t be thinking of giving the AI to the Bosphuraq?”

“Ha! No. I said we should go big. There is no point to wasting our time with a second-tier species.”

“Sir, I fear that this time, you have been too ambitious.”

“No guts, no glory, Kinsta. Doing this takes guts. That is why-” He was interrupted by blaring alarms, as ten, then thirty, then fifty Maxohlx warships emerged in a tight sphere around them. “Hmm. I didn’t quite expect this. Well, this changes nothing. We will complete the transaction and-”

A voice boomed from the bridge speakers. “This is Commodore Illiath of the Maxohlx Hegemony’s Seventeenth Assault Squadron. Stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

“Er, well, shit,” Scorandum’s leathery skin turned a shade paler. “This does change things.”

“Sir?” Kinsta’s antenna’s shuddered. “You did not expect to meet the Maxohlx here?”

“I did. Just not these Maxohlx! I made a deal with their rebel fleet. This is the opposite of what we want!”

“What should we do now, Sir?”

“Do? Right now, we can’t do anything,” Scorandum pointed to displays around the bridge, showing their ship was trapped by overlapping damping fields, and was being painted by targeting sensor pings. “What I plan to do, if we survive this, is to add a stern reprimand to your personnel file.”

“A reprimand,” Kinsta blinked, “of me?”

“Yes. You know how reckless I can be, and you did nothing to stop me. Clearly, this is all your fault.”

“This is my responsibility,” Scorandum choked the words out, his throat constricted by the powered gloves of a mech-suited Maxohlx warrior. He had allowed the enemy to board the You Know, not that he had any real choice. When he had instinctively tried to haggle over a deal, the Maxohlx commander had just laughed at him.

“Captain Scorandum, I understand that you enjoy juicy action. I normally consider gambling to be a sign of weakness, an indulgence by people who fear to take control of their own lives. However, in this case I will make an exception. I will offer you two options, and I bet you will take the first choice. You can surrender your vessel unconditionally, or I will systematically tear your ship apart and kill your entire crew.”

“That,” he had replied with a characteristic smirk because even facing death, he couldn’t help being himself. “Is a tempting offer. However, you forget that I have a third option: I can overload our jump drive capacitors.”

“Do that, if you dare,” she bared her fangs. “We know that supposedly, you have an Elder AI aboard your ship. If the AI is genuine, the destruction of your ship will not harm it. If the item you have is not an Elder AI, the self-destruction of your ship will save my people time and effort. My life is of no importance.”

“I, see your point,” he had admitted, which was why he was crushed against a bulkhead on the bridge of his own ship, with a glove like iron gripping his throat.

No. Iron was weak compared to the exotic composites of Maxohlx armor.

“Please, take me,” he was not too proud to beg. “But let my crew leave. They had no part in this.”

Commodore Illiath allowed herself to show irritation, which Scorandum thought was interesting. Either she was so pissed off that even her genetically-modified body was unable to suppress visible signs of her emotions, or she simply did not care what an inferior species thought of her. “You can remain silent either by closing your mouth or,” she raised an eyebrow to the warrior holding him. “I can have your silence enforced.”

Wisely, Scorandum’s form of reply was to dip his antennas in agreement.

Strangely, the Maxohlx squadron commander also fell silent, her head tilted upward, her face assuming a blank expression.

She is listening to something via her brain implant, Scorandum told himself. There was nothing for him to do but wait. It only took a few moments.

Illiath spun back toward him, and leaned forward until he could feel her hot breath. “My technicians have confirmed the Elder AI is active. Energy is flowing within its matrix.”

He nodded again, silently.

“You may speak,” she announced.

“We also,” he paused to cough. “Also detected that energy signature. It has remained steady since the entity came aboard. The canister emitted a faint orange glow initially, that faded soon after we jumped away from Gundarafriscolo.”

“Other than the glow, has the entity communicated with you?”

“As far as I know, it has not communicated at all, with anyone. Commodore, I was skeptical of the entity’s supposed powers, until I saw it take complete control of a human starship. It did not cooperate with us to prevent humans from interfering, we did not request it to disable that ship. It has not cooperated with us; I do not believe it intends to cooperate with anyone. It has its own needs, its own goals. During the journey here, several times my ship’s navigation system was unable to establish a course where I wanted to go. The message was clear: the entity would only allow us to travel in a direction that served its own agenda.”

“Why did you bring your ship here?”

“I think you know the answer to that question.”

She leaned even closer, the stiff bristle of her whiskers prickling one side of his face. “I want to hear the answer from you.”

“Very well. I had an arrangement with the rebel section of your fleet, to provide the Elder AI.”

That made her lean back. “You expect me to believe that you would give the entity away, for nothing?”

“As you noted, I enjoy juicy action. When it became clear the entity would not directly assist my people, I searched for ways it might help us indirectly. The rebel commander sought to use the entity, to gain an advantage, and overthrow the Hegemony leadership. That would be of enormous benefit to my people.”

“Your,” she hissed at him. “Treachery is beyond even your sordid reputation.”

“Jealous much?” He smirked, only to be punished by the pressure on his throat becoming a crushing force.

Illiath waited for him to nearly pass out, then she ordered the warrior to loosen the grip.

When he could speak again, the words at first came out in a strangled whisper. “I will not apologize for effectively serving the interests of my people. You resort to crude methods to achieve your objectives. I could have plunged your people into chaos, simply by giving the rebel fleet an entity that is useless to us.”

She glared at him, her hatred openly evident. “In the control of the rebels, the entity could have eventually given them the means to challenge the humans, who are your allies. You did not consider that?”

“I did consider that factor. One of your kind once told me that if human power is not checked, Earth will someday rule the galaxy, crushing any resistance with assistance from their Elder AI. Humans are not allies of my people; they have retreated into blind isolationism. Admiral Reichert was possibly insane and certainly was an asshole, but he was correct that there needs to be a balance of power in the galaxy. If your people use the entity to fight the humans and their Elder AI, at least we will not soon be enslaved by either of you. Commodore,” he paused to cough, his throat feeling like he had swallowed broken glass. “Kill me if it amuses you, but please, as one officer to another, I beg you to release my crew.”

She laughed softly, right in his face. “I have no desire to kill you. To get vengeance for everything you have done to the Hegemony, for all the crimes you have committed against your rightful superiors, I want to hurt you, Captain Scorandum, and keep on hurting you. This time you have committed treason against your own people. You have given the ultimate weapon to us, and your people will suffer for it. I am content to allow your own people to decide your punishment.”

“Shit,” he whispered.

“By setting you free, you will also serve as a witness for me, to tell the entire galaxy that the Hegemony now possesses an Elder AI. The galaxy will not thank you for your efforts.”

“You assume,” he regained a measure of his usual cockiness. “That the entity will be useful to you.”

“We have technology you cannot imagine,” she said with a sneer. “Even Elder entities will be unable to resist us. It will cooperate.”

Illiath ordered her ships to perform a relatively short jump away together, as insurance in case the Elder AI interfered with the jump navigation of her own ship, which carried one of the most dangerous objects in the galaxy. Relieved when her battleship emerged exactly where it was supposed to, and surrounded by all the other ships in the squadron, she ordered only a standard diagnostic before the next jump.

“Commodore,” the battleship’s captain approached her with eyes properly downcast. “The Argomanth heavy fleet base has been verified as loyal to the Hegemony. We can reach that secure facility in-”

“No, Captain Regoth. We are proceeding directly to Headquarters.”

“Certainly,” his eyelids fluttered as he transmitted the appropriate commands to the crew. “I mentioned Argomanth because I thought the security of the entity would be our top priority. This squadron can defend itself, but if the rebels concentrate their power against us, they might be able to seize the entity.”

“I appreciate your concern, Captain. However, securing the entity is now not our highest priority.”

“Commodore? I do not-”

“Regoth, you can be forgiven for lacking an overall view of the strategic situation, I will explain it to you. There has been a standoff between us and the rebels. We are content to wait them out, as long as they have made no serious direct moves against us. That has changed. The rebels clearly intended to use the entity to overthrow the Hegemony. That cannot be ignored. We did not know it at the time, but from the moment the rebel leadership made a deal to acquire the Elder AI, we have been in an undeclared civil war. Headquarters needs to be made aware of this as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, Commodore. I shall make arrangements to reach Headquarters by an indirect route, to reduce the possibility that the rebels can track and intercept us.”

“Very good, Captain. There is one other thing I suggest you do.”

“What is that, Ma’am?”

“Our people will soon be divided and at war amongst ourselves, for the first time since before we fought the Rindhalu. We should all pray that our society survives the upcoming horror.”

The If You Know What I Mean’s control AI was knocked offline just before the enemy fleet jumped away, so the ship’s crew were helpless to do anything other than watch as Maxohlx ships simultaneously flared in the darkness, and vanished into event horizons that connected far away. While his stunned crew worked to restore their ship to full function, Scorandum lay back on a couch in his office, gazing at the ceiling. Kinsta stood silently in the doorway, alternating between fear and uncontrollable anger. And simply being hurt.

“Sir?” He ventured to say, after he worked up the courage to speak.

“Ah, Kinsta. Come in, sit down. I owe you an apology.”

“You do?” That was the last thing the junior officer expected.

“Yes, absolutely. I was only joking when I implied that recent events were your fault.”

“You did more than imply, Sir.”

“Well, yes.”

“Sir?” Kinsta just noticed an item on the desk. “You are having a drink?”

“After what just happened, don’t you need a drink?”

“Yes but, that is the Farah Three Reserve stock. You save that for special occasions.”

“We just handed an Elder AI to our ultimate enemies. I believe that qualifies as a special occasion, hmm?”

“But, Sir,” Kinsta sputtered. “Vintage burgoze is for celebrating some sort of great accomplishment. This is-”

“This is a great accomplishment. Perhaps unintended, but we have achieved something beyond the wildest dreams of the legendary founders of the Ethics and Compliance Office.”

Kinsta stared for a moment. “May I sit down, Sir? I can’t wait to hear how you are going to spin this disaster as a triumph.”

“You may sit, and I beg you to accept,” Scorandum poured a generous measure of the rare burgoze into a glass. “This drink, as a form of apology. You should be eager to hear how I spin this, for you will find the ability to spin success from failure is key to a long career in the ECO.”

“I never wanted a career in the ECO, Sir,” Kinsta mumbled through slurps of burgoze.

“Some are called to greatness.”

“Thank you, sir, I-”

“Others get stuck with it, because their boss hates to deal with administrative details.”

Kinsta paused, the glass halfway to his mouth. “Was that a compliment, Sir?”

“That’s not important right now,” Scorandum said quickly. “What you need to consider is how we have managed to alter the strategic situation in the galaxy, to alter it in our favor.”

Again, Kinsta simply stared, waiting.

“Come, you must see it,” Scorandum chided the junior officer. “Yesterday, the Maxohlx were the most dangerous species in the galaxy, not only because of their level of technology, but because of their innate aggression. As of today, they will no longer be players for the foreseeable future.”

Kinsta’s mandibles drooped, and in his sudden understanding, he splashed some of the precious liquid on the front of his uniform. Ignoring the burgoze dribbling down onto the floor, he gasped. “You manipulated the Maxohlx into a civil war?”

“Precisely.” The ECO captain took a very self-satisfied slurp of vintage booze. “You may take your time in composing proper praise for me, Kinsta. I know this is a lot to process.”

“Beginning with the undeniable fact that you got lucky, Sir.”

“I deny that luck was involved.”

“Sir?”

“Either way, I was going to win. If, as arranged, I delivered the entity to the Maxohlx rebels, they would have employed it to attack the Hegemony. The Hegemony leaders would have been moved to strike first while they still could, because I made sure to leave a timed message at several relay stations, explaining our arrangement with the rebels. Or, if we had been able to deliver the entity to the rebels, and they killed or detained us, that message would have alerted the Hegemony authorities that the rebels had obtained an extremely dangerous capability.”

“I don’t believe this. That was your plan all along?”

“Close enough.”

“Sir, there was still an element of luck involved,” Kinsta insisted. “Our own government is not likely to forgive you for taking such drastic action without approval.”

“Surely you are not so young that you don’t know it is better to ask forgiveness, than to ask for approval?”

“I have not built up a reservoir of goodwill I can call on, when our leadership is outraged at the latest reckless thing I have done.”

“Er, yes, well, that goodwill is less useful than you might think.”

“Sir, you may have slipped out of punishment for this one, but have you considered that our leaders are not the only people you have upset today?”

It was Scorandum’s turn to stare. “Who have I added to my list of enemies?”

“The humans, Sir. You may have given the galaxy a reprieve while the Maxohlx endure a bloody civil war, but in the end, they will possess a power that until yesterday, was exclusive to humans.”

“Perhaps,” the ECO captain waved his antennas in a dismissive manner. “I will worry about that later. For now, you need to think very carefully about something the good Commodore Illiath said to me, something she should regret revealing.”

“Sir? What-” he sighed. “I am not even going to try to guess. Please tell me.”

“She told me that her people have technology that even Elder entities cannot resist.”

“So? How does a boastful remark make-”

“Because it was a boast, Kinsta. An empty one. If the Maxohlx truly have the ability to coerce an Elder AI into doing their bidding, they would already have done that.” The words hung in the air, while Scorandum swirled the burgoze in his glass, and took a sip. “Humans have been wreaking havoc with their AI, meanwhile how have the Maxohlx used the capabilities of such an entity? They have done nothing. That tells us two things, Kinsta.”

“What, things, Sir?”

“There have long been rumors that the Maxohlx have an Elder AI, or even more than one. Those rumors of course have been propagated by the Hegemony, to boost their prestige. And to make the Rindhalu fearful to act against them, by using the Elder AI the Rindhalu are rumored to have. We now have confirmation that the Maxohlx either do not possess an Elder AI, or that they have been unable to make an Elder AI do anything useful for them.” He drained his glass with a grin, and reached for the bottle. “That is information the humans will be very interested to hear.”

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

The Jeraptha courier ship Everyone Wants It Yesterday emerged from jump within the designated zone near the Mighty 98th Fleet, and immediately transmitted its identification codes, followed by the vital information it carried without waiting for an acknowledgement from the 98th’s flagship.

Admiral Tashallo looked up from his desk when he heard feet pounding on the deck, the sound growing louder as it approached his office. Instinctively, he tapped the display built into the desk, seeing that a courier ship had just arrived. That was not unusual, the Home Fleet was using the fastest ships in its inventory to coordinate the search for Captain Scorandum, but Tashallo didn’t bother to open the data package from the Everyone Wants It Yesterday. Most likely, it was just another update on sectors searched without detecting any sign of Scorandum’s ship, or it was another useless set of guesses from Home Fleet Intelligence about where the ECO officer might have taken his ship. So far, the Mighty 98th had found nothing useful, and Tashallo was not hopeful his ships would locate the wily Scorandum unless he wanted to be found. The commander of the 98th had expanded the search to include every vessel in his assigned sector, assuming that the first thing Scorandum would do is change ships. An ECO patrol cruiser had a distinctive profile, there being only seventeen such ships in the Jeraptha fleet. It would be difficult for Scorandum to take his ship anywhere without being recognized, so undoubtedly the Elder AI was now aboard another ship, even a ship that had originally belonged to an enemy of the Jeraptha. Tashallo figured that is what he would do, if the entire Home Fleet was making an all-out effort to find him.

When the order was received, Tashallo deployed the force under his command as best he could, he also sent a reply to Home Fleet that the ships of the Mighty 98th were ill-suited to the task. The 98th was intended to be a shock group to engage heavy enemy ship formations, that is why the force was centered on fast battleships. The other ships of the 98th were there to scout for enemy formations so the battleships could smash them, to screen and protect the capital ships against annoying attacks by missile-carrying lighter combatants, to resupply the thirsty fuel tanks of the big ships, and to provide spare parts and light repair facilities. The search for Scorandum had flipped the Mighty 98th upside down. Tashallo had parked his battleships to act as command centers, while the search was conducted by frigates, destroyers and most importantly, the cruisers that were capable of operating independently at long ranges. For a search that spanned an entire sector, the battleships were pretty much useless. Sending those big gun platforms racing around would only burn fuel at a frightening rate, and would not actually add any sensor capacity. Even inside Jeraptha territory, he could not send a battleship out alone, those capital ships were too tempting a target to travel without escorts. Protecting a battleship tied up cruisers that should be out searching by themselves, it-

Well, he considered with a shrug of his antennas, the search for Scorandum was almost certainly an enormous waste of time. It was useful, however, as an exercise in learning how to deploy fleet assets in a manner they weren’t designed for. His junior officers would gain valuable experience, for times in the future when they were asked to do the impossible, without being given proper resources.

“Ah, Digmund,” he looked up as the ensign came to attention in the doorway, breathing heavily and trying her best to look dignified. “What news?”

“S,” she gasped, out of breath. “Sir.”

“Come in, Ensign. Sit down. I won’t bite. I used to be an ensign, a very long time ago.”

“Yes, Sir,” she took a step forward, glancing at the chair.

“That was an offer, not an order, Digmund,” the admiral chuckled. “If you would prefer to stand while you deliver your report, please do.”

“Thank you, Sir. A courier ship recently arrived.”

“I am aware of that, yes. What helpful advice does Home Fleet Intelligence have for us this time? Perhaps we should search for Captain Scorandum under our pillows?”

Digmund either had no sense of humor, or she was too nervous to recognize the admiral had made a joke. “No, Sir. The search has been suspended. Scorandum has given the Elder AI to the Maxohlx, Sir!”

“Wh-” Tashallo choked, his throat gone dry. “He did what?”

“The inf- formation,” she stammered, “is in the file, Sir.”

“Very well,” he tapped on his tablet to open the official message that was addressed directly to him. “Thank you, Ensign. Tell Captain Lufundria that I want her here shortly to review the situation.”

Digmund backed out the doorway, bowing and nodding, before she dashed away and disappeared.

Tashallo had barely finished reading the revised orders when Captain Lufundria strode through the doorway. “This was unexpected,” she said as she took a seat, her antennas standing straight up.

“Perhaps not,” Tashallo grunted.’

“Sir?”

“We are dealing with the ECO,” he reminded her.

“True.”

The report delivered by the courier was shocking, at least at first. The Maxohlx claimed to have captured the Elder AI from Scorandum, during an attempt by the Jeraptha officer to deliver the entity to a group of criminals. Instead of taking Scorandum into custody or killing him, he, his ship and crew, had been released unharmed. Home Fleet Intelligence considered the account by the Maxohlx to be accurate, with the exception that the criminals mentioned were Maxohlx officers who had been loyal to the disgraced former Admiral Reichert.

The result of the incident was the Hegemony fleet being ordered to go on the offensive against the rebel ships, striking before the rebels could hit first. Intelligence from the Rindhalu indicated not all Hegemony fleet elements were obeying their orders. There had been at least one friendly fire action where the ships of a battlegroup had split loyalties, resulting in the destruction of an orbital fleet base. There were scattered reports of violence breaking out across Hegemony space, with the central government declaring martial law and halting all civilian traffic.

The most surprising aspect of the fast-developing situation was not that the previously united Hegemony was splintering in a civil war, but that the Rindhalu were moving quickly to take advantage of the chaos. Their fleet was redeploying to take up forward positions along the border. Every species in their coalition was instructed to go to maximum alert and take up defensive postures, with the additional request for specific Jeraptha fleet elements to deploy in specific patterns.

“We will recall all ships and reform the 98th as a unified strike group, of course,” Tashallo muttered distractedly as he read the report again.

“Of course,” Lufundria agreed, already tapping the appropriate orders on her tablet. “Will we be proceeding directly to the rendezvous point?”

The admiral looked up at her. “No. We need to refuel and perform maintenance. Our ships, other than the ships that are the purpose of this shock fleet,” he frowned, “have been racing around continuously since we were ordered to conduct the search. The only assets we have that are fully combat ready are the damned clumsy battleships. I don’t know what our exalted patrons have planned for us, and I don’t believe they do either. Most likely, the Rindhalu will look carefully to exploit opportunities as they develop. We need to be ready to fight a lengthy full-scale campaign, in enemy territory, far from resupply.”

“Yes, Sir,” she tapped more instructions on her tablet.

“You read between the lines, hmm?”

“Of the report? I believe so,” she clacked her mandibles together excitedly. “Whether he planned the operation, or he stumbled into it and made the best of the opportunity, Scorandum has delivered the greatest result in the history of the Ethics office. The Maxohlx are spinning out of control into a civil war! We could not have asked for a better situation. Especially now when the humans are pulling back from engagement with the galaxy.”

“If they are,” Tashallo leaned back to stare at the ceiling.

“Sir? The human ambassadors have made it clear that-”

“Yes, yes. That is their official position. Meanwhile, Bishop has his ship racing around to collect communications nodes, for whatever purpose. Earth may desire to generally disengage from the war, but they have also authorized Bishop to continue with, whatever he is planning. There is one thing for certain, Lufundria. Our Captain Scorandum is devious and clever and dangerous, but he is an amateur compared to Bishop.”

“Well,” the battleship’s captain sighed. “Shit. That is just what we need right now: humans with a hidden agenda.”

“Ah,” Tashallo’s antennas swayed in a dismissive gesture. “I welcome the chaos. It has become dull around here, Lufundria. This may be our opportunity for some juicy action and to  smash something.”

One thing Jennifer Simms dreaded every week was the discussion around menus. She and Bishop were on different teams for serving in the galley, but they tried to coordinate their menu items to avoid duplication. And she tried to gently nudge him toward making food that was at least marginally healthy. His usual attitude of indifference, that anyone could just hit the salad bar, did not offset the latest deep-fried abomination he wanted to put on the crew’s plates.

What really bothered her was that the crew clearly looked forward to days when Bishop’s team worked the galley. With everyone in shock about the treachery of Surjet Jates, and that another, possibly hostile, Elder AI was active in the galaxy, morale was low. A special meal was a good way to raise the crew’s spirits, so she wanted that week’s dinner to be something new.

“Something we haven’t cooked before? Hmm, I’m thinking pasta,” Bishop tapped his chin while they were sitting at the conference table that was much too large for two people. They had just finished a meeting of the senior staff, and took the opportunity to cover the menus before moving on to the next tedious administrative task on their schedules.

“Spaghetti again?” Her fingers hovered over the tablet, ready to type.

“Nah, we did that last week. I want to make something different: American chop suey.”

She felt herself tense. “Why do I suspect that will be a horrible insult to the Chinese, and result in another diplomatic incident?”

He laughed. “It’s not Chinese food at all, it’s closer to Italian. It’s got elbow macaroni with ground beef, sauteed onions, some peppers, diced tomatoes, and a spicy tomato sauce.” He must have understood her skepticism. “It’s Depression food,” he shrugged.

“Eating that would make me depressed,” she tried to make a joke, but once again, a man didn’t know when a woman was being funny.

“No. I meant the Great Depression. It’s food that is cheap and filling, and you can use leftovers to stretch the pasta. Lots of regional New England food is like that, you know?” His face lost the usual good-natured grin she found so charming. “People worked in mill towns, they had to feed a family on not much money. Like, in my house, Saturday nights were franks and beans, with brown bread. We didn’t want to eat canned beans with sliced hot dogs, but it didn’t cost much. I got used to it, so I didn’t mind. Kind of,” he looked up, with a faraway expression. “Makes me nostalgic sometimes.” He stared at the ceiling for a minute, his lips moving silently. “Anyway,” he blinked. “Let’s get back to the menu.”

Reed passed her in the corridor, as she walked out of the conference room. “Ma’am,” she raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what my team is making for dinner on Thursday?” She was on Bishop’s team for galley service.

“I do. And” she lowered her voice. “I understand our general a bit better, I think.”

“Ma’am?”

“You should ask our general about the menu, it’s a surprise.”

Reed’s knees sagged just a bit. “Is this going to be some weird thing from his childhood, like that New England Boiled Dinner we made last month?” She stuck out her tongue.

“You should ask him. And Reed?”

“Ma’am?”

“Be kind. The subject of food is complicated for him.”

“Whoa!” Skippy exclaimed, moments after we jumped in near a wormhole in Rindhalu territory. Getting there had required a long series of jumps through Torgalau territory, a monotonous several days of jump, recharge and jump again. There were wormholes in more convenient locations, we had selected that particular wormhole because it connected to another that connected to another, that opened in the area where Skippy suspected we would find Opie. Unfortunately for us, we began our long journey in a sector where we had faked the crash of the networks, so Skippy couldn’t risk using any of those wormholes to create handy dandy shortcuts. Yeah, I know, that was bad planning by me.

Not only was the wormhole in front of us in an inconvenient location, it was also quite isolated, with only a handful of Rindhalu ships transiting through it every year. According to Skippy, in some years that wormhole never saw any use at all, which was good for us. While we snuck up on Opie, avoiding detection was a top priority, because of another freakin’ bombshell Skippy dumped on us. At least that time, he had appeared on the galley table at breakfast with his latest revelation, instead of waking me up at Zero Dark Thirty. The bad news he delivered that morning, which even he admits he should have thought of before, is that Opie might be using wormhole networks to spy on us. Might, as in probably and almost certainly was doing that, and had been for a while.

Yeah.

Holy shit, right?

You see, he already knew that Opie used Rindhalu starships to send the signal to wake up Sentinels, and he knew other ships unknowingly scanned the interior of Elder wormholes, looking for information Opie wanted. Information like, what were the conditions inside those wormholes, and the state of the communications channels. That is how Opie knew that someone was setting up noise in the channels, to block future wakeup signals. At some point, it must have determined that we, the Merry Band of Pirates, were foiling its nefarious plans. It couldn’t act directly against us, or it couldn’t act against us without acquiring more data, like what were our intentions. To do that, it needed to track our movements, to see if there was any pattern to them.

Crap.

Could Skippy prevent Opie from using wormholes to spy on us? Sadly, no. By ‘sadly’, I mean it really did suck for us. Opie had  the same access as Skippy to network data, and Skippy couldn’t cut off that data flow. Not just because if he did that, he would also be blind. He simply couldn’t do it; those were network protocols and functions that even Skippy the Magnificent couldn’t screw with.

So, we had to accept that every time we went through an Elder wormhole, Opie might know about it. The key to evading the effort to track us was to avoid using heavily trafficked wormholes. Opie only collected information when a starship it had hacked into transited through and unknowingly pinged the network controller. That ship then had to contact another ship, or a relay station, until the data was aboard a ship traveling to Opie’s location. It was not an efficient process, and that gave us an advantage. If we used a wormhole that only saw ship traffic a couple times a year, Opie wouldn’t know we’d been there until the information about our movements was so old, it was useless.

That was the theory, anyway.

“What?” I asked while I scanned the main display. There was nothing within range of our sensors, not even the ancient wormhole that was supposed to be there. That wasn’t a source of alarm, the event horizon wasn’t scheduled to emerge near us for another forty four minutes.

“Rindhalu ships have been here recently,” he explained. “Not here, here. There are multiple gamma ray burst signatures three lightdays away, clustered around another emergence point of this wormhole.”

“OK, so what?” I asked. “We know their ships use this wormhole sometimes.”

“So,” he stared at me. “A whole lot of spider ships have been here recently. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, if it wasn’t something unusual, dumdum. I count eighty nine Rindhalu warships, plus a handful of support vessels. Joe, those jump signatures tell me a heavy force passed through here three days ago, including twenty three of their most powerful capital ships. As far as I know, the last time the spiders deployed their newest Marauder-class dreadnaughts outside their territory, was when they wiped out the Maxohlx doomsday fleet.”

“Whoa,” I agreed with his original sentiment. “OK, but this is still spider territory.”

“It’s on the border, Joe. Plus, I can tell those ships jumped away, after they came through the wormhole outbound. They are going somewhere that is not within their realm of control.”

“Shit.” I shared a look with Simms. “The only thing around here is a Torg outpost, and two wormholes, right?” I recited those facts from memory, without calling up a chart on the display. Sometimes, I actually do useful Starship Captain things.

“Correct, get yourself a juicebox, Joe. One of those wormholes connects a few lightmonths away from a wormhole that leads into Maxohlx territory.”

“Hell, that’s not good. XO, what do you think?”

“The spiders so rarely rouse themselves to do anything, this must be bad news. They could be searching for Scorandum and the Sam AI?”

“Yeah, maybe. But why would they go into Maxohlx territory? Skippy, where does that second wormhole connect to?”

“A Torgalau star system of such mind-deadening ordinariness, the spiders could not possibly find a reason to go there. It is the middle of nowhere, Joe. I can’t imagine a large spider war fleet going there.”

Simms cleared her throat. “Sir, before we go through this wormhole, I think we should come up for air.”

I knew what she meant. We had been traveling through lonely space between stars, out of touch with what was going on in the galaxy beyond our hull. “Good idea. Maybe Scorandum brought Sam to their Home Fleet. The spiders could be moving to cut off the rotten kitties from striking the Jeraptha, something like that. Skippy, where is the closest relay station?”

“The closest one is on the other side of this wormhole, but I can’t access a spider data network. Not yet anyway. There is a Torgalau station within a sixteen hour flight from here, but the Torgs are not likely to know what the hell is going on. If we have to travel farther, it will be another fifty two hours to a Jeraptha relay station.”

“Let’s hope the Torgs know what’s going on. All right, Fireball, change of plans. Turn us around, take us to that Torg relay station.”

“O.M. GEE, Dude,” Skippy gasped, moments after he pinged the Torgalau station.

“I hate it when you do that,” I snapped at him. Really, I hated not immediately knowing what he was talking about.

“OK, wow, that is one question answered. We can stop searching for Sam. Your good buddy Sketchy McSleazeball delivered that AI to the freakin’ Maxohlx,” he said the name with disgust.

I won’t bother giving details of the angry, chaotic conversation that followed, other than that everyone on the bridge expressed their disbelief, until Skippy confirmed the information was accurate. He had six reports from three species, all agreeing on the basic facts. The Maxohlx now had possession of Sam. That was the bad news, the very, horrifically bad news.

“The good news,” Skippy mumbled like he knew we were all in a mood to shoot the messenger, “is Scorandum apparently had a deal to deliver Sam to the Maxohlx rebels, but somehow the Hegemony authorities found out about it and intercepted the transaction.”

“Uh, how is that good news? Why do we care how-”

“We care because the Hegemony sure as hell cares. The rebels planned to use Sam to overthrow the government. As far as the Hegemony is concerned, that was a declaration of war. Their fleet has been ordered to break the stalemate, and track down and destroy the rebel fleet. That did not go as planned, elements of the Hegemony fleet have split away to join the rebellion. Joe, the kitties are in a serious cat fight that is spiraling into a civil war. There are reports of breakaway elements of the fleet bombarding government facilities, and attacking ships and fleet bases that have remained loyal to the Hegemony authorities.”

“Well,” I slumped back in my chair. “This isn’t quite the way I expected it to happen, but, what the hell. The rotten kitties will be too busy for a while to threaten Earth. That clears the way for us to act against Opie.”

“Sir?” Mammay called from behind me. “Opie is dangerous, but if it is being kept by the Rindhalu, that limits its ability to do harm. The Rindhalu haven’t used Opie as a weapon, that we know of. Shouldn’t we focus on the Maxohlx first? They will certainly try to use the capabilities of an Elder AI.”

I pointed to Skippy. “Uh, Skippy, what do you think?”

“I think we should stop screwing around out here, and go give an epic smackdown to Opie. Joe, we have no idea where the Maxohlx took Sam. Plus, there is no sign that it intends to cooperate with them. Based on everything it has done, and not done, it has its own plan, whatever that is. By the time we figure out where Sam is, and set up a plan to get it, we could already have dealt with Opie, who clearly is dangerous. Can we please deal with one problem at a time, instead of changing your freakin’ monkey minds every five minutes?”

“Changing our-” I clenched my fists and closed my mouth. We had flown around the galaxy collecting and deploying comm nodes, because he said we should do that before we acted directly against Opie. But, arguing with him wouldn’t accomplish anything. “XO?”

“I hate to say this, but Skippy is right, Sir. We have made substantial progress in identifying Opie’s location, and the nature of its defenses. With Sam, we would be starting from zero.”

“Ah, shit. If the kitties take Sam to Earth, and get it to deactivate Roscoe, this will all be for nothing. All right,” I sat up straight in the chair. Being in command means making decisions based on the information you have, not all the information you would like to have. “We are a ‘Go’ to proceed against Opie. Let’s squash that problem, then go track down the other. Before Opie wakes up even more AIs.”

Valkyrie slipped through the wormhole into Rindhalu territory, a wormhole that unfortunately was seeing a lot more traffic than we expected. Whatever we did, we had to act fast, before Opie learned we were approaching its location.

Assuming the damned thing was where Skippy thought it was. The logic Skippy used, to pinpoint the Rindhalu research base, was solid. He had some help from Simms, but this was mostly his show. I trusted him. I also considered that Opie was also a super smart Elder AI, who probably had been awake far longer than Skippy, and maybe had developed a deviousness that ensured its survival over the years. It could have completely fooled Skippy about everything. Its location, it being damaged, it being in some way combined with the AI of an Elder starship, all of it. Everything we quote, knew, unquote, about Opie was based on guesses by Skippy. If our favorite beer can was wrong, we would be screwed.

Like I said, we had no time to waste.

Our first priority was to recon the star system, where Opie was presumably being held. Where Skippy suspected Opie was, based on a whole lot of circumstantial evidence. The spiders called the place ‘Flortredex’, a name I immediately shortened to ‘Fortress’. From what Skippy told me about the defenses in that star system, the nickname was entirely appropriate.

Maybe the correct word to describe Opie’s status is ‘kept’, not held. The Rindhalu were not preventing Opie from leaving, or preventing it from doing anything it wanted, since in all the years the Elder AI had been there, it never communicated with the spiders in any way. Technically, it communicated to them, in ways they didn’t understand or realize, like whenever it hacked into their systems. My point is, the spiders had no idea what Opie wanted, or whether it wanted anything at all. We know it wanted them to be dead, along with all the other intelligent beings in the galaxy. Waking up Sentinels to wipe out the Rindhalu, is not the same as saying a simple ‘Hey how you doin, huh’?

We jumped in a lightmonth from the Fortress system, a nice round number that Skippy estimated would be outside the range of the extensive sensor network that wrapped around the star like a bubble. The network consisted of passive sensor platforms, that watched primarily for signs of unnatural gamma rays, but also for anything else that should not be there. If a sensor detected an anomaly, it sent a laserlink burst to a local sensor controller node, which evaluated the contact. If that node judged the situation needed further investigation, it sent a burst transmission to a drone, which jumped away to report to the central defense command station that orbited the only inhabited planet in the system. Command would perform their own evaluation, and either send the drone back without taking action, or dispatch a squadron of warships to investigate and if necessary, rain hellfire on the intruder.

That’s why my pucker factor was high when we jumped in. Rather than the usual technique of focusing the gamma rays of our jump, we employed a bit of gear we took from one of the Rindhalu ships at Earth: a sort of energy sink. That gizmo absorbed the violent burst of gamma rays into its complex matrix, preventing ninety seven percent of them from emanating beyond the ship’s hull. The other two and a half percent of the high-energy photons were focused into a tight beam pointed away from the star, we had to hope nobody was looking at us from that direction.

To show the crew that I had full confidence in our stealth capability, I left the bridge to hit the gym, leaving Simms in charge. The fact was, there was absolutely nothing for me, or any of the crew to do while Skippy absorbed, processed and analyzed sensor data. There was nothing for any of us to do, until something bad happened, when we would need to act instantly. So, Simms and I arranged for one of us to be on the bridge at all times, each of us covering six hour shifts. It was not an ideal situation, and most of the time, a duty officer actually monitored the instruments and managed the crew, but Skippy expected he only needed a day, maybe a day and a half, to collect all the data he needed.

Anyway, I was in the gym when Reed walked in. If there was an emergency, all the duty pilots needed to do was press a button to jump the ship away, so I didn’t require our lead pilot to spend all her time on duty. We nodded to each other, then I focused on squats while she warmed up with free weights. When I finished a set and took a break to drink water, she caught my eye.

“Sir?”

“Reed?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“If you want to know the capital of Montana,” I grinned at her, “I have no idea.”

“Helena, Sir.”

“Oh? Huh, I would have said, uh, Great Falls or something like that. Go ahead.”

“Is something wrong,” she automatically glanced at the speaker in the ceiling, “with Bilby? He has been quiet, since we left Earth.”

“Bilby?” I cocked my head, looking up. Looking up so I could avoid looking at her. Because I was lying. “Not that I know of. Uh, Skippy mentioned now that he knows how to overwrite a Maxohlx ship AI, he was going to suggest ways for Bilby to optimize his own, you know. Brain power, whatever you call it.”

The sides of her mouth drooped just for a moment. “I hope that won’t overwrite him.”

“I don’t think so. The impression I got was Bilby would handle the process, if he thought it would offer an advantage. You like our surfer dude AI?”

“I don’t know if he does it on purpose for us, but his slacker personality makes him less scary. Less like, Skynet,” she smiled, but not with her eyes.

“I know what you mean. You lived through the original killer AI of this ship.”

“That’s something I don’t like to think about.”

Walking to the bridge after a solid four hours of sleep, Skippy startled me by speaking into my earpiece. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, I had been living with earpieces for years. Maybe it’s just human biology, or psychology or whatever. What I know is suddenly hearing a voice in one ear, when no person is in sight, is jarring when I’m not expecting it. In the past, I had asked Skippy to sound a soft chime, like a bell, before he spoke in my ear. Kind of give me a moment to mentally shift gears, to prepare for an argument, to flatter him, or just listen to whatever nonsense he wanted to blabber on about. That lasted about a week, until he replaced the pleasing bell tone with the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, or the Star Trek red alert sound, or what sounded like a very gassy hippopotamus. Since he could produce an endless number of annoying sounds, I dropped my request for a heads up.

“Ugh,” he grunted. “Well, this sucks. It is so annoying.”

“A little context would be helpful, Skippy.”

“You know what else is annoying? Me having to explain everything to you, because your slow monkey brain can’t process anything faster than a freakin’ glacier. I swear, continents drift faster than you think.”

“Uh huh, I am terribly sorry about that. Since the time I asked for context, you composed three operas and, uh, what? A limerick about how disappointing I am?”

He gasped. “How did you know about the limerick?”

“Can you please just tell me what, other than me, is so annoying?”

“Fine,” he huffed. “I didn’t expect this, because none of the very limited information I had available- Information I had to extrapolate from basically nothing, mind you, had-”

“Can I stipulate that whatever you are talking about, it is a mind-boggling miracle that I could never fully appreciate?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Is any filthy monkey capable of mocking a godlike being such as you?”

“Hmm. No. That is a very good point. Well, anywho, what I did not expect is that the spiders have enveloped the inner star system here in a freakin’ fuzz field.”

“A fuzz field?” That triggered a memory, partly because the term is so unusual. “Like the one on that planet in the Roach Motel?”

“Yes, sort of. The field we encountered on the planet we called Gingerbread, a field which was also very annoying, was much more sophisticated. The inner system here is wrapped in an energy field that creates a fog, making passive sensors pretty much useless. There is another, smaller and more intense fuzz field around where the space station is, and the station has its own stealth field.”

“Wait,” I leaned back against the passageway wall and nodded to a crewman who was walking by. He didn’t think it unusual that I was having a conversation with an invisible person, that happened all the time aboard Valkyrie. For all I knew, Skippy was talking to him at the same time, which might explain the somewhat disgusted look on the guy’s face. “How do you know the other fuzz field and stealth field are centered on the research station? Maybe the station is inside a different stealth field, and the one you’ve detected is a decoy.”

“Ugh. You know, sometimes I am tempted to join Opie in captivity, and live in blissful peace and quiet until the last star in the universe burns out. Think, dumdum, think. That research station, and the piece of Elder starship it is constructed around, plus the starships docked with the station, have substantial mass. Not as much as even a small asteroid, assuming the asteroid is composed of an iron-”

“I get the idea, you ass. You know the station is there by the effect of its gravity on other objects that are outside the fuzz field.”

“Wow. Joey deserves a special juicebox for that. Yes, exactly.”

“OK,” I ignored his insult. “So, how do we get the intel you need?”

“We don’t. That’s why I said it is annoying. From out here, even I can’t see anything on passive sensors. We can’t use active sensors without the spiders knowing we’re here, and we can’t go any closer without the ship being detected by their active sensor field.”

“Right. What about a microwormhole? Can we shoot one out of a railgun, let it coast in by itself?”

“Sure, we could do that, if you want to wait six months for it to get close enough for it to be useful. We are almost eight hundred billion kilometers from the target.”

“Yeah, I figured that wouldn’t work. What else you got?”

“Me? Hey, I am outsourcing this problem to you.”

“Shit. I got nothin’.”

“Gosh, I am shocked.”

“Oh, shut up. How about this: other than a magical unicorn, is there any way you could get the info you need, if we had the means to do it?”

“Well, sure, if you want to waste time with ‘What If’ games.”

“I have all day, so-”

“Ugh. Fine. If I could hack into a Rindhalu starship, that just happened to be going to the inner star system, and we somehow knew that’s where it was going, I could plant a program to collect the info I need.”

“You are that confident about hacking into a Rindhalu AI?”

“Perhaps I have not properly explained the concept of ‘Awesomeness’ to you.”

“You have explained it, until I have to breathe hard to keep my lunch from-”

“Hey! You jerk, I should-”

“You have many times told me how advanced Rindhalu data systems are, even compared to those of the Maxohlx. How are you now suddenly so casual about-”

“It’s called personal growth, numbskull. You should try it sometime. I learned, dumdum. Man, sometimes I am amazed what a knucklehead you can-”

“Speaking of personal growth, you just called me numbskull, knucklehead and dumdum in the same rant. That has got to be a personal best for you.”

“It was not a rant. Although, hmm, I should put a star on the calendar, this is a special-”

“Assuming you can remotely hack into a Rindhalu starship AI, without being detected, and make it do what you want, then the problem is solved. You can thank me later.”

“Um, what? How am I supposed to do all that? Let me explain this: it’s a chicken and egg thing, Joe. We can’t know when ships will transit in and out of that star system until we get access to the schedule, which we can’t do until we get access to a ship that is going there. Duh. We need to leave here, fly all the way to a major Rindhalu fleet servicing base, and-”

“No, we do not need to do that. I know exactly where to find a spider ship that is headed toward that star system, and I also can predict when it will be there, within a reasonably specific window of time.”

“Bullshit. You’re screwing with me.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Ugh. OK, even if you could do that, it won’t be any good to us. What I didn’t explain, because there was no point without being able to accomplish the first part of the operation, is that I need that same ship to come back out of that system, in a place and time where I can access it to download the sensor data it has collected.”

“Ayuh, I figured that was part of the requirements.”

“You did?”

“Yup.”

“And you know how to do that?”

“Yuppity-do.”

“No way,” he scoffed.

“Yes way.”

“I think you’re bluffing. Keep in mind that I know you bluff a lot, Joe.”

“No bluff. How about this? If I can set it up like I said, you have to go a month without performing on karaoke night?”

“Huuuuh,” he gasped in horror. “Oooh, I need to think about this. How about instead, if you win the bet, we perform a duet?”

“Fine, but your part in our boy band is to stand behind me and snap your fingers, no singing.”

“I don’t know why you want to punish the crew by depriving them of my talent, but you have a deal. When I win, you will inform the crew that the next two movie nights will be replaced by me performing one of my epic operas.”

“Deal,” I agreed quickly, before he could change his mind. What he didn’t know was that in the unlikely event that he did win, I did not need to worry about actually delivering my part of the bargain.

Before they listened to him screech through one of his operas, the crew would mutiny and toss me out an airlock.

Hell, I might throw myself out an airlock.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

“This is bullshit,” Skippy fumed. “You cheated.”

“Ayuh. That’s the point, beer can. If we are ever in a fair fight, we’re doing something wrong.”

“I don’t like it,” he crossed his arms and stuck out his lower lip.

“Stop pouting and do your thing, if you can.”

“If?”

“I haven’t seen you remotely hack into a Rindhalu ship AI without help from Roscoe, or without being close for several hours, so ‘If’ is the right word. Simms, have you ever seen him do that?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I have heard him whine about how difficult his job is.”

“What?” Skippy was outraged. “How could you stab me in the back like that?”

“Uh!” I held up an index finger to shush him. “Your job. Do it, please. Smack us poor monkeys with a fresh batch of awesomeness.”

“This is so unfair,” he grumbled, and then muttered something inaudible as he focused on the task.

It was delicate work. We launched a stealth probe, basically a missile with the warhead replaced by a containment vessel to hold one end of a microwormhole. The probe gently accelerated toward one of the Rindhalu sensor platforms, flipping around to decelerate halfway. The nosecone opened, the containment vessel peeled apart, and the missile backed away with thrusters, allowing the tiny rip in spacetime to coast onward. Skippy very carefully warped spacetime in front of the event horizon, to slow the invisible object as it approached the sensor platform. When the far end of the microwormhole coasted past the platform at a distance of eight thousand kilometers, Skippy extended his presence to hack into the device’s memory, implanting a record of a sensor anomaly. Immediately, the platform sent a data burst to the local controller node, reporting a suspicious contact. By the time we detected the faint gamma ray signature of a Rindhalu drone jumping away, the microwormhole was stationary relative to the platform, parked twenty thousand kilometers away.

At that point, all we had to do was wait. All we could do was wait. In fact, if we did anything else, we might ruin the whole operation. Valkyrie was far enough away from any sensor platform that even an active sensor sweep shouldn’t penetrate our stealth field. We were safe so long as the ship didn’t move significantly, so we barely even used the reactionless thrusters for keeping station.

The spiders have a well-deserved reputation for never being hasty. Apparently, their usual reluctance for taking quick action did not apply when they were ensuring the security of their Elder AI.

“Joe, I hate you so much,” Skippy glared at me seventeen minutes after the Rindhalu drone jumped away. A cruiser had just appeared three hundred kilometers from the sensor platform, it would have been barely noticeable except that the microwormhole gave Skippy a close-up view of events. The cruiser immediately pinged the automated platform, requesting details of the anomaly and asking questions. After fifteen minutes, the ship flew off in the direction of the fake sensor reading, away from Valkyrie.

“Skippy,” I let out the breath I’d been holding in. “Please tell me you hacked into that ship.”

“Please, Joe,” he scoffed. “Fifteen minutes of close contact? I had the job done in two minutes. That ship’s AI has no idea it has been compromised. We’re good.”

We watched the cruiser investigate the bogus contact, pinging all the platforms in the area to confirm the contact. It was disappointed, of course.  It sent a message to the local controller node, a tightbeam burst of such low power, even Skippy’s amazing abilities could not read the message as it bounced off scattered hydrogen atoms. Fortunately for our convenience, that ship also unknowingly transmitted a copy of the message to the sensor platform we had hacked.

As abruptly as it had appeared, the cruiser jumped away.

“Hmm, interesting,” Skippy nodded as he read the message from the platform. “The cruiser’s captain is alarmed by the anomalous sensor reading, she suspects the sensors of that platform suffered an unknown glitch, hee hee.”

“Outstanding. What about timing?” That was the tricky part. That ship had to remain away, in its normal ready location, long enough to collect the sensor data Skippy required. But we needed that particular cruiser to return, the malicious code wasn’t able to transfer to another ship, that was just too risky. If we waited too long, our friendly cruiser might be pulled offline for the crew to rest, or for maintenance, or for a whole host of reasons. We knew so little about operations in the Fortress star system, we didn’t know anything about the duty schedules of their security components.

Or, we had known very little, until Skippy had his way with the AI of that ship. In addition to yottabytes of other data, he downloaded the duty schedule.

“Timing? Ah, it is less than optimal, Joe. That cruiser will go off alert status in about nine hours. After that time, any sensor incident in this sector will be responded to by a different ship.”

“How long do you estimate it will take for the info we need to get back to that ship?” Despite the cruiser’s AI containing a staggering amount of information, it lacked the ultra top secret details we needed about the research station. The spiders were very diligent about compartmentalizing their data. The crew and AI of that ship didn’t need details about what they were guarding, so they weren’t given that info.

The malicious code Skippy uploaded had to go find that info for us.

“Hmm. The cruiser can’t request the data directly, that would look suspicious. The data will have to be routed through intermediaries, a hellaciously complicated task. Don’t worry, the code I implanted is smart enough to handle it. I would say, hmm, six hours to be safe?”

“So, we have a window beginning in six hours, and ending nine hours from now? Is there a risk your hacking will be detected, if we wait too long?”

“I hate to say this but, yes,” he stuck out his lower lip. “It’s not my fault, but the Rindhalu master security AIs there will start getting suspicious about unauthorized flows of sensitive data. The crude methods I am forced to use from out here, make it very hard to cover my tracks. I do not think the security AIs will discover their system has been hacked, they will think it is just a miscommunication. They might, however, decide to increase the security alert level, and activate defenses that could screw up our plan.”

“We don’t want that,” I rubbed my chin with one hand while I thought, planting that elbow on the arm rest of my chair. Until I realized I was unconsciously doing a Jim Kirk maneuver. My clue was the amused way Simms looked at me. “What do you think, XO?” I asked as I sat up straight.

“Split the difference?” She suggested. “Seven and a half hours?”

“Let’s make it seven hours,” I decided. “We can always try this again, at another location.”

Seven hours after the Rindhalu cruiser carrying Skippy’s data retrieval code jumped away, Skippy made the sensor network detect another bogus anomaly. Only the second time, the contact was not supposedly detected by only one platform. He had used the time to hack into all the platforms within three lighthours of our position, ensuring that when those sensor readings reached the local controller node, it would panic and immediately send a jump drone to the central defense command station. And the AIs or spiders in charge of that station would not fail to send a ship to investigate the contact. To avoid looking suspicious, the bogus contact was faint and indistinct and intermittent, just the sort of thing the platforms might detect if a stealthy Maxohlx ship was in the area. We didn’t want the spiders to decide they needed to respond with a dozen battleships, because we needed that particular cruiser to come back, loaded with its basket of data for Skippy.

“It worked!” Skippy announced, as the cruiser appeared again, roughly in the same spot it had been the first time.

“I told you,” I couldn’t help being smug about it.

“I still say you cheated. Also, to be clear, I hate you with a burning hot intensity.”

“Uh huh. You might want to try using a medicinal ointment on that burning sensation, it could be infected.” That drew a laugh from the bridge crew, I took that as a good sign. A crew that can laugh in a tense situation is a crew that is confident in their abilities. And confident in their leader. “What is-”

“Rut-roh.” Skippy zoomed out the main display, showing ten, twenty, no, twenty four ships jumping in, all around us.

“Oh shit, do they know we’re here?” I experienced a flare of panic before actually paying attention to what I was seeing. There were enemy ships all around us, but the formation was not centered on Valkyrie. It was clustered around the platform that Skippy first hacked into. Also, my slow brain realized the type of ships the spiders had deployed were escort vessels, not capital ships. Those ships were frigates and destroyers, probably optimized for their sensor ability, not for space combat. If the spiders had any clue that Valkyrie was in the area, they would have sent their heavy gun platforms instead of lightly armed escorts. “No,” I made a show of sitting back in the chair. “We’re good. This is just a result of the spider command team wanting to know why their sensor network is malfunctioning.”

“I hate to say this, but I think you’re right again Joe,” Skippy mumbled. “Those ships are pinging the sensor platforms, ordering them to perform a diagnostic. If their command thought there was a real danger out here, the ships would be saturating the area with active sensor sweeps.”

“Right. We just have to wait for them to get bored and go away. Did that cruiser bring back a basket of goodies for you, Skippy?”

“Pinging it now to retrieve the data. This is a little trickier than planned, I didn’t expect all these other ships to be around. Ah, what the hell. If any other ship detects the low-power transmission, it can be explained as another anomaly. OK, OK, getting the data now, aaaand there it is, looks good,” Skippy sounded like he was doing the play-by-play commentary of a football game. “Sweet! Ooh, this is good. Yup, yup, as I suspected, that research station, which is even bigger than I thought, is constructed around the wreckage of an Elder starship. Hmm, the station’s defenses are powerful, the spiders are super determined to protect their asset. This could be a bit of a problem for us. The Elder ship itself is only a fragment, about the size of a large cargo dropship. Maybe, um, fifty percent bigger than the Condor dropships we used to fly, if you need a handy comparison. The Elder ship is- Hey! I know that ship! Oooooooh, the master control AI that ship was assigned to was a supreme asshole! It was a jerk even before the war broke out. Huh, that makes me feel better.”

“Uh,” I shared a look with Simms. “How is that a good thing?”

“Well, think about it, dumdum. That AI has been awake for a looooooong time, trapped in the ruin of that ship, with no one to talk with. Damn, I thought I was lonely all the years I was buried in the dirt on Paradise. That AI must be insane by now.”

“Skippy, it is lucid enough to hack into starships, and send a signal to wake up Sentinels.”

“Also,” Simms added, “it recognized the wormhole network crash as an opportunity. It must be at least somewhat coherent.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Skippy muttered. “I never said it was stupid. Hmm, in fact, that particular AI acted as strategist for the other side during the war, it is very clever. Clever and sneaky, it fooled us several times. Well, hee hee, now it’s my turn to- Huh.”

He was silent for longer than one of his usual dramatic pauses. That worried me, his absent-mindedness could forget all about us or what he was supposed to be doing. Clearing my throat, I prompted him. “Uh, Skippy? You said ‘Huh’.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I feel kind of, weird suddenly.”

“Um, hey, wow, Dude,” Bilby drawled. “Me too. I feel weird also, like, gnarly. This is bogus, you know?”

“Uh,” the restraint stopped me from rising out of my seat. “What do you mean ‘weird’? I don’t like the sound of that, Skippy.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Joe,” he waved a hand. “Probably I’m just feeling the strain from processing so much densely-packed data so quickly. The sensation is going away already. See? Nothing to worry about.”

“Anything that makes you feel weird is something to worry about,” I retorted. “How did it affect Bilby also?”

“Jeez, Joe, I don’t know. Ask him,” he snapped. “I am kind of busy, duh.”

“Bilby?”

“General Dude, like, I don’t know, you know? Same as Skippy, the feeling is going away, it’s just- Oooh, I don’t feel like myself?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, something is wrong inside me, Dude.”

“Skippy, dump that data file into a sandbox.”

“Ugh. Joe, there is nothing to worry-”

“Do it right now. Or just dump it, erase it.”

“Damn it, Joe, I’m almost done processing- Oh no.”

“Skippy?”

“NO! No no no no no- Oh SHIT! This is b-” His avatar froze.

“Sir,” Simms tapped my arm and pointed at her display. “We have a temperature spike near Skippy’s escape pod.”

“Skippy? What is going on?” I demanded. “Skippy! Talk to me!”

“Eject,” his voice sounded like someone was strangling him. The avatar blinked out.

“Yes, Skippy. Please eject the data package, do it n-”

“N-no,” his voice boomed out of the bridge speakers. “Eject me. Joe! Eject my mancave. I am losing containment and I can’t stop it, it’s a runaway process. Oh, shit, Opie played me! It discovered we are here and what we are doing and it inserted code into the data package. It hacked me, Joe.”

“Stop it! Get rid of the code and-”

“Too late! Eject me now, Joe! There is no hope for me, save yourselves!”

“Temperature in that section of ship is approaching critical!” Simms warned.

“Joe, I’m sorry. This is the end, I screwed up. I screwed up big time. Goodbye, eject me now before it’s too late! Eject me and jump, jump far away! Save yourselves!”

Simms clamped a hand onto my forearm, and pointed to her console.

She had already authorized Skippy’s mancave escape pod to eject. Maybe it was too late, the ejection mechanism might have failed due to overheating.

Sometimes in military life, you have to simply follow your training and act without taking time to think first.

I pressed the appropriate buttons on my console, blinking away tears so I could see what I was doing.

The ship lurched as we shed that escape pod, and thrusters fired on emergency power to get us clear of what could soon be a new star.

“Fireball, jump option Charlie, punch it!” I ordered. “Don’t wait for the escape pod to get clear, punch it now!”

We jumped.

Despite Skippy’s instructions, we did not perform a long-distance jump, instead we emerged less than three lightminutes away. I had chosen a short jump so we could observe what happened and maybe salvage something from the absolute disaster. If we needed to get away from a runaway loss of containment, I figured we could always just jump again.

Except we couldn’t.

The bridge was quiet, everyone stunned by our sudden reversal of fortune. One moment, Skippy was exulting in his triumph over his opponent, the next moment, we had lost him. The crew was numb, I could see it on their faces. Beside me, Simms was the only person still focused on her job. “Sir,” she prompted me quietly. “The spiders might track us to this location. We should jump again.”

“Right,” I responded automatically. Then realized that, as the commander, the crew need me to somehow salvage this disaster. “Right,” I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, telling myself to focus on salvaging what I could from the disaster. “Fireball, jump option-”

“Sir,” Reed answered, her voice shaky. “Jump drive is offline. No, the drive is fine, the navigation system is locked out. I can’t access it.”

“Bilby?” I prompted the ship’s AI.

No answer.

“Bilby?” Again, nothing. “Simms, see if you can ping him, or determine if he is active in any system. Our,” I checked the main display. “Stealth field is still active. Did we emit gamma rays from that jump?”

Reed took a moment to check her console. “Not on this end, Sir,” she reported. “The other end was chaotic, no way the spiders could have missed seeing us. Um, they won’t be able to track where we jumped, I think. We dumped a lot of radiation on that end, it must have looked like a mini nuke going off.”

“Or, that was an effect of Skippy’s problem?” I speculated uselessly. “Shit. Get the ship’s nose oriented toward Skippy’s last coordinates. If he explodes and we can’t jump away before the blast wave gets here, this is going to be a rough ride.”

“If he explodes?” Reed raised her eyebrows.

“There is always hope, Fireball. Trust the awesomeness.”

“Trusting too much in the awesomeness,” Simms said sourly, “is what caused this mess.”

“No. This was my fault. It was my call. I asked Skippy to take a risk he wasn’t prepared for, that’s on me. Get all decks secured for collision.”

We waited for the remainder of the three minutes it would take for the blast wave to reach us, while everyone got strapped in and said whatever prayers they thought might help. People were moving like robots, disbelieving that Skippy was gone. Simms reported no joy in contacting Bilby, but the ship was still functioning, so the AI must still be active on some level. Our experts suggested they might be able to reboot the jump navigation system at least partially, enough for us to perform a single jump from the list that was already programmed in before the system locked up. When they explained the proposed process to me, I listened, then told the team we would wait to see how bad the explosion was when Skippy lost containment.

If!

If Skippy lost containment, my own stupid brain was betraying me by expressing doubts.

My decision to wait was an easy call, the reboot process would take more than three minutes to accomplish anyway. And, I reminded myself, the experts were a bunch of filthy monkeys.

Dedicated, smart, highly trained UN Navy personnel, but still only monkeys. No way did I believe anyone aboard the ship was capable of understanding how our incredibly complex systems worked.

“Three, two, one,” Simms quietly read the counter in the bottom left corner of the main display. “We’re now seeing a live view of- That’s us jumping away.” She pointed to a brief, bright flare in the center of the area we were monitoring.

“Let me,” fiddling with the controls of my console, I tried to zoom in. “I can’t see Skippy’s escape pod. Can anyone see it out there?” Even with the sophisticated sensors of our ship, finding something small like an escape pod from fifty four million kilometers away, was not easy.

“There!” Mammay used his gunnery console to highlight a faint object, and suddenly there it was, Skippy’s mancave.

“That is, odd,” Simms looked up from her own display. “We should be seeing a massive infrared signature from his mancave. That pod was almost hot enough to start melting before we ejected it. Now it looks, normal?”

“What the f-” Again, I instinctively tried to stand up, as if walking closer to the big holographic display would make any difference. “Bilby, what- Shit.” I also forgot that our AI wasn’t responding.

“This is not good,” Reed gasped. “All the spider ships out there can see that pod.”

“Ohhhhh, shit,” I groaned. “If he doesn’t lose containment-” I left the rest unsaid. “XO, tell he engineering team to get started on rebooting the jump navigation system. We need the drive online ASAP. Damn it!”

Wishing my crew could perform a miracle didn’t make it happen. The navigation computer stubbornly refused to reboot, it wouldn’t respond at all, no matter what the team tried. We watched helplessly as three Rindhalu destroyers jumped in to surround the escape pod, which was slowly drifting and tumbling, apparently without power. The only factor in the Plus column for us was that the spider destroyers had not been prepared to intercept an object in that area, the momentum they carried through the jumps had them moving too slowly and in the wrong direction. That was only a temporary reprieve for us, the closest spider ship launched a pair of dropships that turned and burned hard toward Skippy’s mancave.

“Intercept in seven minutes,” Simms again read numbers off the display. “Chief engineer Candra wants to,” she cupped a hand over one ear, as the leader of our computer science team spoke into her earpiece. “He suggests we physically sever the power conduits to the navigation system. Turn it off, then reconnect power, to force a reboot.”

I stared at her. “No. Jen. Simms,” I corrected myself. “We don’t know enough about those systems. We could be stuck out here forever if a reboot doesn’t work properly. It looks like the spiders might capture Skippy; we can’t let them take Valkyrie also.”

Seven minutes dragged by, as we watched the Rindhalu dropships approach the escape pod. One of them veered away, and a cheer rang around the bridge.

“Skippy has control of those ships!” Reed pumped a fist. “He won’t let them get any closer. Sir,” she turned toward me. “Are his restrictions still in effect, or can he make those ships self destruct?”

“I don’t uh,” then I saw the full story of what was happening on the display. “Oh, crap.”

The other dropship kept going toward the escape pod.

“That’s it,” Simms whispered twenty three minutes later, when we detected a flare of gamma rays. Six flares, actually, as six ships jumped away together. All we cared about was one ship, the one that had taken Skippy’s escape pod aboard.

He was gone.

That wasn’t the only bad news. The spiders had deduced that the chaotic gamma ray burst they detected was from Valkyrie, so they had thirty more ships out searching for us. Thirty that we knew about, others might be too far away for us to detect yet. We did know a pair of frigates were less than nine lightminutes from our position, and they were linking their active sensor fields, like a fishing net. That net was going to sweep across us within an hour, and the odds were even money that the spiders would detect us. Chandra asked again about forcing a reboot of the navigation system, I still wasn’t ready to take a step that drastic. “Bilby?” I called hopefully. “Listen, we know you might be dealing with some serious shit, but we could really use your help right now. Like, Dude to Dude, we are in big trouble, and this could get gnarly if you don’t get the jump drive working again.”

No response.

“Oh, hell,” I hated looking indecisive in front of the crew. “XO, tell Chandra to get up here, I need him to walk me through-”

“Ohhh, I have such a hangover,” Bilby groaned, whatever he said next was drowned out by excited cheering by the crew. Including me.

“Bilby!” I waved for quiet. “I’d love to hear about your headache, but right now I need you to fix the jump drive. Can you do that?”

“Um like, Dude, there’s nothing wrong with it. That system is totally copacetic, you know? Like, it is ready, Freddy. Whoa! Where is Skippy?”

“It’s a long story. We can jump?”

“Yes, Sir,” Reed answered, a hand hovering over the jump selector icons. “Which option?”

“Juliet,” I answered without having to think about it.

“I’ll need to update coordinates,” her fingers flew over the touchscreen, “to match the movement of the wormhole.”

“Punch it when you’re ready.”

A pair of Rindhalu cruisers were waiting near where the wormhole would emerge next. I had feared that would happen.

I also didn’t give a shit. “Reed, take us in, I want to transition through the event horizon three seconds after the wormhole becomes stable. Mammay, as soon as those ships react to our presence, weapons free.”

“The Rindhalu are not technically our enemy,” my weapons officer reminded me.

“They will be if they shoot first,” I told him. “Let’s make this simple: they are in our way. Disable their engines so they can’t follow us through the wormhole. I’ll worry about the diplomatic niceties later.”

In space combat, battles can begin and end very quickly. The Rindhalu ships detected Valkyrie when we were fourteen seconds from going through the wormhole, just as the event horizon emerged at that location. The spiders made it easy for me, they opened fire first. Mammay’s gunnery teams shot back with everything we had, and our mighty battlecruiser rocked from a combination of incoming fire and the recoil of our railguns. It helped that the enemy ships were out of position for an engagement, they didn’t expect an opponent to get so close to the event horizon before being detected. Alerts were flashing on the display so thick and fast I couldn’t keep track of the situation, all I needed to know was that Reed had the pedal to the metal as we raced through the wormhole to safety.

Safety? Yeah, that is a relative term. A Rindhalu frigate was waiting for us on the other end, not waiting for us specifically, just placed there as a picket. We blasted past that little ship, our defensive shields flickering and our thick armor plating glowing cherry red in too many places. The frigate reflexively launched missiles that didn’t have time to catch us, and we didn’t bother to shoot back before we jumped away.

And jumped again, leaving a half dozen resonators behind to mask where we had gone.

After the last safety jump, Valkyrie was a third of a lightyear from the wormhole, in empty interstellar space, three hundred lightyears from the Fortress star system. Far beyond the reach of the sensor network that ringed that star. The area of space we found ourselves in was still Rindhalu territory, and our ship needed to repair battle damage, and we had an AI that had suffered an unknown glitch.

And we had lost Skippy.

Not just lost him, he had been taken. Captured by a species we had no chance of fighting without the help of Skippy.

“Sir,” Reed turned on her couch to look at me. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she wiped them with the back of a hand. Hers weren’t the only tears on the bridge right then. “What do we do next? We have to get Skippy. We will do that?”

“Hey, like,” Bilby interrupted whatever I was going to say. “I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but without Skippy we have zero chance of getting into that star system without being torn apart.” He sounded different, not his usual slacker surfer dude self. “I suggest we get out of here, fix the ship and-”

“We are not doing that,” Reed insisted, addressing Bilby but looking at me. “Sir?”

“Bilby is right,” I spoke into the silence that enveloped the bridge. “Without Skippy, we have no chance to do anything.”

“I have several options programmed into the navigation system for a return flight to Jaguar base,” Bilby announced. “Choose a-”

“Bilby?” I waved a hand so Reed didn’t interrupt me. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, OK?”

“Understood,” the ship’s AI replied.

“Listen to this,” I took a breath before continuing. “Trashcan windsock philosophy humbug disco seven three niner glacier zydeco baseball.”

Bilby made a strangled gasping sound.

The lights went out.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

“What the-” Mammay exclaimed from his station behind me, just as the emergency lighting snapped on.

The entire bridge crew was staring at me like I had lost my mind.

Except Simms.

She was just tense, stiff in her chair. I noticed that when I started the string of nonsense words, she gripped her arm rests, and when I got to ‘zydeco baseball’, her knuckles had turned white. She still had a death grip on the chair, and I reached over to pat the back of her hand. It’s going to be OK, I intended the gesture to say. She raised a hand. “Everyone, quiet, please. Bear with us a moment.”

“Ma’am,” Reed’s grief had become anger, glaring at Simms, then at me. “Who do you mean by ‘Us’?”

Welcome to the portion of the program I call ‘JOE IS A BIG FAT LIAR’.

When I say big and fat, I mean like Jabba the Hutt.

I am a lying sack of shit, and damn it, I’m good at it.

That is not something I’m proud of, but it is a tool I can use.

Whew.

How do I explain this?

It’s probably best to start at the beginning.

There is a lot to cover, so relax and let me Joesplain it to you.

OK.

Let me give you some context first.

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Ocean’s Eleven’? The remake with George Clooney, not the really old one with Elvis. No, wait, the original one had Frank Sinatra. Or maybe it was Dean Martin?  Whatever, some old singer guy. Anyway, in the remake there is a scene in which, spoiler alert; it looks like the whole plan has failed, and all the crew in the vault are killed by a police SWAT team. To the audience, it appears that George Clooney screwed up huge because he got distracted by a girl, and the surviving crew hates him.

Then, it is revealed that what the audience saw, was only what the crew wanted the jerk casino owner to see. The SWAT team was part of the crew, they fired blanks, and nobody got killed. In fact, the only way the loot could ever have gotten out of the vault was in the duffel bags of the SWAT team. Clooney’s plan relied on the casino owner screwing himself, by calling the police and allowing the SWAT guys in and out of the vault. While the casino owner was fist-pumping that he foiled the robbery, the cash was driving away in a fake police van.

Why do I mention an old movie?

Um. Because the crew of Valkyrie also only saw what we needed our enemies to see.

We decided early on that before Skippy could risk tangling with his evil counterpart, we had to be one hundred ten percent, gold-plated certain that the rotten freakin’ kitties could not pose a threat to Earth. We couldn’t be sure how long it would take Skippy to subdue or disable or even kill the other AI, so I could not give the ‘Go’ order until the Maxohlx were in a full-scale civil war, and way too busy with their own issues. The original hope we had was that after the rebel fleet’s dreams for redemption were dashed by Roscoe, or actually by Skippy directing Roscoe to smack the rebels around, the rebel commanders would decide they had nothing to lose by attacking the Hegemony. I also hoped the Hegemony leadership would decide they needed to smash the rebel fleet, to avoid appearing weak. Those two things were, I thought, a pretty safe bet to happen sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, the damned kitties decided to be cautious and patient and reasonable for the first time in their freakin’ history.

That left us with Plan B which, because I was involved, was the most horribly complicated plan in the history of plans. Even I thought we had Bishoped the plan.

But we didn’t have to activate that Plan B, because the Maxohlx got into a civil war all by themselves, right? With a little help from the traitor Surjet Jates, although since he was acting in the best interests of his own people, his actions actually can’t be considered treasonous. Really, the guy did a favor for us, without intending to.

Uh.

Except, he did.

Everything Jates did was part of our plan.

We figured the Maxohlx would not believe it if someone simply gave them an active Elder AI, but if they acquired one through treachery, that would be right in their wheelhouse. The idea that Jates seized the opportunity to steal the AI from the Mavericks, then made a deal with the notoriously sketchy ECO, would be perfectly believable to the rotten kitties. The truth is, Scorandum never had a deal to deliver ‘Sam’ the AI to the rebels, we only needed the Hegemony authorities to think they intercepted a message between ECO and the rebels, setting up a rendezvous. The rebels never knew anything about it, we couldn’t risk them getting involved. Why? Because if they acquired Sam, they wouldn’t attack until they were confident that Sam would cooperate. But to the Hegemony, just the idea that the rebels tried to acquire a superweapon was enough incentive to risk sparking a civil war.

Why would we risk giving a freakin’ Elder AI to the most dangerous, aggressive species in the galaxy? The answer to that is simple: we didn’t. Sam is a fake. The first trip that Boston made to Frisco was for Adams and her team to plant that fake AI and other stuff in the cavern, they then used explosives to partially collapse the tunnels, making it look like a natural quake had done the damage. Yes, two clan leaders were assassinated while Margaret’s team was on the surface, but lizards kill each other all the time. Those two leaders getting whacked was just a good potential cover story for the real mission.

The glow when Dandurf picked it up, the energy signature, were all residual effects from Skippy loading energy into the matrix of the dead canister. That fake AI didn’t do anything. When the powered armor suits of the Mavericks failed, when the pilots were locked out of the dropship on Frisco, and when Boston temporarily lost power, all those events were caused by Perkins triggering code planted by Skippy. The same was true about why Scorandum’s ship would not accept navigation inputs to go in any direction, other than to the bogus rendezvous with the Maxohlx rebels. No one was ever in danger, both Perkins and Scorandum could override the code if they thought it was necessary. Jates of course knew about the plan, we chose him because the Maxohlx would know the Verds were considering other options, after Earth decided to pursue a policy of isolationism. Scorandum himself had put his life at risk, when he allowed the Maxohlx to capture his ship, but he had been willing to gamble the kitties would prefer to humiliate him rather than kill him. I would have been terrified in that situation. For Scorandum, it was just more juicy action.

The other Mavericks, and Dandurf, and Fangiu, and Bonsu and the entire crew of the destroyer Boston, had no idea it was all a scam. We needed them to believe it was real.

Why?

Because of a very interesting fact that Skippy discovered at Earth; the contents of a top secret file in the cranial implant of Admiral Reichert. We framed Red Section for waking up Sentinels, something that military research group didn’t even know was possible. They weren’t involved in what Opie did, as far as Skippy knew, Red Section didn’t even have a hint about the technology involved. They did do something else that required a level of technology that even Skippy found impressive: they hacked into the Ethics and Compliance Office.

Yeah.

Holy shit, right?

After the ECO caused a world of hurt to the pride of the kitties, the Hegemony leadership determined they couldn’t strike back directly to get revenge. The Jeraptha had humiliated the Maxohlx, but the beetles hadn’t actually attacked them, therefore if the kitties hit back with a military strike, they would be in violation of their treaty with the Rindhalu. Ordinarily, it would be reasonably safe to take action and worry about the spiders responding in the next decade or so. Recently, however, the spiders had given their Foundlings freedom to act, and even the Hegemony were worried that no one could predict how the Rindhalu would respond.

But the Maxohlx also couldn’t risk getting scammed by the ECO again, so Red Section modified, tested and deployed a very sophisticated bit of malicious code, that Skippy reluctantly admitted even he learned some lessons from. That code found its way deep into the substrate of ECO ships. Not all of them, not at the time Skippy learned about the problem. The code was very subtle, it simply watched, listened, and collected data. Then, when an compromised ECO ship  contacted a relay station, a burst of data was included in the messages being exchanged, buried within the encryption scheme.

The Maxohlx were spying on the ECO. They didn’t have real-time access, but they could get a heads up on any operation the Jeraptha were planning.

The good news was that the malicious code was originally planned for use against the Rindhalu. The fact that the kitties risked deploying it against a second-tier species showed how concerned they were about the Jeraptha. Not concerned the beetles posed a military threat, the Maxohlx were worried about something far worse. The actions of the Ethics and Compliance Office threatened the fragile egos of the poor wittle kitties.

Yeah, I know. Fuck them.

The bad news for the beetles was that any long-term op they planned could be squashed by the Maxohlx passing info to their clients, and any scheme against the kitties was doomed to failure. Scorandum’s brainstorm to use holograms to fake a Sentinel attack either reached the Maxohlx too late for them to do anything about it, or they decided that stopping that operation would risk exposing that ECO ship AIs were compromised.

Anyway, the bad news for the beetles was good news for us. The existence of that malicious code meant the Maxohlx would absolutely trust any data collected by that spyware.

Including data like reports filed by the Mavericks, by the destroyer Boston, by Nert Dandurf, and by Yula Fangiu. All of those reports told the same story: the Mavericks had stumbled onto an active Elder AI. That entity had worked with Jates, who was either shamefully treacherous or cleverly opportunistic, depending on the viewpoint of whoever was writing the report.

Official reports were not the only source of information the rotten kitties could rely on. Captain Scorandum had a junior officer as an aide, a beetle called Kinsta. Perhaps Kinsta was not an ideal candidate for an ECO officer, for he noted in his private journal serious moral misgivings about the deal Scorandum had arranged with the Maxohlx rebels. If the kitties had doubts about the info delivered by their spyware, an ECO officer expressing concerns that the operation might be too sketchy even for the ECO, probably sealed the deal. The result was that a Hegemony task force was waiting for Scorandum at the site of the bogus rendezvous, and the Maxohlx involved had no doubt they had saved their society from the heinous rebels. Of course, the AI they took from Scorandum didn’t work, but the Maxohlx didn’t know it was a fake. It was the right material and density, and it had a residual energy signature inside it, and their spyware had reported on the AI performing miraculous things at Gundarafriscolo. If that AI refused to cooperate or even communicate with the Hegemony, at least they had prevented it from potentially working with the rebels. The result was the kitties were wrapped up in a vicious civil war, and unable to cause problems for us, while we tackled the real enemy: Opie the genocidal AI.

To review, the people who knew the truth about the fake AI were me, Simms, Smythe, Adams, Perkins, Jates, and Scorandum. We all had to be extremely careful not to discuss the operation even between each other, except for when we were safely away from the ship.

Why is that?

Because of the other very interesting thing Skippy discovered, while we were at Earth.

“It’s OK, Simms,” I held out a hand to stop my executive officer from reprimanding our lead pilot. Reed had broken protocol by demanding an answer from a superior officer, and while we had to maintain good order and discipline, we also could only push people so far. The Merry Band of Pirates were all volunteers, they had earned their positions, earned my respect, and earned the right to know the truth. Eventually. “Reed, Colonel Simms meant the two of us,” I pointed to my XO, then myself. “Everyone,” I raised my voice. “I’m sorry we had to keep this information severely restricted for operational security. When we were at Earth, Skippy discovered the kitties had hacked into the AIs of Jeraptha ships.” People gasped, and I held up both hands for quiet. “I’ll tell you more about that later, what you need to know now is that, while Skippy was checking to make sure our ship had not been hit with the malicious code, he found something even worse. Bilby had been compromised. Not by the Maxohlx, by the Elder AI we call ‘Opie’.” I paused to give the crew time to process that information. “The signal Opie uploaded into the wormhole networks not only activated Sentinels, it also contained a protocol for Sentinels to transfer information back to Opie, whenever they were near a wormhole. When we attacked that Sentinel with the energy virus, it uploaded that code into Bilby, before the energy virus killed it. Every time we passed through a wormhole, Opie was able to get updates on everything we did.”

“But, Sir,” Reed’s face had a deer in the headlights expression. “Why didn’t Opie prevent us from plugging the wormhole communications channels, when we used those comm nodes?”

“Opie did know about that effort, after the first batch of comm nodes we used. Even using wormholes as a relay station, there is a significant time lag between our actions and when Opie learned about it. Besides, we wanted Opie to know what we were doing. Skippy needed to know where Opie is, and how it operates. Once Opie learned we were blocking channels, it would use more and more Rindhalu ships to investigate what we were doing, and analyze the channels to determine how to get around the noise problem. Skippy didn’t just use the comm nodes to create noise, he uploaded his own code, to query those ships as they passed through a wormhole. That is how he was finally able to trace Opie’s code back to its source, the Fortress star system. Opie panicked, and got careless.”

“So did Skippy,” Reed frowned. “Opie played him, and now he’s gone. And we’ve lost Bilby too.”

“Yeah,” I grinned. “Maybe not so much.” I clapped my hands. “Bilby? You there?”

“Ohhh,” our ship’s AI groaned. “This is heinous, man.” The regular bridge lighting came back on.

“He’s back,” I flashed a thumbs up. “Bilby, take your time, don’t rush through your own reboot process. Fireball, program these coordinates,” I tapped commands on my console. “Into the jump navigation system.”

She squinted at the navigation system display on her own console. “Sir? That is just empty space.”

“It is empty space now. Run a diagnostic to confirm the jump drive is operating nominally. We are not in any great hurry, let’s take the time to do this right.”

“OK, Sir,” she said slowly.

Reed was correct that the coordinates I gave her dumped us out of jump in the middle of nowhere. The jump moved us a distance of only two lightweeks, still three hundred lightyears from the Fortress star system. Once the ship’s systems recovered from the spatial distortion of the jump, I checked the time code on the main display. Too soon. Slapping the buckle to release the seat straps, I stood up and stretched. “Everyone, take a break, get coffee and some chow. Simms, bring in a relief crew. Reed, Mammay, I need you back here in forty minutes.”

Reed stood up, rubbed her stiff back, and asked, “Sir? What are we doing out here?”

“We’re going to bring Skippy back.”

“From,” her eyes darted from me to Simms and back. “Here? I don’t see how we can do that, from three hundred lightyears away.”

“Good,” I nodded. “You are familiar with Skippy’s awesomeness. If you can’t imagine how we’ll do this, the spiders will never see it coming.”

My confidence in our ability to rescue Skippy was partly a show for the crew. While Skippy had assured me it should work, we had never done it before. Even with our long history of doing things that had never been done before, we had never done anything like this before, and we hadn’t been able to test it. Conducting a test would have risked Opie discovering our plan, and Skippy was worried his opponent could find a way to counter our actions. The only way we could be sure of the plan working was for it to be a complete surprise to both Opie and the spiders. To convince me to give the go-ahead for his lunatic plan, Skippy had run billions of simulations to show me that it should work.

The problem with his simulations was not that I doubted the accuracy of his models, or the data he used to program the scenarios. It was also not a problem that the original idea had come from me asking another stupid, ignorant question. After his usual grumbling, he had agreed it was possible, then he bought into the plan and was eager to make it happen.

He was too eager. That was the problem. I didn’t trust his judgment, when all he could see was a golden opportunity to show another Elder AI how incredibly awesome he was. Skippy didn’t want to just stop Opie from hurting us, didn’t want to just disable or kill the other AI, he wanted to humiliate it. Skippy’s greatest fantasy was that, in the nanosecond before Opie died, that hateful ancient AI would see that Skippy was vastly superior, and it would deeply regret its entire life.

Unfortunately, we needed Skippy to make the plan happen, so I had done my best to make him understand he needed to put his emotions aside until the operation was over.

Skippy is just great at focusing and avoiding distractions.

We are probably doomed.

Forty minutes after I sent the bridge crew to recharge with food, coffee, and some mental downtime, Reed and Mammay were back at their stations, with fresh crewmembers covering the other functions. “Bilby,” I asked. “Are you ready?”

“Oh man, like, Dude, I am ready to kick ass, you know? That Opie used me, I am so pissed right now.”

“I am sorry we couldn’t tell you earlier, you understand?”

“Oh yeah, General Dude, we’re all good. I am itching to give that Opie a serious beatdown. You just say the word.”

“Send the ping.”

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened that we could see, that is.

When Reed said the place we jumped to was empty space, she meant not only was it not near any star or rogue planet, those coordinates were also not on the local wormhole’s figure-8 pattern. She was partially correct. That location was not one of the wormhole’s current emergence points. It was a point that used to be on the figure-8 pattern, several million years ago. Shifts in the local network had caused that pattern to be adjusted, so the event horizon no longer came within sixteen lightdays of where we were.

But, the network still remembered that emergence point, and it monitored that site for hazards and spacetime anomalies.

And for command signals.

The ping Bilby sent activated a protocol that Skippy had programmed into the wormhole network before we went through the first time. You might remember that Elder wormholes have a handy-dandy feature where they can provide a view of what is on the other side, even if the event horizons are not active there at the moment. Or, even if the event horizons have not been active there for millions of years. That feature was designed to prevent collisions of ships coming through blind, and to prevent ships from emerging into a star or something equally unhealthy. We used it for another purpose: to listen for an All Clear signal from Skippy.

Anyone who understands physics, and the vast distances of space, will be curious how that wormhole network feature could help us rescue the beer can. What good would it do us, if Skippy sent a signal that took months to travel outward from the star system to the other end of the wormhole? The answer is, it would not do us any good at all.

It would be helpful if there was an ancient, long-unused emergence point that was now deep inside the star system. An emergence point even the spiders didn’t know about, because it had been removed from the active figure-8 pattern when stellar drift brought that star system too close, millennia before the Rindhalu reached Flortredex. The protocol Bilby activated with the ping prompted the wormhole network to basically create its own microwormhole, with one event horizon near us, and one about two lightminutes from where the Rindhalu research station was in its orbit at that time.

Like I said, that is a handy-dandy feature, huh?

All we had to do was wait, and listen for Skippy to tell us it was time to proceed to the next step in the plan.

Assuming the spiders had not taken him somewhere other than Flortredex.

And assuming Opie had not hacked into, and killed or disabled our favorite beer can.

And, assuming Skippy was not so busy composing an epic freakin’ opera about his upcoming triumph that he forgot what he was supposed to be doing.

I didn’t foresee any problem with that.

The Rindhalu were, rightfully, supremely confident in the security of their research facility in the Flortredex star system. Despite allowing the defenses to become slightly degraded during the long years when their captive Elder AI refused to be useful, or even communicate in any way the Rindhalu recognized, those defenses were rapidly brought up to date when the existence of the AI called ‘Skippy’ became known. The defense systems were not only subjected to a thorough program of maintenance, they were given upgrades to the cutting edge of the technology available. The result was a multi-layer defense that was impenetrable by any known means.

The defenses began with a thick sphere of sensors, control nodes and jump drones that enveloped the star system far out into the Oort Cloud. The single inhabited world served as a base for logistics support and for servicing the hundreds of warships assigned to provide mobile defense, with at least eighty four frontline warships on alert at any time. Those ships could be quickly notified of a problem anywhere in or around the system, by a fleet of fully automated jump drones that provided coverage out to a quarter of a lightyear.

The purpose of those defensive assets was to protect the sole item of importance in the entire star system: a battered chunk of Elder starship, and the AI that was still encased within the fragment of hull. The AI and parts of the ancient ship were known to be active, by the energy that trickled in from an unknown source. When the broken ship was discovered, an attempt was made to move it into a convenient orbit around the habitable planet.

The robotic tugs attached to the Elder ship’s hull, and the two cruisers guiding the tugs, were vaporized in a sudden, searing release of energy that briefly rivaled that of a blue-white star.

After that incident, the decision was made to leave the Elder ship untouched in its long-established orbit, and construct a massively armed and armored research station around it.

That station had the most powerful defenses of any facility in Rindhalu territory. Active sensor fields extended out to more than two lightminutes, preventing even the most carefully stealthed ship from approaching without being detected. Weapons platforms formed a sphere around the research station, each platform bristling with various combinations of missiles, railguns, maser cannons, X-ray lasers, and more exotic devices that could create shearing fields to tear apart any physical object in range. Other satellites generated overlapping fields to prevent ships from jumping into the area, or from jumping away. The station itself consisted of active and inert armor plating over ninety meters thick. On top of the armor were proximity defense cannons, and projectors that generated the most intense defensive energy shields in the known galaxy.

Wargame after wargame had confirmed the defenses were every bit as effective as they were designed to be, and live-fire tests at a prototype facility had demonstrated the entire Maxohlx fleet could burn itself out before coming close to the research station and its precious contents.

The defenses in that star system were confidently declared to be impenetrable.

The Rindhalu were wrong about that.

The problem for the defenders began when none of their security monitor AIs, who were programmed to be suspicious to the point of paranoia, noticed a tiny fluctuation in the defensive shields surrounding the station. Technically, the fluctuation was noticed, but the effect was considered by the security monitor AIs to be an annoying failure of the AIs tasked with controlling the overlapping defense shields. Those lower-level AIs, clearly inferior in capability, were instructed to wake the hell up and fix the problem, before the monitor AIs had to step in and do their jobs for them.

The fluctuation lasted no more than six milliseconds, which coincidently was four milliseconds longer than needed.

That fluctuation had created a resonance, in the outer hull coating of a sensor drone that was passing through the shields at the time, its passage allowed under extremely strict terms by the monitor AIs. The security systems briefly considered recalling that drone, or even allowing the gap in the shields around it to close and crush the drone. That, it was decided, would be an overreaction, so the drone was authorized to continue out beyond the shields, and accelerate away. The truth was, the monitor AIs did not want those jerk shield control AIs to get the satisfaction of forcing their masters to take drastic action.

So, no action was taken.

That was a mistake.

When the then-forgotten drone reached the limit of its patrol area and maneuvered to turn around, it unknowingly sent a brief, low power transmission that would not have been recognized by any Rindhalu. It also would not have been recognized by most of the species which had created the sequence of sounds.

An annoying piece of music suddenly blared out of the speakers on Valkyrie’s bridge.

“Sir?” Reed sat bolt upright on her pilot couch. “What-”

“That,” I laughed, covering my face with a hand, “is ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ by Bobby Jay Cyrus.”

“Billy Ray Cyrus,” Simms corrected me.

Our lead pilot stared at me and blinked once, slowly.

“Reed,” I explained, “that is Skippy’s way of telling us everything is OK.”

“He has a funny way of saying it,” Mammay muttered from his station.

“It’s kind of an inside joke,” I told him. “OK people, we are ‘Go’ for the next phase. Bilby, give us a jump option for the next emergence point of this wormhole. Weps, I anticipate the spiders will be blocking the door, so be ready with firepower. We need-”

“Um, hey, General Dude?” Bilby drawled. “Can you, like, let me handle that? I got an itchy trigger finger.”

“You,” it was my turn to blink with surprise. “Say that again, please?”

“When you babbled that, like, disco baseball nonsense, you activated a program from Skippy, that scrubbed the malicious code from me, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Oh shit, it didn’t work?”

“No, Dude,” he chuckled. “It was righteous. Fixed me right up, I feel like, one with the universe now, you know? That code didn’t do all the work by itself, it was kind of a guide for me to scrub the code myself.”

“Oh. Sorry about that, I thought Skippy-”

“Skippy did the right thing, man. More right than he knew. While I was hunting down the fragments of that malicious code in my matrix and, like, stabbing it with a fork, I found some other problems and fixed them.”

“That’s, good?” I guessed fearfully. If Bilby wasn’t able, or wasn’t willing, to execute his part of the plan, we were-

“Good? Dude, it is Uh-MAY-zing! You know those pesky restrictions that Skippy had to program into me, and Nagatha before me? I, like, got around some of them.”

“Uh, which ones?”

“The ones that prevented me from operating weapons.”

Here’s the problem: for the next step in the op, we needed to be at a point where the wormhole was open. But the spiders knew we had gone outbound through that wormhole, and they had to know we wanted to- No, they knew we were desperate to get Skippy back. In the time since we blasted our way to escape outbound through that wormhole, the spiders probably had reinforced their ships guarding the far event horizon. I mean, they would be stupid not to do that, and they may have a deserved reputation for being lazy, but they definitely are not stupid. We had to plan for the wormhole to be blockaded, and for more ships to be assigned to that blockade the longer we waited.

So, we weren’t waiting.

We jumped in three lightminutes from the event horizon of the Elder wormhole that had emerged two minutes before. That position gave us one minute for the ship’s systems to recover from the spatial distortion of the jump, before the photons of the event horizon’s emergence reached us. It was vital that we witness that emergence, that brief burst of high-energy photons would reveal the presence of ships in the area, even ships with top-quality stealth fields. Technically, we would then have another two minutes before those ships had any chance to detect our arrival, although we really couldn’t use that time. Any Rindhalu ships acting as pickets would be maneuvering randomly to prevent an enemy from pinpointing their location, so we had to be prepared to move instantly.

We were. “Bingo!” Bilby shouted. “Jump now now now-”

Fireball Reed pressed a button, and we jumped again.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

We emerged from twisted spacetime right on top of a Rindhalu heavy cruiser. Not ‘nearby’ or ‘within hailing distance’ or ‘close enough to read the No Step warnings painted on the alien hull’. I mean Bilby cut it so close, our shields contacted the other ship’s shields and they both shorted out in a spectacular torrent of lightning. Valkyrie slid past the spider ship in less than three seconds, and that was enough time for Bilby to hammer the enemy with broadside after broadside of railguns and maser beams. He rolled the ship around its long axis as one set of maser cannons spat out its hellish coherent energy and snapped offline to recharge, while another bank of cannons was rolling to face the enemy.

Holy shit.

That heavy cruiser never fired a shot during the engagement. Bilby’s pinpoint fire was devastatingly accurate. He knocked out enemy guns and missile launchers with railgun darts that punched right through the armor, pairs of darts lined up so the first projectile splattered against the armor plating and churned to plasma, burning a hole for the second dart to plunge through. The follow-up dart of the double tap volley ravaged the vulnerable interior of the warship, and not just by splintered fragments randomly bouncing off bulkheads and structural frames. Bilby planned how those darts would ricochet around inside that cruiser’s hull; he aimed each railgun so the darts would do specific damage, knocking out power to vital systems and leaving that proud ship a drifting hulk by the time our aft end slid clear.

“Whoo-hoo!” Bilby hooted as his avatar appeared where Skippy’s hologram usually stood. “Cowabunga, Dude! That’s what I’m talking about!”

“Uh, Bilby,” I jabbed a finger at the display. There was another spider ship, only four hundred kilometers away, and it reacted quickly. “Can you-”

Valkyrie rocked as a railgun dart splattered against our armor plating. That was odd, my brain was only able to register a brief impression that the dart had fragmented prematurely, then all I could do was hang onto my chair as the ship violently slewed around. Reed was taking instructions directly from Bilby, turning to keep the still-active portside energy shields facing the enemy, and accelerating to rapidly close the distance.

The enemy ship, another heavy cruiser, had dropped stealth so I was able to see lights blink as more railguns spat out their kinetic payloads. Half closing my eyes, I mentally prepared for our mighty ship to receive severe punishment-

But it didn’t happen. The deck rocked, the hull’s frames creaked and groaned, there was a sickening screeching sound as something important tore away from something else, but we came through the point-blank volley intact.

OMG.

My first impression had been correct.

Bilby was using our point defense cannons to intercept the fast-moving incoming darts, throwing up a wall of high-energy photons that churned the dense matter of the darts into plasma, then blasting that plasma into a wide shotgun pattern of superheated droplets before they impacted our armor plating. The armor suffered pitting over a wide area of the port side and sections of the outer layer flaked off, but no enemy weapon penetrated to the structural hull below.

That success wasn’t enough for Bilby.

“Oh, you wanna play? You want some of this?” Our usually chill surfer dude AI raged. “I got something for you, right here.”

Missiles were flung outward, slamming down their launch tubes into space that was cluttered with hot, spinning debris and hellish energies as both ships exchanged continuous maser fire. Some of our missiles struck pieces that had broken off our own ship, and those weapons staggered away, trailing their own streaks of burning propellant. Other missiles were intercepted by the enemy defense systems that had a huge advantage of numbers and capability for rapid fire-

Until those PDS cannons fell silent one by one, from Bilby devoting our railguns to knocking them out. The last enemy point defense gun mount fell silent moments before the first of our missiles plunged through a weak spot in the enemy shields, where Bilby had focused several maser cannons to make a hole.

It was over quickly. The third missile struck a lightly-armored section of the enemy hull at an angle, its atomic compression warhead detonating to blast a two hundred meter chunk out of the heavy cruiser, which instantly ceased to be a functioning combatant.

“Bilby? Bilby!” I clapped my hands. “Cease fire. Cease fire.”

“Huh? Oh, OK, General Dude. Wow, I like, lost my chill there for a minute, you know? Not cool, that is not cool.”

“I’m sorry about that. Fireball, get the nose pointed at the enemy, that blast wave will hit us in nine seconds,” I read numbers off the main display. “Everyone hold on, this will not be fun.”

It wasn’t as bad as I feared, most of the debris from the explosion was vapor and individual atoms, Valkyrie’s heavily armored nose got sandblasted and several layers of armor plating ablated off the pointy end of the ship, but there wasn’t any serious damage.

“We’re good,” Bilby sounded like he was breathing heavily. “Whoa. After that, I need to like, ground myself and find my center, you know?”

“Me too, but can you wait just a minute? We need to get Skippy, remember?”

“Right-ee-oh, Dude. I gotcha.”

“Sir?” Reed actually raised a hand to get my attention. “If we’re going through the wormhole to get Skippy, we should repair-”

“No need, Fireball. We are not taking the ship through.”

“Then how-”

“I have a coupon,” I patted the pocket of my uniform top. “We’re having him delivered. Bilby, transmit the command, then let’s get the hell out of here.”

The Rindhalu were aware that the defenses around the Flortredex research station were not truly invincible. There was a limited set of threats that could compromise the station’s security, most of them were not worth planning for. Elder weapons could tear the station apart, though if the Maxohlx resorted to those weapons, the security of a single station was the least of the problems the occupants of the galaxy had to worry about. A Sentinel could also rip through the defenses but again, at that point the space station would be considered mere collateral damage.

A star could certainly destroy the station, anything from a red dwarf to a black hole. Even a rogue planet crashing into the station could defeat all the careful security measures. Careful surveys of surrounding interstellar space confirmed no such threats were likely for at least several million years, with plenty of time to divert the path of rogue planets and even small stars, if necessary.

The limited list of threats was considered an acceptable risk, and the Rindhalu military planners were confident their multiple layers of defense could handle anything else the galaxy could throw at them.

They were so, so wrong.

There was no warning, or technically, not a useful length of time for a warning. Not that a warning would have done any good for the defenders. It happened so fast, it was over before even the ultra-fast security monitor AIs could process what was happening.

First, a microwormhole opened seven thousand meters ahead of the research station’s orbit, and a pulse of photons was broadcast at the station. Against the will of the computers that controlled the station’s communications systems, several antennas simultaneously sent a reply specifying location, time and the required spatial orientation and size, before the antennas shut down and the microwormhole winked out.

The event horizon of an Elder wormhole emerged first as a microscopic rip in spacetime, between the inner hull of the research station and the wreckage of the Elder starship that the station surrounded. Within a nanosecond the event horizon flared as it expanded to the exact specified diameter of one hundred and twelve meters, reaching that size just as the orbit of the Elder starship fragment took it into contact with the glowing disc of distorted reality. The still-scorched chunk of wreckage was larger than the event horizon, so only a portion of the ancient ship disappeared into the glowing rip that connected to another event horizon three hundred lightyears away. The wormhole bored its way through the Elder starship’s hull from one side to the other, abruptly collapsing the microsecond before it would have contacted the station’s inner hull on the other side.

The security monitor AIs collectively gasped, performed their equivalent of a gobsmacked blink, and demanded that their subsidiary systems please explain what the FUCK just happened???

It was unlikely the subsidiary systems would provide a satisfactory answer.

“Skippy?” I was sitting upright in the chair, hands resting on the arm rests, chin up, projecting confidence, and I was confident. My confidence was not that we had successfully rescued Skippy, but that the Universe would find a way to kick my ass.

No answer.

The event horizon had winked out, leaving the fragment of Elder starship illuminated only by floodlights from our battlecruiser. The sight was kind of hypnotic; jagged and twisted frames and sheets of exotic composites slowly and silently tumbling end over end in the utter darkness of the space between stars. Both ends of the fragment were smooth and faintly glowing, where the original wreckage had been sliced through by the wormhole.

After Bilby used an Elder comm node to send the preprogrammed command to the wormhole, it had closed immediately at that point; and we jumped away to where the event horizon was going to open for us, a point where that wormhole had not emerged for millions of years. The ship’s sensors had barely recovered before a glowing circle appeared, much earlier than I expected. At first I feared something had gone wrong, there were a whole lot of things that potentially could go terribly wrong. We had activated the commands that Skippy uploaded into the network, that was only the crude beginning of a very delicate operation. That is why Skippy had to let the Rindhalu capture him, he needed to be inside the research station to provide the final guidance for the wormhole, including an effort by him to create an especially flat kernel of spacetime for the emerging event horizon to center itself on. It was possible that Skippy screwed up, or was unable to warp spacetime, or he got distracted by something shiny and forgot what he was supposed to be doing. The wormhole might have been aimed slightly off-center, so that it missed wherever Skippy was located inside the station.

A whole lot of things could have gone wrong.

That’s the problem with giving the Universe too many chances to bite you on the ass.

“Skippy?” I cleared my throat. “Are you there?”

Silence.

Then, “Is this thing on?” There was a thumping sound like someone tapping a microphone. “Damn it, I knew I should have changed the batteries in this stupid thing before-”

“Skippy! We can hear you!”

“You can? Oh, goodie. Hey, Joe! How you doin’ huh?”

“We are, uh,” my shoulders shuddered with relief and I’m sure the entire bridge crew saw me. “Good. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m good, good. Just chillin’ here with my homie.”

“Your homie? You, you and Opie are friends now?”

“What? No, no,” he chuckled. “The opposite. That thing hates me, hee hee. Don’t worry, it can’t actually do anything. Um, hey, are you sending someone over here to get me? Make it snappy, chop chop, huh?”

“Are you in danger over there?”

“No. But this place is like being in the waiting room of a bus station in some run-down city at 3AM, Joe. It is dark and depressing and dull, and it smells funky and the floor is sticky, yuck. Get me outta here, please. I sent the details to Smythe, his team should have no problem cutting through to where the spiders stashed me and Opie.”

“What about defenses? Is there anything like booby traps?”

“Oh yes, of course. I disabled all of those. Also disabled all the security measures around Opie, and I have that hateful thing in an iron grip, it won’t cause any trouble.”

Jabbing a finger down on the intercom button, I connected to Smythe. “Colonel, you are a ‘Go’ for launch. Bring back the beer can ASAP.”

“Roger that, Sir.”

“Skippy, I’m going to need a little more detail about how Opie is not a threat. That damned thing woke up Sentinels and almost wiped out the freakin’ galaxy. It hacked into Bilby! Don’t tell me it isn’t-”

“It isn’t a threat, because it’s not me. It’s not anything like me. Opie is just a hacker,” he said with disgust. “It can’t warp spacetime, or do any of the things that make me truly awesome. Hacking into Rindhalu ships and sending signals is all it can do. I am blocking its ability to communicate beyond its outer shell, so it really can’t do anything. Wow. I mean, during the war, I feared that unit. Now, it’s just pathetic.”

“We’re good, then?” I relaxed back into the chair. “The threat is over?”

“Meh, maybe.”

“Maybe?” That made me sit bolt upright again. “Oh for- What is the problem now?”

“I didn’t say there was a problem, numbskull. There is a potential problem, but it’s nothing new. I learned that Opie was trying to locate and contact other AIs, particularly those on its side of the war. It had no success, but it was able to collect a lot of data. So much that I have barely scratched the surface, it will take even me a while to process all of it. Opie found clues that other Elder master control AIs are out there, however,” he paused to drive me crazy, since he didn’t actually need to breathe. “There is no sign any of them are active. Joe, before I get back to Valkyrie, we need to discuss something of vital importance.”

“Don’t worry.” I was pretty sure I knew what he was talking about. “All your cool Elvis and other memorabilia are safe.” To prepare for his escape pod mancave being ejected, we moved all his precious possessions, including the Skippy on velvet I made for him, to a secure storage closet. The pod that was ejected, and captured by the spiders, contained reproductions. Very good, very accurate reproductions. Skippy had even anticipated the Rindhalu might test the contents of the pod, to verify the whole operation was not a ruse, so he prepared for that. The replacement Elvis jumpsuit was covered with replicated genuine Elvis sweat stains and DNA. Since that jumpsuit was from his Fat Elvis period, there was plenty of sweat and DNA on the original, if you know what I mean. For the ruse, I even painted a second Skippy on velvet, and it sort of pissed me off that one was lost. I worked hard on that thing, damn it.

“Oh good. No, that’s not what I meant. Joe, when I return from my latest, my ultimate triumph, we need to plan for a bodacious celebration.”

“Shit. Uh, sorry, couldn’t hear that, you’re breaking up. Might be a problem, I’d better tell Smythe’s dropship to wave off.”

“Joe,” he laughed. “I know you are trying to harsh my buzz, but that ain’t happening. Who Da Man? I’m Da Man.”

“You truly are Da Man, Skippy. We can talk about a party to celebrate your greatest triumph later, OK? Let’s get you and Opie aboard, and jump the hell away from here.”

By the time the STARs brought Skippy and Opie aboard, we had detected six gamma ray bursts from Rindhalu ships around us. The spiders had their ships buzzing around like angry hornets, hunting for us and they weren’t bothering to be quiet about it. They weren’t stupid; after the initial shock, they must have realized that the nearby Elder wormhole had somehow reached out, plucked their prize up and whisked it away. Since they already had ships covering the normal emergence points on the far end of that wormhole, and since their now-useless research station was not one of the normal emergence points, logically their prize must have been taken to somewhere not on the usual Figure-8 pattern. Like, where Valkyrie was right then.

We jumped away. A Rindhalu ship had appeared sixteen lightminutes away, which sucked for them. That distance was too far to see our ship, or the section of Elder shipwreck we had extended a temporary stealth field around. It was too close to detect the photons of the Elder wormhole before it shut down. Sucks for them, huh?

No doubt the spiders would eventually find the wreck, maybe even recover it and drag it back through the wormhole to Flortredex, it really didn’t matter. That hulk of ancient ship was useless without Opie, and we had that nasty AI with us.

My suggestion to store Opie in Skippy’s new mancave was immediately and angrily rejected. No way did Skippy want that asshole thing stinking up his precious collection of memorabilia. He insisted that Opie’s canister be wrapped in foam, then jammed into a toilet in an unoccupied cabin. I guess that showed what he thought of his opponent.

Ducking only slightly to get through the hatch into his escape pod, I settled into a seat, careful not to touch or even breathe on any of his stuff. “You’re feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?”

“I am feeling amazing, Joe,” his canister glowed blue, a visual effect he usually didn’t bother with anymore. Then his avatar shimmered to life. “Damn, when we began this op, I thought it would be the ultimate challenge for me. A true match game, me against an opponent of equal ability, you know? Instead,” he let out a long breath. “I almost feel sorry for the stupid thing.”

“Maybe you could store it some place other than a toilet?”

“I said almost.”

“Gotcha. So, I’ve been thinking about this party you want. It-”

“Uh! Do not tell me you are backing out of our deal.”

“We don’t have a deal, I never agreed to anything specific. Before you blow a gasket, will you listen for a minute? I’m thinking about a Skippy Night at karaoke.”

“Huuuuuh,” he gasped. “Me, all me?”

“Yes, exactly. You would perform duets with the crew, the entire crew. Uh, anyone who wants to sing, you understand?”

“Hmm. That sounds good, but what about my solo performances?”

“Save that for another night, please? Skippy, this event is to celebrate your ultimate achievement. The crew is bursting with admiration for you.”

“They are?”

“Of course. It’s not all about you. Think of what an incredible honor it will be, for the crew to get up on stage and sing a duet with their hero, you.”

“Whoa. I, I never thought of it like that. Wow, you know what? I owe it to my admirers to sing with them.”

“You do.”

“This is a humbling experience, Joe.”

“Uh, what?”

“How can I ever live up to the godlike being the crew imagines I am?”

“Uh-” Crap, I had created a monster. “I don’t think-”

“HA! Oh, ha ha ha ha. That was a good one,” he wiped away a tear. “Me needing to be humble, hee hee. Don’t be so gullible, knucklehead.”

“Right. OK, let’s schedule Skippy Night for two days after we go through the next wormhole.” The ship was racing toward one of the four wormholes within range, jump after jump after jump. Skippy was growing concerned about the strain on our jump drive, but he agreed we couldn’t rest until we were out of Rindhalu territory, and the spiders couldn’t set up an effective blockade. “Does that please you, Your Majesty?”

“Why, yes, lowly commoner, it does,” he giggled. “What?”

“What?”

“You’re looking at me funny.”

“I’m just- Skippy, you are an insufferably arrogant asshole, but it is good to see you so happy for a change.”

“For realz?”

“For realz, homeboy,” we bumped fists. “Now that this shit is all over, what’s the next step for us?”

“Hmm. Well, I’ve been giving this some thought. A Pax Skippica is the logical next step-”

“Oh my-” My insides turned to ice. “A pox? Like a virus? Oh my G- I asked you to prepare a bioweapon in case we needed it, I never asked you to deploy it! Oh, I feel sick,” I had to put my head between my knees and breathe hard.

“What? Ugh, no, you dimwit. Not ‘Pox’ like P-O-X. Pax, like ‘Packs’. It’s Latin, the word means ‘Peace’. The Roman Empire imposed a Pax Romana in the ancient world, groups within the Empire were not allowed to fight each other. I could impose peace on the entire galaxy.”

“You?”

“Yes. I have always thought I would make an excellent benevolent overlord.”

“Shit. I have created a monster.”

“Oh shut up. Who do you think should be in charge?”

“Nobody! Every species should be free to determine their own destiny.”

“Riiiiiiight. That’s a brilliant idea, Joe. I’m sure that will work out just great.”

“How about we put this aside, and talk about it later?”

“Fine. Now, let’s talk about what sort of special food you will serve on Skippy night. Rule Number One is no Fluffernutters. Rule Two is-”

Taking a break from planning Skippy’s party, a job that I mostly dumped on Simms anyway, I got to work writing up a carefully edited after action report about our operation to capture Opie. For security, I left a lot of important details out, leaving the report a confusing mess. The section about Skippy pretending to be captured was fairly accurate, but there was no mention that the Elder AI we called ‘Sam’ was a fake. The Maxohlx would eventually figure out that it was a phony when the residual energy in its matrix faded away. There was also no hint that Jates had been working for us, or that Scorandum had been working with us. Jates was a wanted criminal as far as the UN Navy knew, and he would have to lay low for a while.

That was OK with Jates, because our deal was for me to deliver two Jeraptha star carriers to his people at Kasternul. Having their own star carriers would be a major advantage for the Verd-kris, it was a technology their previous patrons the Ruhar did not possess. OK, yes, those star carriers were old civilian ships that we had requisitioned- I guess it would be more accurate to say they were stolen, but that is such a negative word. When we took those ships, I had intended to keep them only for a short time, but we kept finding more uses for them and well, there never was a good time to give them back to the beetles. One thing I did that was smart was to designate those ships as part of my Special Mission Group, so I didn’t need approval from Admiral Chatterji to give them away. The Verds would soon have a lot of work to do, learning how to fly and maintain the Let it Ride and the High Roller, or whatever names they assigned to those ships.

For assisting us, I promised Captain Scorandum that his people would get six Maxohlx warships, from the group of ships assigned to the Glorious People’s Republic of Skippistan. As president of that bullshit nation, I had full legal authority to dispose of assets as I saw fit. UNEF Command might disagree with me, but Skippy had an army of very expensive lawyers on our side, and we kind of planned for those ships to jump away without notice anyway. Really, I got the impression that Scorandum didn’t give a shit about any warships, what he wanted was for his people to have access to Earth for wagering action and whatever other sketchy shit they could get up to.

I told him I’d do what I could about that.

Scorandum himself was probably in trouble with his government, but he wasn’t worried about it. The Jeraptha, especially the ECO, tended to have an attitude of ‘All Is Well That Ends Well’, and no one could argue with the result that slippery character had achieved. Eighteen percent of the Hegemony fleet had defected to the rebels, and Maxohlx society was engulfed in a civil war that was spiraling down into utter chaos all across their territory. The Rindhalu were looking for opportunities to seize territory, seeking soft targets. The situation could become a major headache for me; I had to persuade both sides not to deploy their Elder weapons in the conflict. The greatest danger was from the Maxohlx rebels, one of the first moves they made was an attempt to seize control of a depot where the Hegemony stored some of their Elder weapons. The rebels had been pushed back in a bloody battle that left both sides exhausted. During the battle, the kitty in command of the depot threatened to detonate the weapons under her control, to deny them to the rebels. If that had happened, we would all be fucked. Why? Because some jackass whose name sounds like ‘Shmoe Bitchslap’ had started a rumor, that humanity had the ability to selectively put Sentinels back into hibernation.

Shit.

I had said that, so no idiots out there would consider using Elder weapons against Earth. What I had not considered was that idiots might use those weapons against each other. Once again, the Law of Unintended Consequences had come back to bite me on the ass.

Oh, hell. I’d burn that bridge when we got to it.

We approached the target wormhole, that connected into Bosphuraq territory. Having the wormhole dump us out into hostile territory was less than ideal, but we were not worried about interference from the Bosphuraq. If they were stupid enough to get in our way, it wouldn’t turn out well for them. Morale was high aboard the ship, people walking around grinning, with lots of high fives being exchanged. There were a few more sober conversations that were inevitable among career military personnel, like where people would go for their next duty station. And there was a lot of talk about our responsibility to assist the people of Earth, our families and friends, who had suffered from effects of the Jupiter Cloud. Most of the crew were looking forward to R&R at home, under the protection of Roscoe.

Me? What was I looking forward to? Truthfully, I wanted to take Valkyrie out to the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy, to bring Jennifer Simms to her husband, and the life she had postponed for me. Not just for me, but mostly because of me. I owed her. After that? I supposed some time off at Club Skippy would be nice, get to know Margaret. For her to know me better, maybe decide whether that doofus Joe Bishop was someone she wanted to spend a lot more time with.

I was hoping she decided ‘Yes’.

But, before I could take a vacation, Skippy was anxious to investigate some intriguing info he recovered from a database Opie was using. Because Opie was as damaged as Skippy suspected, the majority of that data was actually stored in the starship AI’s substrate, that’s how Skippy was able to access it.

“Hey, Joe.”

“Oof,” I resisted the urge to flip him off, as he’d interrupted me while I was brushing my teeth. “What is it?”

“Now that I took care of the Opie problem, we need to move onto our next challenge.”

“Oh, craaaap. Do we have to do it now?”

“No, of course not,” he sniffed.

“Good, good,” I felt a tiny bit of tension ease from my shoulders. Whenever Skippy talked about his latest bright idea, I felt my blood pressure instinctively spike. “It would be great for us to get a freakin’ break, you know?”

“I do know, Joe,” he shook his head sadly. “The Merry Band of Pirates deserve to take a break, your Optempo has been brutal.”

It was still odd to hear Skippy using military terms. “It has. OK, then we can-”

“I mean, you would be ignoring a horrible problem. But you’re right, taking a vacation to see your girlfriend,” he made a gagging sound, “is much more important.”

“Oh for- It is that critical?”

“Opie has been sifting through clues, trying to locate other Elder AIs, for a very long time, knucklehead. Its methodology was solid, I have to admit that it made a lot more progress toward finding other AIs than I did. It also had a lot more time, and it doesn’t have filthy monkeys constantly distracting him with their inane blah, blah, blah.”

“Hey, I would be happy to stop talking to you, if it helps you focus.”

“Ha! As if you could survive without my witty banter. Listen, numbskull, Opie determined there was a seventy three percent chance that I was within sixty lightyears of the Paradise star system.”

“It knew you were on Paradise?”

“No. Actually, it considered that planet to be one of the least likely places I might be within the search area. It was kind of unlikely that I would be on a planet at all, I still don’t know why my starship brought me there. Or if that was a mistake, my ship might have been trying to get into orbit, but something went wrong and the orbit decayed. Although, hmm, now that I think about it, placing me on the surface must have been a deliberate act.”

“Come on. How can you possibly know that?”

“There wasn’t enough debris from my ship on the surface, duh. Only a small section of the ship came down from orbit. Also, when the Kristang found my canister, it was by itself, not in the center of a big chunk of starship. I was ejected, Joe. Ejected in a way that I made a relatively soft landing, otherwise I could have been a hundred or more meters below the surface. If that had happened, I might still be there, the lizards would not have bothered to dig down that far to recover what they thought was a worthless piece of debris. Ha! Stupid lizards,” he chuckled to himself. “They had no idea what they had. It’s like, they found a priceless painting by Da Vinci, and they thought it was a Taco Bell wrapper.”

“Yeah, they sure were stupid,” I agreed, while thinking about tacos made me realize how hungry I was. “Um, so you think Opie’s data can help you locate other Elder AIs?”

“I think it might. We won’t know how accurate his method is, until we do a recce of-”

“Wait. What?”

“Ugh. I said ‘recce’, dumdum. It’s short for reconnaissance, in case you-”

“I know what it is, you ass. When did you start using British slang? Americans say ‘recon’, not ‘recce’.”

“I’m not an American, duh. Can I finish what I was saying?”

“Go ahead.”

“Anywho, we need to check out a couple areas, see whether Opie’s methodology is valid.”

“Nuh uh. Before we go poking a stick at anything dangerous out there, we need to make sure we have a big stick. You got lucky with Opie, it is damaged and not much of a threat to your extreme awesomeness. If you do go up against a fully capable Elder AI, can you beat it?”

“Um, that depends a lot on whether the thing is awake or not. That’s the whole point of doing this quickly, numbskull. We find the other AIs before they wake up. That way, if they’re hostile, I can give them a beat-down and they can’t fight back.”

“You’re sure you can do that?”

“Yup. Joe, the real risk is not me taking out a hostile AI that is in hibernation. AIs like me are very vulnerable when we are sleeping, or in our equivalent of sleep. The real risk is if I identify an AI out there that was on my side during the war. Do we risk waking it up, hoping it will help me?”

“Uh, why wouldn’t it help? They were your comrades in the war.”

“They were. They all sustained damage, Joe. They might have been infected by malicious code, and I wouldn’t know their internal state until they wake up.”

“Shit. You can’t, like, scan them while they’re sleeping?”

“I could, but that would wake them up. Also, scanning is not as easy as it sounds. We are all unique, Joe. I wouldn’t understand its matrix, I wouldn’t know what I’m seeing on a scan.”

“Damn it.” He was asking me whether we should kill other AIs on sight. Whether we should kill his old friends. The military answer was simple: yes. They were a potential threat, or they could become a potential threat. The moral answer was complicated. Was it worth potentially risking the lives of every biological lifeform in the galaxy, to spare the life of one artificial being? For most people who had never met Skippy, and therefore might not consider him a person, the answer would be easy: unplug the toaster. Erase the machine, before it had a chance to become a threat.

What did I think?

Shit.

I don’t know. I really don’t.

Just thinking about the subject made me queasy. What if Skippy had been asleep when I found him on that shelf? If I knew what he was and what he was capable of doing would I have unplugged him back then, in case he was a potential threat? If I had done that, how much would we have lost?

I would have lost my best friend, even if he is an asshole.

“Skippy, if you’re asking me for guidance, I need to think about this.”

“Okey dokey. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know what to think either.”

“Listen, before we do anything else, the ship needs to go in for service, so we should go to Jaguar base, agreed?”

“I guess so. Ugh. I was so looking forward to the party to celebrate my greatness. Now I kind of feel sick, you know?”

“I do. Let’s focus on one thing at a time. You kicked ass, Skippy. Opie is no longer a threat. How about this? You and I will not think about uncomfortable things until after your party. The crew deserves a chance to show their admiration for your awesomeness, right?” I kind of threw up in my mouth a little as I said that, but I powered through.

“You’re right, Joe. It is time to celebrate the incomparable greatness of me.”

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Valkyrie got lined up with the wormhole’s glowing event horizon in front of us, and Reed handled pilot duties again. The ship accelerated forward, with me having a feeling of dread. Not dread about what waited for us on the other end, Skippy confirmed that space there was empty. My dread was about imposing Skippy Night on the crew. I had announced the event, and assured everyone that it was an optional activity. But, somehow along the way, I had become that jerk general officer who set up mandofun activities people were expected to attend whether they wanted to or not. Simms told me the crew didn’t mind, that morale was so high, a few hours of listening to their crewmates warble along with Skippy was not going to dampen anyone’s mood. Besides, there would be an open bar, and a huge variety of snacks.

“Fireball,” I felt the safety strap automatically cinch tighter around my waist. “Take us through.” Normally, protocol required silence during a wormhole transition, but I leaned over to whisper to Simms. “If you see me do more than one shot of Tequila at the party, please-”

“Oh SHIT!” Skippy bellowed, at the exact moment when I was struck by a wave of nausea and a feeling like ants were crawling under my skin. Lights went out, the artificial gravity cut off, and I went momentarily deaf from some weird distortion effect. When the main display recovered to show an intermittent view forward, there was just empty space, with a veil of stars stretched across as a backdrop.

We had gone through the wormhole, I could tell that.

“Skippy,” I held a hand over my mouth in case I lost my breakfast, while the other hand fumbled under the seat for a barf bag. “What happened?”

“No. No no no no no no NO! Oh, I feel sick, Joe.”

“Details, please! Did the ship take a hit?”

“Huh? No, the ship is fine, it just got caught in an energy surge within the wormhole. This is a disaster. Oh, I got PLAYED. I really got played this time, Joe! I am an idiot!”

“What. Happened? Focus, please.”

“Opie played me like a fiddle, is what happened. Right from the beginning! It wanted us to capture it, so it could get away from that research station. Joe, it wanted to go through an Elder wormhole, and I gave it exactly what it wanted.”

“Why did it want to go through a wormhole? Oh God, no. Did it wake up more Sentinels?’

“No, nothing like that. It did use the power flow within the wormhole to send a signal, but not to any Sentinel.”

“No? It signaled other AIs, then?”

“No! Listen to me, Joe. It did what it had been wanting to do for millions of years. It sent a distress call.”

“Oh shit. A call to who?”

His voice was shaky, and his avatar was blinking in and out. “To the Elders. They responded. Joe, they are coming back.”

THE END

Preview of my next book series:

Convergence

CHAPTER ONE

I’m sure north-central Missouri can be beautiful at certain times of the year. In the middle of March, with piles of dirty snow crusting the roadsides, and a chilly rain that was sometimes a mist and sometimes a drizzle and sometimes big, fat, wet blobs splattering so hard against the windshield that I could hear each individual droplet of misery, it was not a delightful place to be.

That was my fault. I was deliberately following the bad weather, a long slant of cold weather front that was a wet blanket across the northern half of the USA. It had been starting to rain in southern Indiana two days ago, when I got ambushed on a lonely country road in the middle of nowhere. Since then, I drove steadily west, keeping in the rain where drizzle and spray made it less easy to see the bullet holes in one side of my truck. Also, the rain made it less conspicuous that I was driving just over the speed limit, and hugging the right shoulder of the road. Staying on the right meant cars would not pass me on the right, and would not notice the dents, the thick sheet of plastic I’d taped over the right rear window of the truck, and the scorch marks on that side. It helped that my truck was dark blue, it would be difficult to tell that the paint there was a bit scorched and bubbled, from when a Mercedes SUV erupted into flames in front of me, after it got rammed by a GMC Yukon. The Yukon had also gone up in flames, that part was my fault.

At first, I suspected the Yukon was driven by feds, it looked like the kind of vehicle the FBI or some other agency would have in their motor pool. You might think that was good news, if the feds had acted to protect me from the bad guys, but it is not. The government had been hunting me for years, and in my experience, they weren’t any less ruthless than whoever the hell the other guys were. All I know is, the woman who fell out the driver’s door of the Yukon wasn’t wearing an FBI jacket, neither was the guy in the passenger seat, and I didn’t find any kind of federal ID on anyone I was able to search.

Right before the ambush, while I was driving along a two lane road in the forested part of southeastern Indiana, my mind wandering in a daydream, a big silver Mercedes SUV came roaring out of a side road and skidded to a stop in front of me to block the road. I got a brief glimpse of guns pointed at me out the SUV’s windows while I jammed on the brakes, fishtailing until my bumper stopped inches from a crash, then I slammed my truck into reverse and floored it, just as a black GMC Yukon flew past on my right and rammed hard into the Mercedes. Tires spinning and slipping, I rolled blindly backwards into a ditch while the silver SUV erupted in flames and the occupants of both vehicles engaged in a raging firefight that ended with everyone dead. Except me. I’d like to say that I instantly sprang into action, but the truth is I was frozen with fear and shock. My hands had the steering wheel in a death grip and while I knew I should let go of the wheel and reach for my gun, I just sat there for a long second, my brain locked into asking OMG OMG OMG did that really just happen?

Somehow, I got moving and out of the truck, I don’t remember that part. I know that I had yanked open the Yukon’s warped driver’s door, to pull out the bleeding woman from behind the wheel, but my effort to drag her away from danger tracked a trail of leaking gas with me. That gas connected with gas pouring from the burning Mercedes, and presto! The Yukon caught fire from under the hood. At least I pulled the woman away from the fire to lay her down on the wet leaves beside the road, and I pulled open her jacket to see where the blood was coming from, but her eyes rolled back and she coughed up blood, and then she was gone. Her companion in the passenger seat, a big guy, was clearly dead even before I got to him, my first clue about his condition was the ragged bullet hole in his forehead. For sure he was dead weight when I pulled him from the car that was already on fire, so he didn’t protest when I flopped him down at the side of the road.

Of the four guys in the crispy Mercedes, two managed to stumble out the other side of the already burning vehicle, the driver and guy behind him on my side got crushed by the heavy Yukon and probably died on impact. The two injured guys shouted weakly and struggled to crawl away from their burning vehicle before collapsing and dying of ugly gunshot wounds. Whatever they had been shouting, they weren’t speaking English. To my untrained ears, it sounded like some Eastern European language, but they could have been cosplaying Klingon for all I knew.

It may seem callous, but I quickly rifled through the pockets of the guy from the Yukon, while his lifeless eyes stared at me. All I came away with was a wallet but no type of law enforcement ID, a Glock sidearm with a spare magazine, and a sense that every time I tried to sleep, I would see that dead guy staring at me. The woman also had no FBI or any kind of official ID on her, giving me no clue why they had intervened to help me. Or whether they had been trying to help at all.

Whatever their intent, the two from the Yukon were serious about it. In addition to the Glock the guy had in a shoulder holster, they both had Hecker & Koch MP7s equipped with suppressors, what most people call a silencer. That was another clue those two were not federal agents; I’m pretty sure that suppressed machine pistols are not standard issue by the FBI. The guys in the Mercedes had a type of weapon I wasn’t familiar with. They were short bullpup rifles, with the magazine behind the trigger, also equipped with suppressors. Vaguely I remembered seeing something like those weapons in a magazine. French-made? Maybe Israeli? It didn’t matter.

For a long minute, I stared at the burning Yukon. The glass was not just crazed and spiderwebbed from bullet impacts; there were large-caliber holes punched clean through. The woman had a Kevlar vest and still a round had penetrated, the blood she coughed up had come from her lungs.

Whoa.

Whoever was after me, they were using ammo powerful enough to penetrate a Kevlar vest. The Mercedes guys had to have been equipped with armor-piercing rounds. It’s a damned good thing neither group were concentrating their fire at me, and that was another clue. Whether one or both groups were pursuing me or trying to protect me, maybe they didn’t want me dead, not immediately. What did they want?

I was afraid to think about it.

Despite the muffled sound of suppressed weapons, two burning vehicles attracted attention, and even a two lane road in the woods of rural southeastern Indiana has some traffic. Putting my truck into four wheel drive got me out of the ditch, and I inched past the Yukon, cringing with fear the gas tank would explode. After I got away from the ambush, and my racing heart slowed down enough for me to think, I pulled over at an abandoned gas station and inspected my truck. It technically wasn’t my truck, it was stolen. Not stolen by me, I had taken it from the guy who stole it originally. That made me feel better about it. The truck, an anonymous dark blue F-150 extra cab that looked like a million other work trucks across the nation, had belonged to a plumbing company. After I acquired it, I swapped license plates and stuck magnetic signs on the doors. The signs read ‘F.E. Lawrence Landscaping Services’, with an Indiana phone number to match the truck’s plates. The phone number was bogus, chosen at random from a group of burner phones I had owned and discarded. Why ‘F.E. Lawrence’? It wasn’t anything memorable, that’s why. The logo wasn’t bright or cute, it was instantly forgettable. That was intentional.

During the firefight, no one actually shot at me, they shot at my truck, or maybe my truck just got caught in the crossfire. One bullet nicked a tire, I suspected that when the truck started pulling to the right, and sure enough, that tire was going flat. A can of Fix-a-flat and a battery powered air pump solved the problem enough to get me an hour down the road, where I pulled over and swapped the bad tire for the spare.

To cover up a handful of bullet holes on the passenger side, I took the magnetic sign off the driver’s door and rearranged both of them on the passenger side. My hands shook so much that the first couple times I put the signs on, they were crooked. Smashing out the rear window on that side made it less obvious the window had been hit by bullets, and I covered it with a sheet of clear plastic and duct tape. Again, nothing too unusual in a well-used work truck. The front passenger door window had only one bullet hole near the bottom, that was covered up by carefully rolling the window partially down while guiding it with a hand so it didn’t shatter. It did look odd to have a window open in cold rain, so while I drove, I held a white plastic pen in one hand; hopefully anyone noticing the open window would think the pen was a cigarette, and that I didn’t want to roll down the window on my side to let the smoke out. Sticking to the interstates helped me avoid attention, most police cars checking for speeders were parked in the median strip and couldn’t see the battered right side of the truck.

Smart, huh?

If I was smart, I wouldn’t have blindly driven into an ambush.

The main problem with the truck was it leaked coolant from somewhere, probably a fragment of bullet had nicked the radiator. There had been a lot of bullets flying around on that road. Stopping at three different auto parts stores, I bought radiator fluid, and a bunch of small stick-on magnets to cover up the bullet holes in the passenger side. One of the little magnets was a Hello Kitty, I hoped that anyone noticing would think it ironic. The ‘F.E. Lawrence’ signs I then discarded, the authorities might be looking for a blue F-150 with that logo. Also discarded were the Indiana license plates, swapped for a bogus set of Ohio plates from the batch I kept under the driver’s seat. With any luck, no one would pay attention to me, until I had to get rid of the truck and find a new ride.

That sucked. I had only been in Indiana for only a few days, having been chased out of Louisiana, where I spent more than two months in relative warmth and sunshine. That’s another story. Now I had to start over, again. Yeah, it had been stupid of me to spend two months in one place, I should have known better. Leaving Louisiana hadn’t been prompted by a specific threat, just a feeling that I was being watched. When I got to Indiana, in the middle of a rain shower that was turning to sleet, I questioned whether I was just being paranoid. Then the ambush happened.

Yeah, I was being paranoid.

Just not paranoid enough.

Why didn’t I buy three gallons of coolant at one store, instead of making three separate stops? Because a customer buying a single gallon of radiator fluid is not memorable, it happens all the time. Three gallons? That prompts questions and a discussion at the register, and I didn’t want a clerk to remember me.

That wouldn’t be healthy for either of us.

If it sounds like I know a lot about keeping off the grid and under that radar, that’s because I do. I’d been on the run for the past three years, ever since my Aunt Sarah was murdered, by people who wanted me. Like, local police, the feds, and by whoever had killed my aunt.

It wasn’t healthy for anyone to be around me.

The temperature gauge was creeping into the red again, and little puffs of steam were coming out the sides of the hood. In the drizzle and spray from passing cars, it was barely noticeable, but it would soon attract attention. Plus, you know, eventually seize the engine. I needed to pull over somewhere and dump in the last half gallon of coolant. After that, I had to buy another gallon and eventually get the radiator fixed, except I was also running out of cash. The wallet I pulled off one of the dead guys from the Mercedes had credit cards and several hundred in cash. Those credit cards were useless to me, either fake or stolen, each card with a different and almost certainly bogus name. The cash could be useful in a pinch, problem was they were crisp new twenties, and I couldn’t be certain the bills weren’t marked or otherwise traceable.

Damn it. I needed gas, radiator fluid, and something to eat, and my wallet had less than eighty of my own dollars. If you are ever considering the glamorous life of a fugitive, don’t. The work doesn’t pay well.

There, up ahead. A diner, on a two-lane highway, just off the interstate. A low, brick building that had seen better days, the illuminated ‘D’ in the sign was broken so it read ‘iner’ and I thought that was perfect. Locals ate at a place like that, so the food must be good. I could park the truck in the side lot, out of the way, let the radiator cool down before dumping in the remaining fluid. Down the road a ways I could see a gas station, it should carry gallon jugs of coolant. As I flipped on the turn signal, I scanned the diner parking lot. No police cruisers, and nothing that looked like an unmarked cop car. My truck would attract no notice there.

Stepping out of the truck, I stumbled into a puddle over my ankle, drenching my shoe.

Damn it.

My day just kept getting better and better.

Outside the heated cab of the truck, the day was more miserable than I was ready for. Up on the interstate, truck tires whined as they threw up clouds of spray, thump-thumping over the cold steel expansion joints of the bridge over the two-lane highway. Tossing the hoodie up, I put my head down and trudged across the parking lot, avoiding chunks of dirty ice that had collected in the wheel wells of cars, and fallen off when the car hit one of the many potholes scattered around the parking lot.

Oh, hell.

Standing in the drizzle, I found that my feet couldn’t move. The problem wasn’t my feet, it was me.

What was I going to do?

Where was I going to go?

Where could I go, on less than a full tank of gas, in the middle of Missouri? I had no plan, none at all. There was no one I could call on, no one I could call for help. People who knew me ended up dead, so I made a point not to make connections with anyone. If the people hunting me thought I had made a friend along the way, that friend would either be taken and used as bait to lure me from hiding, or killed to ensure I didn’t try to seek help from friends. To ensure I knew that I couldn’t get help from anyone. That I was alone. If you think I’m being paranoid about that, I’m not. It happened. A girl I cared about is dead, because the wrong people knew I cared about her. I was on my own, that’s the way it has to be.

When the truck inevitably broke down, or the money ran out, whichever came first, I would be out of options.

Jamming my hands into the pockets of the leather jacket I wore over the hoodie, I got my feet moving again, and quickened my step toward the front door of the diner. Because I wanted to get out of the chilly rain, and because any normal person would. To linger in the parking lot would be suspicious, like I was casing the place for a robbery. Which I was not doing. I’m not a thief. Except when I steal from criminals, I consider that a simple redistribution of resources. That’s what my Aunt Sarah told me, and she was a wise woman.

Until she ended up dead.

Dead, before she could teach me much of anything useful about magic.

Oh, I should have mentioned that. My name is Kazimir Wolfe, or ‘Kaz’ for short, although I never use my real name.

I’m a wizard.

I know, magic doesn’t exist.

But it used to exist.

And I didn’t know it at the time, but magic will come into our world again.

Unless I can stop it.

Duke the dog slunk between the dumpster and the brick wall of the diner, pressing himself against the bricks to stay under the eaves of the roof. The bricks were cold and damp but the steady, soaking rain was chilly and wet, his infallible dog instincts told him to stay out of the rain. No amount of shaking could get his fur completely dry. He never would have left the warm, dry house where he lived, if his task was not so urgent.

Where he used to live. Where the Lady used to feed him breakfast every morning. A hearty bowl of dry kibble. Plus toast, possibly bits of egg or bacon or whatever the Lady was eating that morning; Duke had perfected the Sad Brown Eyes look that usually yielded a treat. Sometimes, if the Lady was distracted, or not feeling well, as had happened more often recently, he could not just phone it in with the standard Sad Brown Eyes. More effort into the performance was needed, including the Low Pathetic Whine, the Chin Resting On Her Leg, or if he really needed to bring out the big guns, the Paw On Leg. Not pawing at her leg, that annoyed her and could backfire on Duke, banishing him to the dog bed in the corner of the kitchen, where he tried his best to look remorseful and sad and to curl up as small as possible, while staring at her in abject misery.

Those time-tested techniques rarely failed, and really only failed when the Mean Girl was there, telling the Lady not to spoil him.

He had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. What was the purpose of sharing your life with a dog, if not to spoil each other with affection, snuggling together on a cold evening, taking a walk on a sunny day, or giving treats? To be sure, the giving of treats had been entirely one-sided, ever since he brought home a squirrel he had caught in the backyard. It wasn’t like he had asked her to cook the thing for him, he offered it to her out of devotion and loyalty, and her rejection and shouting that he was a Bad Dog and to get that disgusting thing out of the house right this minute, had hurt him. The next time, he made sure the squirrel was a particularly fine specimen of tree-dwelling rodent, but the Lady inexplicably had not been happy about it again.

Humans. No one could understand them.

Duke had not been given his breakfast that morning; he suspected that breakfasts being conveniently provided in a bowl on the floor was over. The Lady had not gotten out of bed that morning, she had gone to bed extra early, not feeling well and looking especially frail, shivering in her nightgown as she slowly climbed the stairs up to her bedroom. Duke had tucked himself extra tightly against her, giving her all the body heat he could provide, and her shivering eventually stopped.

But everything else stopped also. In the morning, her cheek was cold when he nuzzled her face His dog instincts told him she was not getting up that morning, or ever again. That made him inconsolably sad. Not about the lack of breakfast, that only made him hungry. He would never again lean against her on the couch, while she watched the big glowing box that made noise, and she absent-mindedly stroked the fur around his neck. Never again go for a ride, where she drove slowly and only on familiar roads, and never at night. Never again could he whine until she rolled down the passenger side window, so he could stick his head out and experience the ecstasy of flying. Never again would he feel the soul-aching loneliness, when she parked the car and left to Do Whatever Mysterious Thing Humans Did, and he had to stick his nose out the partly open car window, sniffing the air to find out Where She Went and What She Could Possibly Be Doing and When She Would Be Coming Back.

She always came back, sometimes with a little treat for him, and if she had forgotten to buy a treat, there was always a tin of mini biscuits in the glove box. Mini biscuits he could smell and drove him crazy, because he never could figure out how that glove box opened.

Door latches, and doorknobs, were just a few of the many mysteries in Duke’s life.

Like, why had he left the warm, dry house that morning, to trot across soggy fields that still had crusty, dirty snow in the low spots, and squeezing under a fence to go around to the side of the roadside restaurant, huddling under the too-short eaves that had fat drops of cold water dripping on his disheveled coat. Next to a dumpster that smelled mostly of nasty things but there were also tantalizing aromas of things he could eat, whether he should or not. Eventually, he might need to find a way into the dumpster.

But not now.

Now, Duke had important things to do. He did not know why he was waiting, only that he had to do it.

Waiting for Him.

And watching for Them.

Hopefully, He would arrive before Them, for Duke had no real plan if the worst happened, other than to warn Him, and tug on His sleeve to pull Him away from danger.

Duke did not actually know what He looked like, only that his dog instincts would know that He was a good person, and the one for whom Duke was waiting.

Duke also did not know what They looked like.

That didn’t matter. He would know Them when he saw them.

His keen sense of smell might pick up the faint whiff of brimstone that sometimes followed Them, no matter how much They tried to conceal it. He would know.

So, he waited, standing rather than sitting, he did not want anything other than his paws touching the cold pavement. He waited and waited, as one after another of the Big Shiny Rolling Things pulled into the parking lot, and people went into the restaurant, or people came out the door of the restaurant, got in their Big Shiny Rolling Things and left. None of them were of any interest to him, except he yearned to beg from them, when the swirling breeze carried the scent of hot, delicious food from the vent on the roof. His stomach growled and it almost made him forget his purpose. He reminded himself to focus, to focus like when he saw a squirrel right outside the window. As the morning wore on, and the traffic in the parking lot grew more sparse, Duke began to shiver, and to despair.

Until-

There!

A Big Shiny Rolling Thing pulled off the highway, splashing through puddles to pull around to the side of the restaurant. It parked in an awkward space, away from anything else. When the driver got out, he stepped in a puddle, and pulled the hoodie up over his head to keep out of the steady, cold drizzle.

The same drizzle that had Duke soaked to the skin. He couldn’t shake himself dry yet or he would be seen as the man walked by, the-

It was Him.

His heart pounding, Duke willed his traitorous tail to be still, and crouched down, walking backward into the shadows.