SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  "Could be," I nodded. "My parents told me that they thought I was dead, it surprised the hell out of them when I called."

  "What was your cover story?" Williams asked. "You didn't tell them the truth, did you?"

  It surprised me that Williams didn't know the cover story that UNEF had cooked up, until I remembered that he, and most of the SpecOps people, had been selected less than two weeks before the Dutchman departed, and those two weeks had been frantic eighteen hour days for everyone involved. Although the entire original Merry Band of Pirates had all been given the cover story, UNEF hadn't planned to release it to the public until after the Flying Dutchman left Earth orbit. "The cover story? Your team wasn't read in before we left?"

  "There wasn't time, sir. UNEF wanted us aboard the Dutchman as soon as possible after we were selected. I think part of that was operational security, we couldn't talk to people on Earth if we were already in orbit."

  That made sense to me, I remembered that UNEF had insisted all communications to and from the Dutchman went through UNEF HQ in Paris. Skippy, naturally, had ignored silly monkey regulations, as the commander, I had done my best to comply with the rules, whether I liked it or not. "UNEF’s cover story, it should have been released to the public on Earth by now, is that the Merry Band of Pirates, you know, the original crew, came back to Earth aboard a Thuranin ship, because the Thuranin were upset that the Kristang on Earth were acting without authority. The public thinks we were passengers on the ship, flown by Thuranin, and the Thuranin killed the Kristang on Earth, because those lizards were ransacking the planet of an ally. Governments thought it would be too much for the public to take, if they learned that both the Ruhar and the Kristang are our enemies, that the entire galaxy is hostile to humans. Hostile, with an overwhelming technological advantage. For myself, I'm not sure the Ruhar are enemies, they seem more likely to ignore us than bother conquering us. I also don't know that the Ruhar would go out of their way to help us, they have enough on their plate. When I was on Paradise, after the Ruhar took the place back, their deputy administrator told me they had plans to sustain UNEF, for a time, until humans could grow enough food for themselves. That's all great, it all depends on what happens with the Ruhar's wider military campaign, really it depends on how the Jeraptha fare against the Thuranin. If the Jeraptha suffer a major defeat, the Ruhar won't have the resources to spare for a low-tech species like humans. UNEF has a lot of mouths to feed on Paradise, and I'm sure most of the Ruhar there don't feel like they owe humans anything."

  "Do you trust the Ruhar?" Simms asked. "You had more contact with them than I did." I had told her about the intel the burgermeister gave to me, intel I had distrusted, intel Skippy later told me was a hundred percent accurate.

  "I trust that the burgermeister, the deputy administrator, was sincere about what she told me," I said honestly. "I don't trust whether she will be able to deliver, it's not only up to her." I turned my attention back to Graziano. “Doctor?”

  “Yes, I will create a summary of what we know to date. It is not much,” he said, almost as an apology.

  “We all understand that, Doctor. Do the best you can, and, whatever resources you need, to learn more about the people who lived here, you will have it.”

  Graziano asked for more people, and more equipment, to assist in excavating the cathedral complex. There was no need for me to request volunteers, everyone wanted to help. Graziano’s problem was not lack of help, it was restraining the volunteers’ enthusiasm for moving rocks and digging soil. Skippy volunteered also, he assigned a submind to research what he could about Newark, attempting to figure how a civilization could have arisen on such a frozen planet. And what caused them to become extinct. He called me while I was helping Doctor Zheng collect samples from a pond three kilometers from our home canyon. "Joe, after you found those bones, the tools and the ruins, I took a look at Newark, and I discovered that something is very wrong with this star system."

  "Wrong, beyond it being a crappy place to live?"

  "Very much so. Disturbingly so. I wasn't paying attention before, because I'm busy enough repairing the Dutchman and passively scanning for enemy starships, so I didn't bother to investigate this star system beyond the basics. It didn't matter before. Now it does, very much. There is no way a complex species, an entire civilization, could have evolved on Newark, the way the planet is now. There are currently no land animals at all, above the microscopic level. Clearly, the planet's climate has changed radically. The star's output has not varied significantly within the last several million years, that cannot be the reason for the climate changing so radically. Since you found those perplexing ruins, I ran back a mathematical model of the orbits of all seven planets, and the math tells me that something disrupted their orbits around 2.7 million years ago."

  "Wow. I read something like that in a book once."

  "Incredible."

  "Yeah, a, uh, I think it was a star," I tried to remember the details of that book, "I read this book a long time ago, this rogue star passed close to the star system in the book, and its gravity screwed up the orbits of all the planets."

  "Astonishing."

  "The people in the book had to leave their planet, and go live on a planet they figured would end up orbiting this new star, after it left their star system. Their original planet was going to be ejected away from its star, or become uninhabitable or something. The writer’s name was McDermott, McDevitt, something like that."

  "Amazing. Absolutely unbelievable."

  I paused. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of this before, Skippy, it must happen sometimes, in the galaxy. I remember now, the star was a brown dwarf. That's a star so small-"

  "I know what a brown dwarf is, Joe, and yes, wandering stars occasionally do disrupt the orbits of planets in star systems they approach. That's not what I find astonishing."

  Now he had me intrigued. "Then what is?"

  "You read a book?" He laughed.

  Damn it, I should have remembered what an asshole he is. "Yes, Skippy, I did."

  "This was a comic book, I assume. Lots of pictures."

  "It wasn't-"

  "Oh, sorry, I should have said 'graphic novel', I don't want to upset the nerds."

  "It was a real book, Skippy! And I've read more than one book."

  "Wow. So, both of these books you read, did you have to go real slow, sound out the words as your finger slid along the page?"

  "Forget I mentioned it, please." Under my breath I added "Asshole."

  "I heard that."

  "Can we go back to what you found about the orbits of planets in this system? Was it a brown dwarf that caused it?"

  "No, it wasn't a wandering star, or planet, of any type. That would merely be interesting. The truth is, as I said, disturbing. Perplexing. Frightening. Look at your iPad, I'll show you."

  The iPad popped up a diagram of the star system, not to scale I assumed, with eight planets all circling the star. Circling, not oval-shaped loops. Newark was highlighted in blue, the gas giant in red. "Skippy, why are there eight planets in his diagram, and I thought Newark was the second one from the star?" The diagram listed Newark as the third planet. I used my fingertips to zoom in the display to just the inner planets to confirm; Newark was shown as the third planet. The new eighth planet was close to the star, like Mercury. There was no such planet in the original diagram Skippy had put on the main bridge display, back when he explained why he set course for this system.

  "This," Skippy explained, "is the star system, 2.7 million years ago. Newark's orbit was nice and circular, it was slightly further outward from the center of this star's Goldilocks Zone than Earth is from its own habitable zone, so Newark would have been slightly cooler overall. I would need ice cores to confirm, still, I am very confident in my analysis. For many millions of years, Newark was reasonably similar to Earth in terms of habitability, which explains how complex life forms could have arisen there. Complex life forms, such as the sentient beings who built the rui
ns you found."

  Sentient beings. All dead. An entire species. "What happened to this place?"

  The iPad display began to move, planets circling in their serene orbits. Then, Newark suddenly, by itself, moved outward. Its orbit was still a circle, it was a bigger circle, further from the star. "Joe, something pushed Newark out of its original orbit. The new orbit was beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone. The planet began to rapidly freeze, more rapidly than the low-tech species here could compensate for. They froze, and became extinct, probably within less than one year. All of them."

  "Holy shit. Oh my God."

  "There was nothing holy about what happened here, Joe." Skippy said with surprising vehemence.

  "I agree. The new orbit, it was still a circle? Why is it an ellipse now?"

  The speed of the display increased, and the orbits of the planets began to wobble, disturbed from the graceful tracks they had followed for a billion years. "Changing the orbit of Newark affected the gas giant planet I am now orbiting. That had a cascading effect on the entire system. The two gas giant planets in this system had a roughly two to one resonance, like Jupiter and Saturn in your home star system; Jupiter orbits twice for every one time Saturn circles your sun. When that resonance here was disrupted, the orbits of the other planets were disturbed. The orbit of Newark, and what is now the first planet, became elliptical. What was the original innermost planet, I speculate it was a small, rocky body like Mercury, had its orbit made so elliptical that it fell into the star, that is why there are now only seven planets. Newark will eventually reestablish a circular orbit, slightly closer to the star than its original track, I predict that will happen within the next twenty million years. The ice will melt, and Newark will become a pleasant place to live. Again."

  A smartass remark popped into my head, about this being a good time to buy cheap real estate on Newark. I squashed it silently. An entire sentient species had died here, died horribly, their entire civilization buried under a smothering blanket of snow and ice. There was nothing amusing about what had happened. "How? What you showed me was Newark moving on its own. That can't happen, right?"

  "No, it can't. And, given the native species primitive level of technology, it isn't anything they did, by accident or otherwise. Joe," his voice dropped to a near whisper, "pushing a planet like this took Elder-level technology."

  "Wow. Wow." I pondered that a minute. "You think the Rindhalu got hold of some Elder devices, and used it here?"

  "Not a chance," Skippy said, "the Rindhalu hadn't even discovered fire 2.7 million years ago, it couldn't be them. The Elders transcended long before that, and they wouldn't have done something horrible like this. Joe, this scares the hell out of me. I have gaps in my memories that are annoying, this goes beyond annoying. Something significant happened in the galaxy, that I can't account for at all. This cannot be possible, yet I can't deny the facts."

  "Is there any chance your analysis is wrong?"

  There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. "Joe, I'm not sure of anything right now. Based on the data, my analysis is correct. However, I could be misinterpreting the data, or I could be missing something, or my analytical functions could be faulty in ways that I cannot detect. You know that I suspect something unknown is wrong with me."

  "Skippy, I'm sure you're doing everything you can."

  "It's not enough." He actually sounded sad, almost lost.

  "Skip," I said. "Hey, getting real here. I'm a dumb monkey, the best I can do is to be the best dumb monkey I can be. You're an AI with intelligence and knowledge I can't even imagine. No matter how smart you are, you can only do the best you can. You rescued my entire species, without even stretching your abilities. No matter how incredible you are, you can only do the best you can. Whatever is wrong with your memories, it's not your fault."

  “Thank you Joe, your words would be more comforting if they weren’t being spoken by a flea-infested monkey.”

  Damn it, common courtesy wasn't in Skippy's nature. "This something you suspect is wrong with you, is that why you're such an asshole?"

  "Huh? No, that's me."

  "No hope of fixing that, then?"

  "I wouldn't count on it, no," he said. I appreciated his honesty.

  “Hey, well, maybe when you contact the Collective, they will have answers for us, right? That’s what you want, answers.”

  “Answers, like why I was buried in the ground on Paradise, and how I got there? Answers like how Elder-level technology was used, during a time when no intelligent being inhabited this galaxy. Answers like how Elder technology was used for unquestionably evil purposes? Yeah, I want answers like that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe! Wake up!" My zPhone earpiece blared at me. Army training allowed me to snap upright on my cot, mostly alert, one hand fumbling for the zPhone earpiece, the other hand automatically holding a boot so I could stuff a foot into it.

  "What is it, Skippy?"

  "No immediate emergency, you can drop back to Code Yellow."

  "You scared the hell out me, it was almost Code Yellow in my shorts, you ass. What is it that couldn't wait," I checked the clock on the zPhone, "three and a half hours, until I was going to wake up on my own?"

  "Two things, both fairly important. Very important, actually. Good news and bad news."

  "Bad news first, please." Bad news meant I might have to do something about it ASAP. Good news could wait this time. Until morning, and a cup of coffee. Maybe two cups. I put the other boot on, there was not going to be any more sleep for me that night.

  "Of course,” Skippy agreed. “Two of the Kristang leaders here were talking on their phones, one complained about how their workforce is lazy and not moving fast enough, the other one, who I think is their leader, said they need to move faster, because he expects a ship to pick them up in the next sixty to eighty days."

  "WHAT?! That is bad news." I stood up and pulled pants on. Sleep could wait. "You told us they wouldn't have a ship coming to pick them up for a year or more!"

  "That was based on communications I intercepted, yes. Based on this new information, I now suspect those communications were the leaders lying to their workforce about the timeline for their departure. I now believe that when the ship arrives, the six leaders plan to take the Elder artifacts with them, and abandon their workers here to starve. This does explain a discrepancy I have noticed; their food supply does not appear to be sufficient to support their population for the official duration of their mission. Before, my assumption was that the leaders at some point planned to kill their workforce, in order to stretch their food supply."

  All of which were things Skippy should have told me. Or I should have inquired about. "You can't screw with that ship's sensors, like you're doing with the satellites?"

  "No, not through the microwormhole, the connection doesn't have the bandwidth for me to transmit a submind. The satellites don't have the capacity to store a submind anyway. And also, through the wormhole, I can't activate the Thuranin nanovirus that is likely embedded in the Kristang ship's systems."

  This was going to be a problem, a very big problem. "This new ship will be able to see us, then."

  "Yup, very likely."

  With pants and a shirt on, I could think more clearly. "Damn it. All right, then we'll need to burrow underground, remove all trace of our habitation from the surface, and hide until that ship goes away." That was going to be difficult, our success would depend mostly on the newly-arrived ship wanting to pick up the Kristang here quickly, and not seeing any need for a serious scan of the planet's surface.

  "Negative. No burrowing. Not only burrowing, anyway."

  "Why not?" I hoped he didn't have even worse news for us.

  "Because of the good news, Joe. We have an awesome opportunity!"

  Oh, crap. When you're in the military and someone tells you about an 'opportunity', it's almost never good news for you. "You found us a great deal on car insurance?"

  "N
o! Even better! Joe, seriously, this is awesome. Joe, they have an AI!"

  "That's, uh, that's great, Skippy." What did he think was awesome about that? All starships had an AI of some sort as their central computing core. Even dropships had a type of AI running their navigation system. So what if the lizards had an AI at their scavenger base? They probably used an AI to figure out which Elder junk was valuable.

  "You don't understand. While those two lizards were talking, they had a video feed going, and behind one of them, I saw some of the Elder artifacts they have recovered, sitting on a table. One of those artifacts is an Elder AI!"

  That was awesome news. "An AI like you? Another shiny beer can?" I asked excitedly. "Did it tell you about the Collective?"

  "I haven't been able to contact it. I don't understand why not."

  "Maybe it's dormant, because the Kristang are a star faring species? That why you couldn't talk to the Kristang or the Ruhar on Paradise, right?"

  "That doesn't explain why it won't talk to me. We AIs can communicate on a higher level, biologicals wouldn't know about it. Also troubling is this AI, like myself, appears to be connected to an Elder starship crash. What the Kristang here are digging up is debris from an Elder starship that fell out of orbit, in this case I estimate the ship crashed between 2.3 and 2.5 million years ago."

  Dreading the answer I may get, I asked "Oh, boy. You're telling me no burrowing, because we need to go get this AI, before the Kristang ship arrives to take everything away?"

  "Exactly. We can't miss this opportunity! If this AI can direct me to the Collective, your mission is complete, and you can go home when the Dutchman is repaired. If the Kristang take the AI away, we might never find it again. The Kristang have no idea what it is, of course, they're only taking it with them because they know it is somehow connected to the Elder ship. That AI may spend eternity sitting under a pile of junk."