If the Kristang ship hung around Newark a moment longer than it needed to, I hoped that all it would send a dropship down to the Elder crash site, to see if the scavengers had missed anything useful. That would keep the Kristang busy, until they got bored and went away. No humans had been to the crash site, so the new group of Kristang wouldn't find any trace of us there. "I'll take the b-" I almost said 'beer can', "the AI and the comm node." Maybe Skippy could find something useful to do with them later, and it didn't feel right leaving the dead AI where it was. "The rest of it, we cover with explosives, and set a timer." I looked up to the north, where dark clouds were gathering, and a chill wind was beginning to stir. "Let's get moving, we have a lot of ground to cover before nightfall."
When the Kristang ship arrived, I was outside the cave getting much-appreciated fresh air in the early morning hours, stretching my legs and taking in a quick change of scenery. During daylight hours, we kept to our three cramped caverns, a big treat for us was bunking in a different cavern for a few days, being able to see relatively new faces. We got notice of the ship's arrival almost simultaneously from our zPhone detecting the gamma ray burst, and from Skippy calling us. "That Kristang ship is here, Joe, you best get under cover."
"Roger that," I replied, and didn't need to say anything else, as we all double-timed back to our respective caverns. No running, this was a disciplined group and no one needed to be scolded for risking a twisted ankle or broken leg in the semi-darkness. "ETA?"
"It jumped in far away from the planet, far even for a Kristang ship, their jump drive appears to be in poor condition. My guess is they won't enter a stable orbit for another day, maybe more. They're pinging the scavenger camp, and of course getting no reply. They also just requested a download from the satellites, I'm giving them everything we want them to see."
"Great. I'll check in with you every six hours, you contact me if anything happens that I need to know about."
"Affirmative. Dutchman out."
"Hey, Colonel Joe," Skippy called me, startling me. I'd been sitting on a rock near the entrance of the cavern, watching a cold rain splatter down outside, slowly drinking a cold chocolate-banana sludge. There wasn't much else to do, and I'd slept plenty already, maybe too much.
"What's up, Skippy?"
"Uh, we gots a tiny problemo."
"Oh, like what?" I snapped my fingers to get people's attention, and around me, I could see people stirring and putting on their zPhone earpieces so they could listen in.
"Two pieces of news, one bad, one merely FYI. The FYI part is that ship is sending a dropship down to check out the Elder crash site, in case the scavengers missed something. For now, they're not going to bother inspecting what's left of the scavenger base, and they're not interested in the crash sites near our main encampment, where we shot down those two scavenger aircraft. They completely bought the story I fed them in the fake satellite data. True to Kristang, they 're not even pissed about being raided and having all the scavengers killed, thy are only pissed that some other clan stole the Elder artifacts."
"That is actually good news so far, Skippy. What's the bad news?"
"More like extremely annoying news, but it could turn out to be devastatingly bad, we'll have to wait and see. From internal ship communications, leaking through their hull because of a shockingly, and I do mean I am truly, actually shocked this time, Joe, I'm not merely doing the old joke where I only pretend to be shocked, you know what I mean? You say you're shocked, but you actually mean the opposite? The most famous usage of that phrase, of course, was by Claude Raines in the movie Casablanca, although that line is strangely misquoted very often. The correct-"
"Skippy! The point, please. Here's another good quote for you to remember: brevity is the soul of wit."
"And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief," Skippy finished the quote for me. "Man, I try to smack some culture down on you-"
"And we ignorant monkeys greatly appreciate it, Skippy, at the appropriate time, Ok?"
"Fine," he said with a huff. "As I was saying, before, I guess before I rudely interrupted my own train of thought, huh, I see your point now, Joe. Damn, my mind wanders sometimes. I was saying, the communications security aboard that ship is shockingly bad, their cabling must be completely worn out, more of the data signal leaks out than gets to its destination. It is so bad, that even if they had a functioning stealth field, which they do not, I'd be able to listen in. You monkeys are a young, impatient species, so without further embellishment, here's the news: the Thuranin star carrier that dropped off this ship at the edge of the star system will not return for another four and a half months, that's 'meh' level accuracy for you. That means the Kristang ship will be here for four months, at least. During those four and a half months, the Kristang on that ship may become bored, and start poking around, scanning, and looking into things better left alone. They might discover the human presence on Newark."
"Damn it!" I looked around and met people's eyes, they were all indicating alarm. "That isn't the only problem, Skippy, we only have three months of food with us here." My group may be able to stretch out our supply of dehydrated sludges to three and a half months, possibly another week under extreme conditions, we were already on rather lean rations as it was. The main group, back at the caverns near the cathedral complex, had more food, they might make it to four months. None of us were going to survive four and a half months.
"That is a problem, and with that ship in orbit, I can't send another food delivery. The Dutchman's supply of sludges is almost exhausted anyway, and I can't make more until the ship is up and running again. Joe, this sucks, because I've been making substantially progress up here, had a couple spots of good luck, and I expect to have the ship ready jump in and retrieve you in about a month. That's only one week longer than the original schedule."
"Fantastic, Skippy, that is incredible, and we'll give you the slow clap of amazement when we get back up there-"
"Hey! A slow clap? Is this a sarcastic thing?"
"What? No. Oh, uh, sorry, Skippy, I guess that can have a double meaning. In this context, I meant we would be genuinely amazed by how you fixed the ship."
"Damn, I will never understand monkey social norms."
"Me neither, Skippy. Back to the subject, is there anything you can do about that Kristang ship for us?"
"Not that I can think of yet, Joe. I have two missiles, one ready and one partly assembled, only needs a propulsion unit."
Only needed a propulsion unit? What was he planning to do, launch it from a really big slingshot? "One missile isn't much help, huh?"
"Unfortunately, no. That ship would detect one or two missiles while they are inbound, and likely destroy them both beyond their effective range; the Kristang who own that ship are barely maintaining their internal systems and jump drive, but their sensor field and defensive batteries are functional. A failed missile attack, at such long range, would get the Kristang asking uncomfortable questions, and poking around places we'd rather they don't look."
"Understood. I'm pretty sure none of us down here can throw a rock up far enough to hit that ship in orbit, so you keep trying to think of a solution, Ok?"
"I'll do my best, Joe. I'll do my best."
Skippy' best thinking, he admitted to me early the next morning, wasn't nearly good enough. "I thunk on it all night, Joe, in between, you know, building a starship out of moon dust up here. And I got a whole lot of nothing. You military brains down there come up with an idea?"
"No," I admitted. We'd talked about it late into the night, tossing around increasingly unlikely and impractical ideas, until I called a halt, and told everyone we'd begin again with fresh minds in the morning. "No, Skippy, we also got nothing down here. We're working on it. Let's both have faith, Ok?"
"Ok." He said quietly. The fact that he didn't make a smartass remark told me how discouraged he was feeling.
His mood mirrored my own gloominess.
"Skippy, we
have come way too far to fail now. We got all the way to this star system without any power from the reactors, we defeated a superior Kristang force without them firing a single shot at us, and we've managed to survive on this damp, rainy, chilly mudball of a planet. Also, I didn't kill anyone for singing Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall, like, way too many freakin' times, which is a solid gold gosh-darned miracle. I am not giving up now."
Taking a tiny, tiny risk, I slid my butt along the rock at the cavern entrance, so I had a clear view of the only partly cloudy early morning sky. In theory, the Kristang ship might have a snowball's chance in hell of seeing me, if it had been looking right at our cavern through a gap in the clouds at that exact second. Somewhere up there, at this time to the right of Newark's small moon, was the microwormhole that we used to communicate with Skippy. Looking up at the invisible wormhole, I felt just a tiny bit closer to that annoying little beer can, an alien AI who I inexplicably felt some measure of affection for. A true miracle from Skippy, the wormhole allowed almost real-time communication through- "H-o-l-y shit."
"What?" Skippy asked.
"The way this microwormhole thingy works is," I said very slowly, thinking through my idea as I spoke, "you send radio waves through it, so we can talk without a big time lag?"
"Given your monkey-level understanding of physics, sure, let's go with that. Oh, man, Albert Einstein would be weeping for your species right now."
"You send photons through the wormhole, so-"
"Wait! Uh! Uh! Hush, you! Not this time. Not this time! This is where you think you have some brilliant idea that I should have thought of, right?"
"Uh, maybe?"
He laughed gleefully. "Ha! Hahahahahaha! I know exactly what boneheaded monkey-brain idea you're going to tell me, and I can tell you ahead of time, it won't work. You want me to send missiles through the wormhole, and hit that ship. That's it, right? Hahaha! You can forget it, Mister Smartypants, because that won't work. We only have one functioning missile right now, remember, dumbass? Also, that wormhole is less than half a nanometer in diameter, no way can we squeeze a missile through it. So, you're not so freakin' smart, are you? Hahahahahaha!"
Skippy's rant hadn't let me get a word in. "You done gloating now?" I asked.
"Give me a minute, I want to let this soak in. Ahhhhhh, this feels good. I like this feeling. You think you're so smart, and you're not. Here, pretend I just tossed a coin into your hat, dance for me, monkey, dance!"
"Great," I said. "Because I was going to suggest you send a maser cannon beam through the wormhole, not a missile."
A long silence. Long. Like, really, awkwardly long. Then, Skippy said "Damn it! Excuse me, I'm going offline a moment so I can smash something."
"Skippy?" Silence. "Skippy?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," he finally grumbled.
"Did you smash something? You feel better now?"
"I didn't smash anything yet, but there's a pair of small moons here that are going to have a very bad freakin’ day in about two hours. A maser cannon shot through the wormhole, huh?"
"That's the idea."
"Damn you, Mister Smartypants. You have no idea how thoroughly, utterly humiliating this is for me."
"I'd love to hear, can you explain in great detail? Don't leave anything out, all of us ignorant monkeys on this end would truly enjoy hearing it, I'll record it for you. How does this make you feel, with your god-like intelligence?"
"Sure, I'll pencil you in for the twelfth of Never, or how about the fourth of Shut-the-hell-up, do either of those dates work for you?"
Maybe I should have named him 'Snarky' instead of Skippy. "The maser beam thing, it will work?"
Skippy sighed. Deep down, all the way into whatever spacetime most of him resided, he had to be incredibly frustrated with himself. "Yes, yes, it will. I'll need to refocus the emitter to narrow the beam, that will attenuate the power somewhat, hmm, I can goose up the, well, this is all technical stuff on my end, nothing worth explaining to monkeys. Yes, it will work. We'll only get one shot at this, pun intended, transmitting that much power through the wormhole will collapse it completely. After we shoot, I won't know whether it worked, until your radio signal gets here more than an hour later. We'll be limited to slow speed of light communications after we lose the wormhole. We need to make this one shot count, I'll have to target their reactor directly. Breach containment there, and that ship is a nice firework in the sky for you. The remaining problem with this plan is, I have only a limited ability to aim the beam when it comes out your end of the wormhole, and that ship's orbit right now doesn't take it within the targeting cone. You got any ideas how to fix that?"
"Uh, huh, figured that might be a problem." I thought a moment. How to get a ship to change its orbit? "Yeah, I might."
"Does your idea involve sending a message to that ship, asking it to pose for a photo in front of our wormhole?"
"Um, no. Our two stealthed satellites, you can move them, slowly, without the Kristang detecting?"
"Yes. Those satellites are tiny, Joe, so forget about me trying to smash one into that ship. If that is your best idea, we are in big trouble."
"That wasn't my idea. How about this: you position one of them some place away from the microwormhole, and then you adjust the satellite's stealth field, so it looks like a stealthed ship whose field is failing? You can do that?"
"Piece of cake, Joe. I'm waiting for the brilliant part of your plan. If you don't have that, the only mildly stupid part of your plan would amuse me, also."
"Great. If that Kristang ship thinks another ship, a stealthed ship, is suddenly in the area, will it jump away immediately?"
"No, not from where it is, the ship is too deep in the gravity well for it to jump away right now, it would need to-, oh, I see your plan now. I position our satellite to flush the Kristang ship toward our wormhole as it tries to climb out to jump distance, so I can get a clean shot at it?"
"Yup, that's the plan. Will that work?"
"You are such a smartass," Skippy said with a disgusted snort. "I hate you."
"I love you too, Skippy."
"And?"
"I'm not saying I love you back!" He said disgustedly.
"The 'and', in this case, means," I explained patiently "and, will my plan work?"
"Yes."
"I couldn't hear that very well, Skippy, did you just say a monkey plan will work, when your incredible intelligence couldn't think of a way out of this mess?"
"YES! For crying out loud, I said yes. Damn, you are annoying. You know what, when I get this ship fixed up, I am declaring it a monkey-free zone. No filthy monkeys allowed. Ah, it will be like paradise up here."
"Yeah, paradise," I pointed out the flaw in his plan, "except for the part about you being stuck right there for eternity, or until the Dutchman's orbit degrades, and the ship falls into the gas giant's atmosphere. After that, you will sink to the core of a slowly cooling planet, until the heat death of the universe, quadrillions of years from now?"
"Yup. No monkeys. Like I said, paradise."
Skippy only had one shot at that ship. Of course, he only needed one shot, despite his grumbling about how we were asking him to do the impossible, as usual, and how we didn't truly appreciate his incredible awesomeness. To shut him up, I offered to bake a cake in his honor when we got back aboard the Dutchman. That afternoon, while the Kristang ship frantically accelerated to jump altitude to get away from a phantom ship that didn't exist, Skippy fired a full-power maser cannon beam through the wormhole, scoring a direct hit on that ship's already overheated reactor. The result was a brief, bright flare in the partly cloudy sky, and then silence. No Kristang ship above us, but also no Skippy.
On our zPhones, we were able to view satellite data that showed the Kristang ship exploding. After the debris field cleared, we tracked pieces of the ship in orbit, the largest piece was smaller than a dropship. All the pieces were dead, no internal power, no signs of life. For days after, we saw things burn
ing up as they fell into the atmosphere. The satellites were supposed to notify us immediately if any piece of the ship began moving on its own, or generating power, or transmitting signals. Just in case, I checked satellite images and data several times a day, and ordered the team to maintain cover.
Several hours after he shot the maser cannon through the microwormhole, Skippy saw the distinctive flash of a reactor losing containment, then jump drive coils exploding, as the Kristang ship ceased to exist, so he knew he'd accomplished his mission. That part of his mission, anyway, he still needed to finish rebuilding the busted Dutchman. The time lag for radio signals was enough of a problem, the larger problem being that our low-powered zPhone antennas could barely pick up signals from the Dutchman, and it was almost impossible for the Dutchman to hear our weak transmissions at all. We managed to maintain only the minimum communication necessary, the bandwidth limited us to text messages only, no voice.
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Page 39
