Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  "I guess so. You want me to play a lullaby for you?"

  A pillow over my head didn't block him out enough. "Good night, Skippy."

  When I woke up, and was in a better mood, I asked Skippy about his plan to raid the asteroid. Not a detailed plan, I needed to get Giraud to work on that soon, for now all I wanted was to hear the basic concept from Skippy. “You’ve had time to review all the data about the asteroid layout and defenses, right? How do we get inside the place?”

  “Oh, I have a totally brilliant plan, Colonel Joe. We’ll use Thuranin dropships,” Skippy explained patiently, “I can get the outer landing bay doors open and fool their sensors. so the Kristang can’t shoot at the dropships. After the dropships land, the crew will rush the inner doors, and blow them open.”

  “Rush the door in a depressurized landing bay? Skippy, none of us will fit into a Thuranin spacesuit. They’re too small.”

  There was a millisecond pause, that, I now knew, was an eternity in AI time. “Well, shit.” Skippy finally said.

  “Well, shit? Seriously? This isn’t a joke? You didn’t think about us humans needing space suits, in space? Let me define space suit for you; two words, the first is ‘space’-”

  “I’m not a meatsack! I don’t think like you biological trashbags.”

  “This biological trashbag is going to take a big dump on your lid, and throw you out an airlock.”

  “That would be a better threat, if I didn’t control all of the airlock mechanisms, monkeyboy.”

  “Airlocks have manual overrides. Ooh, look, monkey has opposable thumbs.” I waggled my thumbs at his lid.

  “Shut up.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m thinking!” Skippy shouted defensively.

  “I can smell the smoke.”

  “What?”

  “The next time you think of telling me how god-like smart you are, just remember ‘space suits’.”

  “Oh, shut up. Never said I was perfect.”

  “Go back to square one, and rethink your plan,” I said as I headed into the tiny bathroom. “I want to discuss it with Giraud this afternoon so he can start fixing your screw-ups. That’s in about ten hours, which is a bazillion years in Skippy time, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to come up with idea that don’t include humans breathing hard vacuum.”

  Private Randall approached me in the gym that morning, while I was sweating away with Sergeant Adams’ improved equipment, and he reported that Major Simms was satisfied the crew had completed their familiarization drills; that everyone now knew where the airlocks were, how to operate trams and lifts, where their duty stations were, and a whole list of emergency procedures that Chang and Simms insisted on, and Skippy thought were a complete waste of time.

  “Joe, this crew trying to learn how to operate this ship is a waste of time. You’re like a dog. A dog may know that inside the pantry is a yummy box of treats, but it can stare at that doorknob all day, and it’s never going to understand how it works.”

  “So, we’re dogs now?” I winked at Randall. “When did we get a promotion? I thought we were all bacteria to you.”

  “You have performed better than expected overall, your species is reasonably adaptable. Maybe I can consider you more like a paramecium.”

  “Wait, a pair a what?” Randall asked.

  “Pair-a-mee-cee-um,” I pronounced it slowly. “It’s a single-cell organism, you probably looked at one through a microscope in high school. They look kind of like a paisley.”

  That drew a blank stare from Randall. “A paisley?”

  “That’s uh,” I struggled to think how to explain paisley, “those funky swirly patterns on old people’s couches, or curtains. Kind of like half a yin-yang symbol?”

  “Huh, I didn’t know there was a name for those.” Randall nodded.

  Skippy made a disgusted noise. “I changed my mind again. You idiots are bacteria. Who doesn’t know what a paisley is?”

  “We’re soldiers,” I explained, “not interior designers, chrome dome.”

  “Paisley would be a great unit symbol for your merry band of pirates, Joe. I’ll get the fabricators to crank out a bunch of them.”

  True to his word, later that day Skippy did produce patches of a paramecium with a pirate eyepatch and a dagger. Adams brought a sample of patches to me, figuring I’d get a good laugh out of it. I expected that would be the end of it, until some of the crew asked me if they could use the patches on their uniforms. That shouldn’t have surprised me, we were pirates, and wearing a paramecium was the crew’s way to give the finger to Skippy. That was how our merry band of bloodthirsty pirates ended up wearing paisley.

  On my way out of our makeshift gym, I passed Sergeant Adams as she was heading into the gym, a towel slung over one shoulder. "Sergeant, let's discuss your attire."

  “I thought we were good to wear T shirts on deck, sir, unless we’re going into action?” She asked, pointedly looking at my gray shirt with ‘ARMY’ across the chest. “I only have three tops aboard, sir.”

  “You’re Ok to wear a T shirt, Adams,” I smiled, “but, we’re on a starship, heading boldly into space where no human has been before, potentially having to land on planets with unimaginable dangers.”

  “Sir, yes?”

  “And you’re wearing a red shirt.”

  “Oh.” She blushed as she got the old Star Trek reference. “Yes, sir, I’ll be sure to change into a Marine Corps utility uni before we beam down anywhere.”

  “You do that.” I gave her a smile. “Carry on.” I was proud of myself that I didn’t turn to watch her shapely behind as she walked away. This could be a very long trip.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN RAID

  Giraud pinged me, he needed to talk about the plan to raid the asteroid base. I found him, along with Sergeant Thomson, in a cargo bay near the gym. Skippy told me he'd been working with Giraud on an assault plan, and I let Giraud work without unhelpful interference from me.

  "Good morning, sir." Sergeant Thomson said in his charming British accent.

  "Good morning," I replied, still tasting the sludge I'd had for breakfast. That morning, I'd tried mixing the unsuccessful apple-cinnamon sludge with a chocolate sludge that wasn't too bad, the result was something I was happy to gulp down as quickly as possible so I didn’t have to taste it. There was an unspoken competition among the crew to find good flavor combinations, which were then posted on our internal zPhone network. My experiment that morning was going into the 'Fail' column. "Lieutenant, I see you've been busy?"

  "Yes, sir." Giraud nodded. When he'd signed up for the mission, I'd gotten the impression that he regarded me as a bit of a lucky fool, someone who had the keys to the future but didn't know how to use them, and needing professional soldiers like Giraud to make the important decisions. He probably still had a less than stellar impression of my tactical planning skills, but there was a grudging respect for the way I'd handled the overall mission so far. My idea to get rid of our Kristang problem, by jumping their starships into a planet, had impressed a lot of people. That, and the fact that the mission had been resoundingly successful so far, and gone exactly as I'd promised. We'd escaped from paradise, captured a Kristang frigate and a Thuranin star carrier, and were now jumping toward a wormhole. Success encourages confidence. I needed to keep the successes coming. "The plan to raid the asteroid requires the element of surprise; we need to move quickly once the dropships are in the landing bay. That means the assault team can't wait for the bay doors to cycle closed and the bay to repressurize, they must exit the dropships and gain access to the base interior before the Kristang can react. To do that, they need space suits."

  Giraud gestured to a rack that held two space suits, a small suit that looked lightweight, and a larger suit that was bulky and heavily armored. "This Thuranin suit," he pointed to the small one, "won't fit even our shortest crew member. Skippy told me there is no way to expand the size of these suits, this ship's fabrication facilities don't have the capacity to pr
oduce the materials."

  "True," Skippy agreed over the speaker in the bulkhead. "Thuranin battlegroups include support ships with full fabrication facilities, individual warships only have limited ability for fabrication."

  "That was a serious problem," Giraud continued, "until Sergeant Thomson thought of the spacesuits on our Kristang ship. These suits are armored and powered for combat, motors in the limbs enhance the wearer's movements, so the weight will not be a problem for humans."

  The Kristang suit did look cool, I walked up to it and rapped my knuckles on the armor. It was solid. Weapons could be attacked to brackets at the wrists, so the wearer only needed to control the trigger. The faceplate was some kind of smoked glass, maybe it wasn't even glass. Ironman, or a mech suit from Halo or a dozen other video game, came to mind when I looked at the suit. "Good thinking, Sergeant. The next question is, are these suits too big?"

  "That is a problem." Giraud admitted.

  Thomson went around to the back of the Kristang suit, where the back hinged open, and carefully stepped inside it. Giraud helped him suit up, and get the back closed. Status indicators lit up on the wrist displays, and the suit took two careful steps forward, then the faceplate retracted so I could see Thomson's face. "It's not ideal," Thomson said, his words distorted. His face was hidden from the nose down. "My chin hits the bottom of the helmet, I can't open my mouth all the way too speak properly."

  "Sergeant Thomson is almost two meters tall," Giraud said.

  "That's six feet four to you, Joe," Skippy added helpfully.

  "And he is barely able to use the suit effectively," Giraud continued. "The suit can be adjusted, and Skippy says he can fabricate some components for us."

  "A limited number of components," Skippy cautioned, "don't get too excited."

  "How much of an adjustment?" I stood on my toes to look in the helmet. Thomson did not appear to be comfortable.

  "The maximum adjustment, for practical use in combat, is limited to people six feet and taller." Skippy stated.

  "I'm six three," I mused, "who else?" Thomson and Giraud were tall, so was Chang.

  "Seven people," Giraud ticked off on his fingers, "me, you, Sergeant Thomson, Colonel Chang, Specialist Putri, Private Marsden, and privates Marsden, Darzi and Putri."

  "Seven people? Is that enough for a successful raid?" I asked.

  "Six people," Giraud corrected me. "You're not going on the raid, sir. You need to remain aboard the Dutchman, and command the operation."

  "He's right, Joe," Skippy added. "I'll be here flying the dropships and monitoring sensors, somebody needs to tell me what to do."

  Trying to keep the irritation off my face, I said tersely "We'll discuss that later. Are six people enough to achieve the mission?"

  "No." Giraud stated flatly.

  "I agree, Joe." Skippy said. "This is where we need your military genius. I could hammer the asteroid open with railguns, and then we search through the debris, but that's too much risk of damaging the items we need."

  "Lieutenant," I addressed my remark to Giraud, "you have special forces training and experience. If you think we can't achieve mission success, then I don't have anything to add."

  Giraud frowned. "We are, as you Americans say, back to square one."

  "We are not giving up. I'm sure you've considered everything. Let's step back, take a break, and approach this again tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes."

  Giraud helped Thomson out of the Kristang combat suit, Thomson moved his stiff shoulders, the suit had barely fit him, and the edges of the suit had dug deeply under his arms.

  "Sergeant," I asked while examining the Thuranin space suit, "if that Kristang suit is properly adjusted, are you confident you could use it in combat?"

  "Yes, sir. When it moves, it's almost effortless. With practice, we can be deadly with these suits. We're fortunate the Kristang weren't able to use these suits when we took the Flower."

  "Good, good." I was distracted. The Thuranin suit was lightweight, almost flimsy. Even assuming it was made of exotic high-tech material, I couldn't see how it could compete in combat against a Kristang suit. "Skippy, these Thuranin suits are like spandex. Does this material harden into diamond or something like that? Or do they have, like, energy shields like a ship?"

  "No, nothing fancy like that. It's a space suit." Skippy replied.

  "Huh. How do the Thuranin fight in these things?"

  "Fight?" Skippy laughed. "The Thuranin don't typically go into combat themselves. Those little green pinheads aren't going to expose themselves to danger directly. They remotely control military drones, you'd probably call them combat droids or robots or something like that."

  "Combat droids? Are there combat droids aboard this ship?"

  "Of course, there's three dozen of them in the ship's armory." There was an implied 'duh' in Skippy's voice. "Thirty eight units, to be exact."

  "Armory? What armory?" I asked.

  "We have combat robots?" Giraud demanded. "This would have been a good thing to know, before I spent days planning an assault!"

  "There are combat robots, rifles, rockets, all kinds of toys in the armory, it's located aft of the command section. It's kind of hidden, you have to know where it is."

  "Why the hell didn't you tell us about this?" I didn't try to keep the frustration out of my voice.

  "Well, Joe, you didn't ask," Skippy grumbled, "and I'm not going to volunteer to tell a bunch of monkeys where they can find dangerous toys to play with."

  "Merde." Giraud's face was red. "Colonel, if you ever feel like throwing Skippy out an airlock, let me know, and I will be very happy to take care of it for you."

  "What?" Skippy asked innocently. "What did I do?"

  I gave Giraud a thumb's up. "Skippy, if you don't already know, I can't explain it to you. These combat robots, are humans capable of controlling them, or is that something the Thuranin do through their cybernetics?"

  "The Thuranin use cybernetics, sure, that is one of the most efficient ways to telefactor a remote device, especially in combat where response time is critical. There's no reason we can't hook something up for humans to be the telefactoring agent."

  It would have been helpful for me if Skippy bothered to explain unfamiliar technical terms. "To be clear, telefactoring is remote control? With what, joysticks, buttons, that sort of thing?"

  "Phhhtttt!" Skippy made a raspberry sound. "As if! No way, dude, that would be way too slow! What, you think this is 1985 and you're playing Super Mario? We'll attach sensors to the operators, so the robots will move as they move. Motion capture, only way better than the technology you monkeys have. Now that I think about it, we'll need goggles also, so the operator can see what the robot sees. That's not as efficient as hooking directly into the optic nerve like the Thuranin do, it should be good enough. And the sensors should include accelerometers, so the operator can get a sense of feedback when the robot encounters resistance."

  "Would you kindly unlock the armory, so us grubby monkeys can see these amazing robots?" I put as much sarcasm into my voice as I could.

  "Since you asked so nicely, sure." Skippy couldn't resist a dig at us. "Wash your paws first, though, please."

  The droids were impressive, although Sergeant Adams quickly coined the term 'combot' for them. According to her, they weren't true androids, as they had only a limited ability to move and react on their own, requiring control by a sentient operator. Once we got three combots out of the armory and into an empty cargo bay, Giraud, Adams and Thomson were able to control them without any special gear, simply by having Skippy watch their movements and instruct the combots to follow. In action, we wouldn't be able to rely on Skippy, he cautioned, the asteroid base was heavily shielded and operators needed to be close to their combot, to reduce the time lag. During the raid, operators had to be aboard the dropships in the landing bay. I wasn't happy about that, we'd be exposing more people to risk, even if the risk to them was less than to the people wearing Kristang powered armor s
uits. We still needed people in suits on the raid, Skippy didn't trust combots with tasks that required fine motor skills, like selecting, picking up and transporting the fragile, ancient Elder gear he needed. Also, with only combots we'd have all our eggs in one basket; according to the Kristang and Thuranin data Skippy had downloaded, the Kristang had designed their defenses specifically to protect against the Thuranin, and Skippy couldn't guarantee the Kristang didn't have some ability to interfere with the telefactoring connection. The Kristang knew all about Thuranin combots, and would have spent a lot of time and effort figuring out how to beat them.

  Giraud's revised plan called for six people wearing Kristang suits, and nine telefactor operators in the dropships. Skippy would remotely fly the dropships, which meant we didn't need to dedicate people as pilots, I wanted at least four people trained to fly Thuranin dropships anyway. Six people needed to have Kristang suits adjusted to fit them, then practice using them in combat simulations. Four people needed training to fly Thuranin dropships, and it had to be minimal training because those same people, along with almost everyone else, had to practice telefactoring combots. For the raid, I reluctantly agreed with Giraud, Chang and Simms that I would remain behind aboard the Dutchman along with Skippy, Desai and Private Walorski.

  Walorski had been awakened and released from the medical pod by Skippy, after he decided Walorski had healed sufficiently to go through the remainder of the healing regimen on his own. On his own, except that his left forearm, that had been shattered and almost severed during the battle to capture the Flower, was encased in a rigid sleeve that was designed for Thuranin legs. It was a bit to large for Walorski's forearm, enough that he kept bumping it on things, causing him pain and causing Doctor Skippy endless frustration. Every time the healing forearm was disturbed, it set back Walorski's recovery ever so slightly. The sleeve contained nanoprobes that were knitting Walorski's bones, nerves and musculature back together, there were vials of fluids that needed to be changed three times a day. Skippy predicted a complete recovery, with the sleeve able to be removed in three weeks, possibly sooner if Walorski cooperated. Certainly a much better prognosis than what we'd feared originally, that of Walorski losing his left arm below the elbow, and very likely dying given the scant medical supplies we'd brought along and lack of a human doctor.