Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah, huh.” I caught a warning look from Simms out of the corner of my eye, she probably was concerned about me risking Skippy getting pissed off. She didn’t know that little shithead like I did.

  “Fair enough, Colonel Joe. You don’t know this, since you are, after all, bacteria, but I am actually a hundred percent reliable when I make a promise. We can work on that.” He still sounded hurt. I wondered what portion of his capacity was devoted to an emotion-emulating subroutine. It was almost convincing.

  “Are we done, Major? “ I asked Simms. “There isn’t anything we can do to help the Expeditionary Force on Paradise. UNEF came out here to protect Earth; that mission got all fucked up because the lizards lied to us, but we can protect Earth. That is our mission. If there ever is a way to reestablish contact with UNEF, I’m all for that, but it’s beyond our capability.”

  Simms nodded with a grimace. “You want me to talk to the crew?”

  That would be taking the coward’s way out. “No, I’ll handle it.”

  I was more tactful when I spoke to the crew later that day; explained the situation, listened sympathetically, said that I also had friends on Paradise. What I did not do was pull rank and state that I’m the commander and we’re doing what I think is best. Mostly, I listened, and let people talk. Everyone understood there wasn’t anything practical we could do for the humans on Paradise, and what was really bothering people was guilt. Guilt that we would, hopefully, be going home, to whatever Earthly comforts were still there. Home to friends and family, and cheeseburgers. While UNEF would be left to hope the Ruhar decided to divert enough resources from their war effort to keep them alive. Even if the Ruhar felt like feeding their former enemies, the technologically backward humans, the Kristang could harass Ruhar shipping enough to disrupt supplies getting to Paradise, and the Ruhar might not be able to provide for UNEF.

  In the end, I reminded our not-so-merry band of pirates that we would be coming home to an unknown situation, that we didn’t know how many Kristang and ships were on the Earth side of the wormhole, that Earth might no longer be the blue and green haven we remembered, that we might have to fight our way through numerically superior enemy forces. And that, when the Kristang on the Earth end of the wormhole realized they had no way home because we’d shut down the wormhole, they may be tempted to forget The Rules and use banned weapons against the human population. Eyes narrowed and jaws set when people considered that. “Our mission isn’t over when we shut down the wormhole behind us. That's when it begins.”

  "Colonel," Private Putri asked. The American Putri, not the Indian one. "What's the plan if there is a substantial force of Kristang ships at Earth?"

  "Then we fight. It's no good shutting down the wormhole if the lizards at Earth can destroy our home. We fight, however we can, until the lizards are no longer a threat to Earth. The Dutchman isn't a battleship, but we do have weapons, and superior jumping ability. If the lizards want to fight, we pound the shit out of them. We fight until the lizards are destroyed, or until our last breath. That’s my plan.”

  A couple hours later, I was taking my shoes off in my tiny sleeping quarters, when Skippy spoke through the speaker in the ceiling.

  “Colonel Joe, we need to talk.”

  “Oh,” I groaned, “don’t we talk enough? Can this wait?”

  “Emphatically no. We are close to transiting the wormhole to Earth, I need you to understand something before I program the jump drive.”

  Uh oh. His tone touched off my spidey senses. This was going to be trouble. What hadn’t the shiny little shithead told me this time? Swinging my legs back onto the floor, I rubbed my face to spark semi-alertness. “You have my attention. What is it?”

  “That was a rousing speech you gave, about fighting the Kristang with everything you have, to your last breath.”

  “You’re keeping me awake to compliment me on my speech?”

  “No, truthfully, as a speech, it was third rate at best. Totally derivative. You’re talking about the potential of going into humanity’s first space battle, and the best you can do is lame clichés? You could at least have thrown in some warmed-over quotes from Patton, or something.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sk-“

  “My point is, you may intend to fight with everything you have, but one thing you won’t have to fight with is this ship. I need the Dutchman to contact to Collective. I won’t allow it to be put at risk. And since I need a human, a live human crew to fly it for me, I won’t allow you to send everyone away to fight. Especially if it is likely that you would lose.”

  Shit. I gritted my teeth to answer. “What do you mean, you won't allow?”

  “If you want to do something stupid that will put the Dutchman at risk, or deprive me of a crew, I won’t cooperate in running the ship. That means I won’t program jumps, or load courses into the autopilot, or prepare and target weapons. Captain Desai has only learned to minimally maneuver this ship in normal space, and I can lock out those controls also. By going through the wormhole and then shutting it down behind us, I’m taking a risk that you might decide not to help me find the Collective after we resupply at Earth. We have a bargain, Joe, I expect you to keep it.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Such a multi-purpose word, Joe.”

  “I meant it as, fuck, yes, I remember our bargain. I will absolutely keep my end of it. You have any genius thoughts on how we’re to resupply, if the Kristang have a major task force of ships in earth orbit?”

  “That scenario is unlikely, given the price the Thuranin have been charging the White Wind clan for shipping to and from Earth. I expect the Kristang have garrisoned only a minimal force on Earth, their technological advantage is so overwhelming they would not need many troops to hold your backwards planet. Thuranin communications that I have intercepted indicate they have major fleet elements setting up for a battle around a wormhole cluster at the other edge of this sector. Their attention is focused elsewhere.”

  “The point is, Skippy, we have no idea what we’ll find when we get to Earth. If we discover the lizards are terrorizing our home planet, you can’t expect this crew to run away and wander the galaxy with you. We need another option.”

  “I’m open to suggestions, Joe. You’re the soldier.”

  How was I supposed to come up with a space battle strategy, with a tired brain, and no experience or training in space combat? Or ship to ship combat of any type? Oh, yeah, because I wore silver eagles, that’s why. “All right, how about the Flower? You don’t need that ship, right? Are you Ok with me sending part of the crew away on the Flower, to fight the Kristang? I promise you, Skippy, I promise you I won’t leave you here. I will remain aboard the Dutchman.”

  “The Flower is somewhat useful, as having a Kristang ship attached, particularly a battle-damaged Kristang ship, is an effective ruse. But it is not essential. Ok, you can detach the Flower, I’ll even program a jump for you. I don’t know what good you expect your untrained crew to do, with a ship they don’t know who to fly.”

  “Then I need to get them started on training, pronto.” We needed a strategy also. Or, not? I considered what Giraud said about flexible battle plans, and it made total sense. We couldn’t make plans until we had intel. Any intel. “How about this, Skippy? Can we jump the Dutchman in close enough to see what forces the Kristang have around Earth, but far enough away to be safe? Then we can either detach the Flower, or, if you agree the risk is minimal, we jump the Dutchman into orbit.”

  “Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously weasel-wordish. Minimal risk is not the same as no risk. Oh, what the hell, why not? I’m bored already. Just for you, Joe, I’ll agree to this: we can jump directly into orbit and scope out the situation from there, and we jump right out again if I judge the risk to be too great. Not that I don’t trust you or your crew, but I will program the autopilot on a timer to jump us right back out unless I cancel the command.”

  “Deal.” I hastily agreed before Skippy could chan
ge his mind. Any risk too great for Skippy would mean it’s best for us to retreat and consider our options anyway. Maybe we could lob a couple railgun rounds at the Kristang just before we left, as a wake-up call. Having a Thuranin star carrier jump into Earth orbit and blast a couple Kristang ships without warning would certainly throw the Kristang into panicked confusion.

  “For your education in tactics of space combat, if the Kristang are at Earth in force, it’s better to jump right into orbit than to jump in a couple AUs out. Even I can’t conceal the gamma ray burst when we emerge from a jump, we’d have to wait there and run long-range sensor scans, and the Kristang at Earth would be alerted to our arrival. Jumping right into their laps will allow us to catch them off guard, and maybe pump a couple missiles up their asses before they can react. Then we can jump away, if we need to.”

  “Space combat sounds complicated.” I thought back to when I’d listened to the Chicken pilot talk about air combat after our first war game, on Camp Alpha.

  “Uh huh. Then there’s the Skippy factor.”

  Part of me wanted to avoid taking the bait. “The Skippy factor?”

  “You know, my incredible awesomeness.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Not convinced? Specifically, I am referring to my ability to remotely take control of Kristang systems, using the Thuranin nanovirus embedded in their systems. To do that, I need to be within about a lightsecond of the enemy ship.”

  “A lightsecond? That’s, uh-” Light travels, uh, hmm, I was trying to picture myself in a classroom-

  “Let me put you out of your misery before you sprain your brain, monkey boy. A light second is roughly the distance from the Earth to your moon.”

  “Oh.” I thought a moment. “I thought ships shouldn’t jump in that close to a planet?”

  “Most ships can’t, the gravity well of a planet distorts the jump field at entry to make jump navigation unpredictable, and the field distortion can damage jump engines, even tear a ship apart. A ship with me controlling the jump engines compensates for the field distortion. Thus, the Skippy factor.”

  “Impressive.” I had to admit.

  “What? No snarky joke?”

  “No, you may be an arrogant asshole, but your awesomeness is legit.”

  “It ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. Hey, is that why you jumped us in so close to that gas giant planet?”

  There was an ever so short hesitation. “That may have been too close. I hadn’t finished tuning up this ship’s crappy jump engines. Won’t happen again. Hey, uh, good talk. You need to get some shut-eye, we can talk more later, huh?”

  I laid back down on the bed, trying to conceal a smile. The monkey had made the AI uncomfortable. I needed to remember that.

  The transition through the final wormhole was uneventful, any fears I had about us running into an outbound Thuranin ship were for nothing. Skippy couldn't detect any ships in the area. With the wormhole safely behind us, Skippy disrupted the wormhole's connection to the network, and it blinked out. Helpfully, Skippy had loaded a new app on my zPhone, on the home screen of all our zPhones, it was simple clock. A clock counting down until the wormhole reset. We all got the message, loud and clear.

  In my quarters, I was attempting to attach sergeant stripes to one of my uniform tops, Skippy had fabricated the chevrons for me. Once we reached Earth, my theater rank of colonel would be voided, and I'd revert back to me regular Army rank of sergeant. Part of me, a big part of me, feared what the Army brass would think about me ever wearing silver eagles, and all the things I'd completely fucked up, or the questionable decisions I'd made. As soon as Earth was on the display, those silver war eagles were going into a box, and I wasn't going to make a big deal about it. Chang, who had been released from sickbay now that his broken ribs had healed enough, agreed he would take command when we reached Earth, with the exception that I was still captain of the ship. In my opinion, Chang wasn't comfortable dealing with Skippy yet. It didn't matter much anyway, once we made contact with the authorities on Earth, command authority of our pirate crew would be from the surface. Assuming we didn't have to fight our way through a fleet of Kristang warships. I was nervous about that.

  There was another thing I was nervous about, I waited until I could talk to Skippy in private. Taking a break from running sprints down the Dutchman's spine was a good place. "Listen, oh great and powerful Oz, I'm really sorry that I ever called you Skippy. I feel like an idiot now, I didn't know how powerful you are, and I meant no disrespect. The government is going to shit if they hear I named you Skippy, so what else should I call you? Lord God Almighty is still out, in case you were thinking of that."

  "I'm good with Skippy. I like it."

  "You sure?" I couldn't tell if he was joking.

  "Yes. Skippy is a nickname, right?"

  "I think so." I didn't know of anyone whose given name was Skippy.

  "And nicknames can be either a term of derision, which, face it, isn't possible with you lower lifeforms talking about me."

  "Of course not." I rolled my eyes.

  "I saw that! Or a nickname can be an indication of acceptance, of belonging, of being one of the cool kids."

  Cool kids? A million year old, unbelievably powerful being, wanted to be one of the 'cool kids'? "Sure, let's go with that."

  "People calling me Skippy will constantly remind you monkeys that I am not anything like any Skippy who ever lived on your miserable dirtball of a planet, and that will point out your total unimportance compared to me, far better than any name intended for respect. And really, do you truly think you knuckle draggers are actually capable of giving me the respect I deserve? The name Skippy is appropriate; it was a defensive reaction by you, to something far beyond your understanding."

  "It was an offensive reaction, to the fact that you're an asshole!"

  "Or that. Whatever."

  Before we made the final jump into our home solar system, I ordered a stand down to make sure everyone was well rested, and all our systems and gear were shipshape and ready to rock and roll. Especially I was concerned about the Dutchman's weapons, comparatively weak though they were.

  Chang was up and about faster than I expected, even with Thuranin miracle treatments, the guy had broken ribs and a partially punctured lung. He came into the CIC while I was in the big chair and Simms was in the CIC. “Colonel Chang, should you be out of sickbay,” I asked. Skippy hadn’t said anything about him releasing Chang from treatment.

  Chang lifted his shirt, there was a hard black plastic something wrapped around his ribs. “I am being treated, Skippy said walking around would help the tissues to adjust as they healed.”

  “All right, as long as you don’t think you’re going back on duty. You take it easy for a couple days, agreed?”

  Chang winced, still in pain when he moved. “Agreed. Colonel, I hear it was your idea to use our suit radios to triangulate the position of the communications node That was excellent thinking, it may have saved us all. If we had to sort through all that trash by ourselves, we would have been trapped.”

  Getting admiration from Chang felt great, it was also misplaced. Unfortunately, I needed to explain what really happened. “Thank you, it wasn’t anything brilliant, it was obvious. All I did was ask whether the comm node could transmit, it seemed like it should if its purpose is, you know, communications. Skippy is incredibly smart, he’s also absent-minded and doesn’t think of things that we would consider obvious. Like how he didn’t tell us about the combots until I asked him how the Thuranin fought. Always keep that in mind when you’re dealing with Skippy, he simply doesn’t think on our level.”

  We jumped into Earth orbit, Skippy reported there were only two Kristang ships there, a frigate and a troop transport that was also their command ship. I adjusted the display to zoom in close on the big Kristang troop ship, so it filled one of the view screens. It was a damned big ship, although I kept forgetting how very much larger the Dutchma
n was. The Dutchman could carry dozens of those Kristang ships across lightyears.

  "I'll need to establish a connection to the nanovirus on the Kristang command ship, crack their multi-level encryption, take control of their computers, and lock them out."

  "How long will that take?"

  "I did it between me saying 'establish' and 'connection'."

  "Nobody likes a show-off, Skippy."

  "I can go slower, if you like, but I'd probably get bored, and lose track of what I was supposed to be doing after a couple pico seconds."

  "We can't have that. What assets do they have on and around Earth?"

  "Just those two ships, the troop carrier over there that is their command ship, and a frigate in a polar orbit, currently over Sumatra on the other side of the planet. The troop carrier has twenty four assault dropships of various types, of which three are aboard now, one is in orbit on approach, and the others are scattered across the planet. The frigate also has two small dropships aboard. There are Thuranin defensive installations atop the space elevators. And, the Kristang have a constellation of seventeen maser satellites in orbit, for ground strikes."

  "Ok," I let out a long breath. "We're safe enough to stay here? Cancel the jump out?"

  "Affirmative, I have cancelled the jump away countdown. We got lucky, both ships are within my range of control, although the frigate's orbit will move it beyond my range in ten minutes. At the moment, the Kristang are startled by a Thuranin ship, a star carrier, appearing in the sky without notice. I’m confusing them with garbled communications from the Dutchman, that won’t stall them for long. Both Kristang ships are preparing to jump away on short notice. They don't realize that I control their computers."

  "You said there are satellites? Like what kind of satellite?"

  "Each satellite is fifty eight meters long, powered by a fusion reactor which can generate eight hundred twenty megawatts of maser power."

  "Is that a lot?"

  "Your American nuclear aircraft carriers typically generate around two hundred megawatts, from fission reactors."