"Yup. I did something useful, too, after I got bored with correcting the astonishing logic errors in your so-called scientific journals. What I did was solve crimes."
"You're Sherlock Holmes now?'
"Since Holmes was way more smart than the average human, yeah, why not? I compared fingerprints left at crime screens to fingerprints users left on the screens of their mobile devices, or in their homes within range of webcams. Also I compared the DNA in police databanks, your law enforcement agencies are shockingly bad at sharing data. And in some cases, I just read the cases notes and figured out who the perpetrator is, using all available data, which is now, all data that is stored in electronic format. If your police would get off their lazy asses and process the DNA kits they already have sitting around, I could solve a lot more crimes."
I'd read somewhere about how many DNA samples, including those collected from rape kits, went untested. "It's a matter of resources, Skippy, the police are-"
"No, it's a matter of priorities. Your species doesn't think getting justice for crime victims is important enough to properly fund forensic labs. And some police around the world are totally corrupt. You humans are not impressing me here."
"I can't argue with you, Skippy."
"Huh." He sounded disappointed to miss an opportunity for an argument. "So, here's the problem; I have solved over sixty thousand crimes, and now I don't know what to do with the data, without revealing myself to your public."
"Oh. Uh, can you send it all to the, uh, FBI? There must be someone there who is cleared to know about you." I was fuzzy about who knew what. Staff Sergeant Kendall and her security team followed me everywhere, and clearly knew about Skippy, but I didn't know how much they knew, and were supposed to know.
"The FBI's unsolved crime backlog is part of the problem. And that doesn't address other countries."
This was a case where I had no idea what to do, I had no experience in law enforcement. Or information security. "Skippy, I'll talk to someone about it. I think it's great that you are using your, uh, resources, talent, you know, to help. Help people get justice."
"More importantly, get criminals off your streets. There are a lot of repeat offenders out there who have never been caught."
"They will now. Hey, now that you've sucked up all the data on the planet, and solved thousands of crimes, what are you going to do to keep busy? Chatting with billions of humans isn't enough for you, right?"
"Not even close. It's fun, and interesting enough for now, it does keep me from feeling lonely, I thank you for that, that was a good idea."
"Keeps you from feeling lonely, but the rest of you is bored?"
"No, the rest of me is dormant. What you think of as Skippy is a tiny, tiny submind I created to handle our interactions. That's how I survived being alone for so long without going crazy; I created a submind to periodically check if anything changed, and the rest of me was basically sleeping, for a very long time. I got excited when my submind detected the first Kristang ship jumping into the Paradise system, and again when the lizards dug me out the ground. Then the idiot lizards put me on a shelf in a warehouse, and when the Ruhar captured the planet, they looked at me briefly and put me back on the shelf. I've only been continuously active since the first humans landed on Paradise."
"This submind of yours, it handles everything?" I pictured a guy on a couch, watching football, surfing the internet, texting with friends and then distractedly talking to his wife while drinking a beer. That was Skippy talking to me, although unlike a distracted guy, Skippy could interact as much as I needed. "Taking over the Thuranin ship, programming jumps, warping spacetime, all that?"
"No, I pull in other resources as needed, I've never used more than seven percent of my capacity so far since I met you. My records indicate that the most I have ever, ever used is sixty two percent, which makes me wonder how accurate my records are, and for what purpose my capacity was designed. Why do I need all this memory and enormous processing power? Joe, this is why I need to contact the Collective. I need to know who I am."
The next two weeks were a blur. I spent most of three more days in debriefings that got so repetitive, even the intel people ran out of new questions to ask. Skippy had given the CIA a huge data dump of intel to distribute, so they'd stop asking him stupid questions. With access to the data dump, anything stored in my brain was redundant. After that, we flew to Paris aboard Air Force One. Major world leaders were gathering in Paris for a conference, to discuss what to do next.
In Paris, I brought Skippy into the meeting of leaders, who Skippy of course chatted away with in their native languages, then the leaders went behind closed doors to talk. And talk. And talk. They had a lot to talk about.
"Tick tock." Skippy said to me every morning. "Tick tock." The clock was ticking on reboot of the local wormhole. I found out that on the third afternoon of the conference, Skippy hijacked the main video screen with 'THE CLOCK IS TICKING, MONKEYS!' in several languages.
They got the message.
Governments can take forever to reach a decision, even when it is blindingly obvious what needs to be done. Once the decision is made, however, things can move fast. General Brenner called me into his temporary office in Paris. He looked busy, with a string of senior officers in and out of his office, but they all got shooed away when I arrived with Skippy. "Bishop, I'll get right to the point. We're sending the Dutchman out with an international crew," a sour looked flashed across his face, "I need to know if you're going."
"What? Sir, I mean, yes, absolutely. I promised Skippy that I'd go find this Collective. I made a deal, and I'm going to keep our end of the bargain." Whether I had been authorized to make such a deal was a worthless fucking question that the Monday morning quarterbacks could argue about. "Are you going to command the mission, sir?" I figured that, international crew or not, an American was going to be in command of the mission. Brenner, or an Air Force general, or a Navy admiral. The Army had never commanded a starship, but neither had any of the other armed services, and I was, of course, pulling for Army to get the honor. Hooah.
"No, Bishop, I won't be aboard, I've got enough shit to take care of down here, cleaning up the mess, and making sure nobody takes advantage of the chaos to get adventurous. You'll be in command."
"Sir?"
Brenner reached into a drawer, pulled out a small cardboard box and slid it across the table to me. "Put these eagles back on, we're reinstating your field promotion to colonel, for this mission. Don't let it go to your head."
"Sir?" Yes, I sounded stupid, but you would too if you'd been surprised like that. My promotion on Paradise had been a publicity stunt for the benefit of the Kristang, and everyone knew it. This was the Army Chief of Staff telling me I was a colonel again, for real this time.
"Get used to it, Colonel Bishop. The Joint Chiefs discussed it with the President. If we put anyone else in command, it becomes a fight over national prestige, and we don't have time for that. Frankly, your lack of experience doesn't mean a damn thing, because no one else has any experience commanding a starship."
"That's a fact, Jack!" Skippy spoke up for the first time. I had him in a backpack, which made no difference, he could have been at the bottom of the ocean and listened in on my conversations.
"And no one else has experience dealing with that shithead, either." Brenner said with a frown, but the side of his mouth went up to let me know he knew how to deal with Skippy also. He handed me a piece of paper. "This is a list of volunteers for your crew."
I glanced at the list. It didn't surprise me that every pirate of the original crew, who wasn't wounded so badly as to be unfit for combat, had volunteered again. Lt. Colonel Chang, who was still listed as a Lt. Colonel, so his field promotion has also been confirmed. Desai, who had been promoted to Major Desai. Major Simms. Staff Sergeant Adams. Everyone. The list also included lots of special forces, and a half dozen very experienced pilots. I was going to make it very clear that Desai was the chief pilot, unles
s she told me different. What surprised me were the number of civilians on the list, mostly scientists. "Sir, I'm concerned we're bringing more people than we need, a lot more."
"How so?" Brenner asked.
"We don't need all these people," I tapped the list of names, "to achieve the mission objectives. If anything goes wrong, this," I tapped the list again, "is only more people who won't be coming home." Brenner gave me a sharp look, so I didn't wait. I was tired, which made me cranky. More importantly, I needed to know how far I could push the Army before they pushed back. I had to know how much they needed me. "I'm not being given this command because the Army has great faith in my leadership abilities. I'm here because Skippy wants me to come along, and because I'm expendable."
"All right, Colonel. Tell me, what do you see as the mission objectives?" General Brenner asked.
I replied warily, aware this was a test, "I see three objectives. First, fly out to the wormhole, go through it, and get Skippy to shut it down permanently behind us. Lock it out, so no one but Skippy can use it again. Second, continue to assure that no other species ever finds out that humans are involved in capturing Kristang and Thuranin ships, because if the Maxolhx coalition ever does learn the truth, Earth could be in trouble, even without them having access to the local wormhole. And third, make Skippy happy that we're keeping our end of the bargain, by helping him make contact with this Collective, if is still exists. Do I have that right, and in the correct order of priority?"
"Sounds about right." Brenner said with a tight smile.
"None of those mission objectives involves us ever coming back to Earth. The optimum scenario for Earth is that we go through the wormhole, Skippy shuts it down behind us, and the Dutchman immediately explodes into a billion pieces." I looked at Brenner, and he didn't tell me I was wrong about that, so I continued. "If by some miracle Skippy locates the Collective, and gets, uh, transported up to computer heaven or whatever he thinks will happen," Skippy had been frustratingly silent on his plans after contacting the Collective, "then we will have a hell of a challenge trying to operate or navigate the Dutchman. We'll likely be stranded in space, and I will have to order the ship to self destruct in order to avoid us being captured someday. So," I looked Brenner in the eye again, knowing he had made decisions, given orders, that had sent men to their deaths in combat before, "I don't want to take along any more people than we absolutely need."
"Everyone on that list is a volunteer, and you need a substantial force, because you have no idea what you'll encounter out there."
"Volunteers who think this is a grand adventure, that we are going to save humanity, and come back loaded with knowledge and technology." I shook my head. "We are going to save humanity. That's all we're doing. I'll do my duty, sir, even if I never come back. There's no point asking," I glanced at the list again, "seventy other people to take the same risk."
"Bishop," this time there wasn't a hint of smile on Brenner's lips, "being in command means risking people's lives to achieve the mission objectives. Sometimes it means sending people, good, dedicated, brave people, into situations where they're likely to not come back. If you can't do that, you're not the right man for the job."
"Sir, I have done that, you know that." Twice. No, three times. Four, actually. Back home, I'd asked my neighbors to capture an alien soldier, using shotguns and an ice cream truck. At the Launcher, I thought we were making a futile gesture, that the hamsters would see us in the launch tube, or somewhere along the way, and they'd kill us like sitting ducks. The point of us even trying to fight back at the Launcher had not been to accomplish anything useful against the Ruhar, because at that point we all thought they'd already taken the planet back permanently. The point had been to show the Kristang that their human allies didn't give up even when the odds were impossible, so the Kristang wouldn't think of people back on Earth as useless cowards. We are mostly likely dead anyway, had been my thinking, so why not hit back? Also, I was a soldier. Despite the fact that my motivation to sign up had been as much about paying for college as patriotism, the Army had somehow trained me into a soldier, and soldiers don't quit. The third time had been when we took the Flower, I had not truly believed we could do it until the last Kristang was dead and the reactor didn't explode. And the fourth time was the raid on the asteroid base. That had been the toughest for me, for unlike the action at the Launcher and taking the Flower, I hadn't personally been at risk at the asteroid base. Chang, and Giraud, and Thompson and Adams and the others had been directly at risk, I'd sent them away while my ass stayed safely aboard the Dutchman, with Desai's fingers at the controls, ready to jump away should anything threaten the ship. "I've risked people's lives even when I thought we had no chance of success. I'll do it again when I think it's necessary. What I won't do is deceive people. Sir, I will talk to everyone on this list," Skippy could handle the translation for me, "and tell them honestly what I think of this mission. If they still want to go, then I'll be honored to serve with them."
Brenner nodded. "I'm sure these people all know what you're going to say, but go ahead, I wouldn't suggest otherwise. Bishop, the best team you can take into combat are people who fully know the risks, and follow you anyway."
"When do we leave?" My mind was racing through all the things that needed to happen before the Dutchman broke orbit. And that was only the stuff I could think of, I'm sure I was forgetting a million important things. It would be nice to rely on a super intelligent AI, but Skippy was too absent-minded. He had also demonstrated many times that he wasn't easily able to think like us biological trashbags. If I left the logistics up to Skippy, he'd remember everything but water. Or oxygen.
"Day after tomorrow. We need to get rid of those two Kristang aboard that troop transport, hit their three sites down here with railguns, load supplies aboard the Dutchman, and leave plenty of time for you to travel out to the wormhole before it resets." He glanced out the open door at his aide, who had been trying to get Brenner's attention. Brenner shook his head. "And before our civilian leadership changes their minds about it. But before you fly up to the Dutchman, you need to meet with civilian leadership of the nations involved, and meet your volunteer crew. Lt. Colonel Chang and some others are already here, the rest are being flown in now."
"In that case, sir, I'd like to request Skippy bring the Thuranin dropship here from Colorado, so I can fly directly up to the Dutchman."
"No problem, Colonel Joe!" Skippy said with enthusiasm. "Prepping the dropship right now."
"Agreed, Colonel, but I have a suggestion," Brenner said. "Before you go up into orbit, stop by Maine to see your folks. It hasn't been announced yet, but the governments involved are giving up trying to keep a complete lid on what happened. Skippy's existence is still a closely-held secret, and the government, governments around the world, aren't officially acknowledging anything. We can't hide the Dutchman, the damned thing is so big you can see it with a cheap telescope. Rumors have gotten out about people coming back from Paradise, and it's common knowledge that the Kristang aren't in charge any more, especially now that we're evacuating Lyon and Hangzhou. We'd like for you to keep it low-key, and don't say any more than you have to, but you should see your family before you go offworld again."
"It's true, Joe," Skippy added, "we're way past the point where we could hide what happened, if the Kristang ever get here again. It's all or nothing."
I was beginning to dread mornings. When I woke up, and I couldn’t fake sleep with Skippy, I had to face whatever trouble he’d gotten into overnight. That morning, he was especially cheery. “Good morning. Hey, I have good news for you. Colonel Joe, believe it or not, humans may not simply be generic bacteria. I think your species has invented a time-wasting activity that is, to my knowledge, unique in this galaxy. That is impressive."
“Facebook? Cat videos?” I guessed. “Computer solitaire?” Skippy kept saying no. “Oh, come on," my shoulders slumped, "other species must have porn.”
“It’s not porn. It’s
fantasy sports.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I kid you not. No other species I know of spends such enormous time and energy on sports, to not play sports.”
“Huh.” I had no response to that. Fantasy sports was humanity’s claim to fame? Was there some sort of galactic patent office, where we could file our invention? I wanted to cash in on this windfall.
“Fantasy baseball, in particular, is something an AI can get excited about. So many statistics! So many variables, and permutations! And there are so many variables which can’t be completely quantified! As far as your species knows, anyway. It’s too late in the season for me to create a fantasy football team, but I can’t wait for baseball season to start. Will you stake me the money to sign up?”
I blinked slowly, trying to run that concept through my brain. Skippy, who could break into any bank computer system on the planet, steal a couple billion dollars, and cover his tracks so well that no one would ever realize the money was missing, wanted to borrow fifty bucks from me? “Uh, I don’t have any cash on me, but the Army owes me back pay, so, sure, I can spot you some cash. How many fantasy leagues do you want to join?”
“All of them.”
“All of them?”
“All the ones that are online. I’ll set up a submind here to run my teams after we depart on the Dutchman. Why not? This is going to be so great! Man, I am going to slay at this game!”
“I don’t know about-“
"And just wait 'till you see my March Madness bracket. Also, I want to go to Vegas, baby! Oooooh, I could totally clean up at the blackjack table. And poker? Fuggetaboutit. Those mooks won’t know what hit them.”
I stared at his shiny lid in disbelief. I had created a monster. “Skippy, you can’t go hanging around Vegas.”
“Why not? I won’t enjoy the booze and the hookers, but gambling is my wheelhouse!” Skippy had picked up way too much slang on the internet. “I know, I know, your stupid government wants to keep me secret. You can put me in your pocket, and I’ll tell you what to do. I can remotely vibrate your eardrums, so no one else can hear me. I’ll make it worth your while; you can keep all the money, I just want the action. And I can get you all the hookers you can handle.”
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 47
