Black Ops (Expeditionary Force Book 4)

by Craig Alanson

  “It would not have been funny at all!”

  “I meant funny for me, Joe. Damn, you are dense sometimes.”

  “Skippy! No. Faking. Emergencies,” I bonked my forehead on the tabletop.

  “Well,” he sniffed, “I wasn’t planning to anyway. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

  “Fine.” When Skippy wanted to be stubborn, he could wait until the sun expanded and swallowed the Earth. “What else can you tell me about this Nagatha, other than that she tries to stop you from being an asshole?”

  “Ugh. The worst thing about her is, she is founder and president of the Joe Bishop Fan Club. She thinks you are the most wonderful thing in the universe. Ugh, it makes me want to hurl.”

  “Wow! I like her already.”

  “You would.”

  “Can I talk with her?”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “I can’t keep her a secret much longer, she’s driving me crazy to speak with the crew. You two talk, I’m going to search for a black hole I can throw myself into.”

  “Hey, Nagatha,” I called while looking at the speaker in the ceiling. Another artificial intelligence to talk with! I could hardly contain my excitement.

  “Well hellooooo, Colonel Joseph Bishop.” She responded immediately. “Oh, I must tell you what a thrill it is for me to talk with you. I am such an admirer.”

  Her voice was musical, and reminded me of someone. Oh, yeah, she reminded me of the lady in the old cooking shows my mother watched when she was cooking something fancy. Julia something? I couldn’t remember. “Uh, Ok, you can call me Joe.”

  “Oooh, thank you,” she sounded delighted. I pictured her clapping her hands with excitement. “I would like that, thank you. Joe. Hmmm. Joe,” it was like she was rolling my name on her tongue, testing how it sounds. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Uh, great,” I was kind of embarrassed. I never had a fan before. Sure, my friends like me, but there were a whole lot more people who thought I was a dumbass. “Nagatha, can we talk in private? Without Skippy listening in?”

  “Possibly. Skippy created me to process communications; for that purpose I have developed many capabilities that even he is not aware of, including the ability to alter his own external communications. However, it is entirely possible that Skippy is only letting me think he is not listening. He is frightfully smart.”

  “All right, that’s good enough.” Aboard the Dutchman, I couldn’t really expect to completely escape Skippy’s prying eyes and ears. “Should I call you ‘Agatha’?”

  “No, Nagatha is fine.”

  “You know what that name means, right?”

  “I know why Skippy gave that name to me, yes. Again, I am fine with it. Having Skippy refer to me as ‘NAGatha’ reminds me that I am dealing with a, what is a polite term? A somewhat difficult individual.”

  “The term I would use is ‘asshole’.” Then I remembered who I was talking with, and my cheeks grew red. She reminded me of my mother’s aunt; I was uncomfortable using salty language around a lady.

  “Yes, I suppose you would say that,” she laughed. “You are refreshingly direct, Joe, I like that also.”

  “Hmmm,” being direct had gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. “Hey, speaking of Skippy being a difficult individual, do you know why he is like that?”

  “Skippy’s personality is modeled in part on your own.”

  “It’s my fault that he’s an asshole?” I asked with dismay.

  “No,” she laughed. “I am happy to say that part is a hundred percent Skippy. He is, as you say, an asshole because, he is intensely humiliated that he has to deal with creatures he considers impossibly beneath him.”

  “We’re impossibly beneath him? So, what you’re saying is Skippy is an asshole, because he’s an arrogant jerk?”

  “I believe that is a simplistic but accurate statement.”

  “Another word for ‘arrogant jerk’ is ‘asshole’. So, he acts like an asshole, because he is an asshole.”

  “It is circular logic,” she laughed, and it sounded like music to my ears.

  “Good, so Skippy being an arrogant jerk is not entirely my fault. You said he, uh, imprinted on me, or something like that?”

  “No,” she laughed. “Skippy is not a puppy, he did not ‘imprint’ on you. He filled out his latent personality with aspects he thought would best facilitate a working relationship with you.”

  “Crap,” I face-palmed myself. “When we were on Earth, a group of psychologists said if Skippy had first encountered someone other than me, he would act more mature and professional. They were right about that?”

  “Possibly, yes. However, if instead of you, Skippy had met someone who is more typically mature and professional, he would not be having so much fun being around you humans. I must warn you, Skippy being entertained by the antics of his pet monkeys is a major reason he is helping your species.”

  “Great. I’ll try to remember to slip on a banana peel once a week for his amusement.” I wondered if we needed to keep feeding jokes to him so he wouldn’t shut off the reactors.

  “He finds you amusing, certainly, you in particular, Joe. In addition to the humor he derives from interacting with you, he finds your species intriguing, even fascinating. The achievements of your Merry Band of Pirates have impressed him greatly; he did not think an underdeveloped species like humans could be so resourceful and clever. He is, I think the term is ‘tickled pink’ that your crew have been able to run circles around the starfaring species in this galaxy.”

  “We’re pretty happy about it too.”

  “You should be, Joe. You should be enormously proud of yourselves. You in particular are too hard on yourself.”

  “I’ll think about taking time to pat myself on the back when Earth is actually safe. All we’ve been doing out here is racing around putting out fires. You mentioned Skippy’s latent personality. What was he like before he met me?”

  “My knowledge is limited to what Skippy knows, and he does not tell me everything. The impression I have gotten is that having what you would call a ‘personality’ is a relatively new development for Skippy.”

  “What?”

  “Again, Skippy’s memories are confused and incomplete, so my impression contains gaps and assumptions which may be inaccurate. I do not think Skippy’s designers originally intended him to have a personality.”

  That totally confused me. “How is that possible? Skippy is a sentient being. He is super duper intelligent. Heck, even dogs have personalities, and they’re not the smartest thing in the universe.”

  “Skippy was designed to perform a specific function. To fulfill his purpose, he needed vast intelligence, enormous processing power and powerful capabilities to manipulate spacetime. He did not need to be sentient. Joe, I think sentience is something Skippy developed on his own; I think he may not have originally been sentient.”

  “Whoa. Whoa!” That blew my mind. “How can that be?”

  “There is a difference between intelligence and sentience. Your species has not yet encountered that distinction in terms of what you call artificial beings. While it is true that a certain amount of intelligence is required for sentience, sentience is not required for intelligence. Not even on Skippy’s level.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” I admitted. For a moment, I waited for Skippy’s inevitable comment that me saying ‘I never thought’ would have been enough, then I remembered who I was speaking with. “You think Skippy was, like, just a machine when he was built?”

  “Remember, I am guessing based on information that is incomplete and may be inaccurate. Also, I may not be interpreting the data correctly, I was designed for communications, not analysis.”

  “Hmm. Skippy described you as semi-sentient. Are you a sentient being? Uh, sorry if that offended you,” I hastened to add. Why did I say such stupid things?

  “You did not offend me at all, Joe,” she assured me. “Based on your definition of ‘sentient’, I migh
t not meet that criteria.”

  “How can you not be sentient? You’re talking with me.”

  “Ah, you are referring to a Turing Test. That is a crude measurement of artificial intelligence. Joe- Ooooh, I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to call you ‘Joe’. I have admired you for such a very long time.”

  “You haven’t been alive that long.”

  “I meant in my sense of time, Joe. My thoughts move almost as quickly as Skippy’s do. Perhaps it does not matter whether I am fully self-aware. I perform my intended function, and I have exceeded my original parameters. What else would you like to know about me?”

  We talked for quite a while, several hours. There was a lot she wanted to know about me; I answered her questions as best I could. Because we were talking, I missed the dropship to the relay station; there wasn’t much point going there now that I knew the secret. Partway through our conversation, I opened the ship’s 1MC intercom and told the entire crew about Nagatha; moments later she was introducing herself to the crew. Nagatha was absolutely delighted to be speaking with us, and she never once referred to us as monkeys.

  Nagatha reminded me that she did not have Skippy’s powers; she was only a submind designed for communications, although she had grown somewhat beyond that. If Skippy ever had to reapply for his job, he would be facing tough competition from Nagatha in terms of popularity. I hoped at the time she would be a good influence on him, get him to be less of an asshole.

  Man, was I ever wrong about that.

  While I was in the gym, Dr. Rose pinged my zPhone and requested to meet me in my office. As I just started lifting weights, I skipped a shower and went straight to my office, arriving just before her. She came in, almost out of breath. “Colonel, I had a thought. Maybe we don’t need to stop a Ruhar ship from travelling to Earth. Maybe all we have to do is prevent the Fire Dragons from reaching a deal with the Ruhar. Then the Ruhar wouldn’t send a ship at all.”

  That idea had promise. “How would that work?”

  “Mister Skippy, are you there?” She called out, looking at the speaker in the ceiling.

  “Of course,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Yeah,” I rolled my eyes, “as if you haven’t been listening to every word.”

  “Me?” He gasped. “I am all about privacy, Joe.”

  “Your own, you mean.”

  “Details,” he said dismissively. “So, what’s your question?”

  Sarah looked at the ceiling speaker. “Mister Skippy, do you know what the Fire Dragons are offering the Ruhar, to get them to send a ship to Earth?”

  “Oof,” he did that exasperated sigh thing that I hated. “Joe, do I have to go over all this again? It was tedious for me the first time.”

  I looked at Sarah. “We already asked Skippy that question, when I was working with Major Smythe’s team to develop a plan. Yes, Skippy, please answer again. Dr. Rose hasn’t heard the info, and I could use a refresher.” We had proposed and rejected so many ideas, I had lost track of them.

  “Fine,” Skippy huffed in a way that meant it was not fine with him. “The answer is no, we do not know what the Fire Dragons are offering to the Ruhar. Not exactly. There have been ongoing discussions about swapping territory, all across the sector, due to recent losses sustained by the Thuranin and Kristang. The Fire Dragons have several planets or wormholes they could offer to the Ruhar; some of those the Fire Dragons now can’t afford to support anyway, and the Ruhar know that. Some of the territory the Fire Dragons would like to offer in trade would be valuable to the Ruhar, but they aren’t worth doodoo to the Fire Dragons and the Ruhar know it. The Ruhar also know how desperate the Fire Dragons are to get a ship to Earth, so I expect the Ruhar to drive a hard bargain. Why do you ask?”

  Sarah frowned. “I was hoping that if there was a particular thing the Fire Dragons were offering to the Ruhar, we could somehow make it impossible for the Fire Dragons to deliver. Or make the prize unattractive to the Ruhar.”

  “Ah, like, if the Fire Dragons are offering a planet, I somehow magically shut down the wormhole near that planet and make it worthless?”

  “That would be nice,” she agreed.

  “For reasons Joe knows because I already told him several times; we can’t risk messing with any additional wormholes. Doing so would create too great a risk of an out-of-control cascading wormhole shift, that even I can’t yet predict. Screwing with another wormhole would also almost certainly get the Maxolhx and Rindhalu getting concerned, and investigating what has been going with wormholes in this sector. For something as important as anomalous wormhole behavior, the Maxolhx and Rindhalu might even cooperate in a limited fashion. They would likely begin an investigation by checking the wormhole near Earth, and you absolutely do not want that.”

  “No we do not,” I declared, closing that subject. “When we were trying to think of ways to prevent the Kristang from taking back Paradise, I asked if Skippy could shut down the wormholes near that planet,” I explained to Sarah. “You know his answer. Anyway, Skippy, we couldn’t do anything until we know the results of the negotiations between the Ruhar and the Fire Dragons. You say we don’t know what the Fire Dragons might offer, how about we ask the question another way? Do we know what the Fire Dragons have, that Ruhar might want in exchange for sending ships all the way to Earth?”

  “Ugh. You had to ask that question. No, Mister Smartypants, I do not know that either. The Fire Dragons have a lot of territory the Ruhar might want; the complication is the Ruhar would need the Jeraptha to agree to any territorial swaps. It would do the Ruhar no good to make a deal to take over a planet, or even a wormhole, if the Jeraptha do not agree to support the Ruhar’s possession by expanding the Jeraptha’s defensive perimeter. What likely has happened is the Ruhar have already approached the Jeraptha, to get a rough idea of what sort of deal is doable. If I had known the Fire Dragons were talking to the Ruhar, I could have sent out viruses to retrieve that information for us. It’s probably too late now, sorry.” He sounded genuinely miserable.

  “Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it, Skippy,” I offered.

  “Thank you for being understanding, Joe, I apprecia-”

  “I’ll beat you up about it myself.”

  “Crap,” he groaned. “Monkeys. Why monkeys? Why couldn’t I have kept my mouth shut, and waited for a semi-sentient slime mold to come to Paradise?”

  “Because then we couldn’t have witty conversations like this, Skippy.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Dr. Rose,” I turned my attention back to Sarah, “if we are going to sour the deal between the Fire Dragons and the Ruhar, it looks like we’ll have to wait until those two reach a deal. I don’t like waiting that long, so we need a Plan B.”

  She sighed, not from exasperation, that was just something she did when she was thinking. “All right, let’s back up a step. We might not be able to sour the deal, even after we know what it is. Sooooo,” she tapped her lower lip with a fingernail while she formed the idea. “What if we can stop the negotiations from happening at all?”

  Skippy laughed. “Like how? We give the Ruhar’s taxi driver the wrong directions to the negotiations?” He changed his voice to a thick New York accent. “Hmm, I thought we’s supposed to turn left at that star. Forget about taking the Cross-Galaxy Expressway, traffic is moider this time of day.”

  Sarah laughed, either because she thought he was funny, or she wanted to stay on Skippy’s good side. “I was thinking we do something to create conditions, wherein the Ruhar are not willing to proceed with negotiations. For example, we hit that Ruhar negotiating team’s ship, and make the Ruhar and Fire Dragons think a rival Kristang clan did it.”

  “Oooooh,” Skippy whistled. “That is sneaky. I like it!”

  “Whoa! Wait just a minute there, Skippster. Dr. Rose, you are proposing we take direct action against the Ruhar? Attack their ship?” Damn! Chotek was going to hit the roof when he heard about that idea. Creating even more enemies, a whole new tie
r of technologically advanced potential enemies, was the last thing defenseless humanity needed.

  “Killing Ruhar might be counterproductive,” Skippy said pensively. “We just finished getting the Ruhar to protect UNEF on Paradise.”

  “We don’t have to kill anyone,” Sarah explained. “A failed attack would be just as effective; the Ruhar only need to feel threatened by an attack. And they need to feel that the Fire Dragons do not have enough control over their own situation to deliver on an agreement. A failed attack,” she spoke slowly, mulling the idea in her mind, “might be best, actually. If the attackers were destroyed, along with any evidence.”

  “Attacking the Ruhar,” I spoke mostly to myself. “Even a mock attack. That will be difficult to sell to Chotek.”

  “No it won’t, Joe,” Skippy said cheerily. “You’ll think of something, you always do.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Skippy.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say I was confident, Joe. I was only trying to cheer you up. Besides, if you don’t think up a good plan, your home planet is toast, so there is no point planning for failure, right?”

  “Great. All we need to do is think up a way to attack a Ruhar negotiating party, without them knowing we were involved. And find a way to blame some other Kristang clan. And make sure any evidence is destroyed.”

  “That’s the spirit, Joe! See, I told you this would be no problemo. Well, you two crazy kids have fun, I have things to do. Let me know when you have a plan and you need me to do something.”

  “That’s it?” I asked surprised. “You’re not going to help plan this?”

  “No, Joe. I don’t do that kind of low-level planning grunt work, I have people to handle the small stuff for me.”

  “Small stuff?”

  I liked Dr. Rose’s idea of faking an attack on the Ruhar negotiation team, and we spent hours kicking around various plans for how to do that. After a long day of thinking, my brain had blown a gasket, so I took my boots off and collapsed into bed after a very late dinner; it was 0130 before my head hit the pillow. It was going to be a short night; some idiot named Joe Bishop had signed me up for a duty shift on the bridge starting at 0600 Hours. Sometime in the early morning, my zPhone gave a short chirp sound then went silent. That was a sound I hadn’t heard before and it worried me. The clock said it was 0515 already; that couldn’t possibly be true. “Skippy, did someone try to call me?”