Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  Jesse and Dave obliged the cadets, then watched as the eager Ruhar tried to follow, including Nert. When several Ruhar crashed into chairs while attempting a too-enthusiastic jump, Dave called a halt. “Whoa, whoa, Ok, that’s good. Save it for when you have something real to celebrate, huh?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Czaj-ka,” Nert said slowly, beaming at Dave in hero worship. “Could you explain this, please?” He held a fist up close to his chest, and slowly pushed it toward the human.

  “Oh, man, you got it right,” Dave bumped the fist. “Gently, huh? Don’t want to go so hard you hurt yourself, right? We call that a fist bump. It is like a quick high-five, I guess.”

  Half an hour later, the two men walked into the common area of their living quarters to find Perkins studying something on her laptop. “You two look happy about something,” she observed.

  “Yes we are,” Dave replied and bumped fists with Jesse. “Ma’am, the only thing on this ship cooler than Nert right now are humans. Us.” He shook his head in wonderment.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dave was startled awake from an all-too-brief nap by Jesse shaking his shoulder excitedly. “Part of the battlegroup is back! A destroyer just jumped in to recon the Assembly Zone, it’ll jump back out soon to give the All-Clear, then the task force will be here,” he announced with a gleeful shout. “Come on, man, you don’t want to miss this. I was watching it on the display in the briefing room, and one of the hamster kids there said he noticed battle damage to that destroyer.”

  “I’m on it,” Dave rubbed sleep from his eyes, now fully awake, swinging his feet down onto the deck. He knew there wasn’t anything he could see on the display in the briefing room that he couldn’t view on his zPhone or the display built into the bulkhead of their tiny bunk room, but being with people made everything seem so much more real.

  When he got to the briefing room, Jesse was disappointed to see the big display on the opposite bulkhead was showing only their ship and a blinking ring off to the side. He couldn’t tell how far they were from whatever the blinking ring was, because the display didn’t include any sort of distance scale. Captain Striebich was seated in front and Captain Bonsu was strapping in beside her.

  “What happened, Ma’am?” Dave asked, also disappointed. “Where’d that destroyer go?”

  “Where are the hamsters?” Jesse asked with a glance back over his shoulder through the open door.

  “The destroyer jumped away, you just missed it,” Irene answered. “That ring,” she pointed to the display, “represents the spatial distortion effect of their outbound jump. You can’t see it, that’s a projection by the display. The, uh,” she also checked the doorway, “hamsters kids bugged out of here when too many humans came in here.” She emphasized her words with a single-finger gesture that was not befitting an officer. “Damn,” she winked, “I hate it when it does that,” she remarked while shaking her hand.

  “That was quick,” Dave shrugged toward Jesse, “the destroyer just got here.”

  “The destroyer was just performing a recon jump to assure the task force that the AZ is clear. They had to wait for their sensors to reset after coming through the jump, and they had to wait for distortion of the inbound jump to stop vibrating spacetime so they could form an outbound jump wormhole,” she explained. “They were able to jump back early because the Toaster,” she gestured to the deck to indicate she was referring to the ship, “gave them the All-Clear. Usual procedure would require the destroyer to sweep a bubble five lightminutes in every direction before they Ok’ed the task force to jump into the AZ.”

  “When will the task force be jumping here?” Perkins asked as she strode into the briefing room, coming forward to take one of the seats in the front row and slipping a safety strap loosely around her waist.

  “ASAP if they follow standard procedure, Ma’am,” Derek responded. “Every second they wait, the gamma rays of that destroyer’s inbound and outbound jumps are expanding outward, and illuminating the AZ to enemy ships like shining a strobe light. The task force needs to get here, reset their sensors and shields and maneuver into a defensive formation before an enemy can pinpoint the AZ and react. The hardest thing to remember about the rules of space combat is that ships can travel much faster than sensor data. If a ship sends out detectible energy, like an active sensor pulse or gamma rays, the enemy can pick up that energy and jump right on top of you before your sensor pulse returns to you.”

  Perkins nodded silently because she had been learning space combat tactics in her own training. “I told the Ruhar that I would be slow to learn about space combat because I’m not a pilot, and my instructor told me that is not a problem. Their opinion is the humans best able to transition to space combat would be our submarine commanders.”

  “Subs?” Jesse asked. “Like, underwater, Ma’am?”

  “I can see that,” Dave mused with a hand rubbing his chin in deep thought.

  “Huh?” Jesse looked at his friend in puzzlement.

  “Think about it, ’Pone. Sub drivers have to rely on stealth, they can’t go pinging the ocean with sonar, or they give away their position.”

  “Correct,” Perkins nodded happily. “A submarine crew also is used to relying on passive sensor data of an enemy they won’t ever see. And they spend months at sea in a metal tube without ever seeing the sun.”

  “I’ve seen plenty of suns on this cruise,” Jesse shook his head. “But it’s different looking at a star through a helmet visor when your feet aren’t on solid ground. Or any ground at all. We-”

  He was interrupted by Irene’s excited shout. “Two ships just jumped in. Correction; one ship just jumped in. The other jumped in almost a minute ago, but it’s fifty seven lightseconds away so we’re just seeing it now. Hmmm, uh oh,” Irene fiddled with the controls built into the arm of her chair, zooming in the image to show the closest warship, a destroyer. “That doesn’t look good.”

  The ship had a long gouge out of its belly, with the scar wrapping around to the starboard side. Sparks flared from the damaged area, and the destroyer’s nose was flattened and smashed in. It was more difficult to detect if the second ship was damaged, because it was farther away and the bulkhead display only had access to low-level sensors. “Ma’am?” Irene turned to Perkins. “You have access to command systems?”

  “Limited access,” Perkins grimaced. The access that had been granted to her was only for training purposes, she didn’t know if it would provide any real-time tactical data. To her surprise, she was able to pull up a status summary on her tablet, though the system wouldn’t let her feed the info to the bulkhead display so her team could view it. “You’re right, Striebich, this is not good. The Ruhar got into a battle against the Wurgalan. Our friends thought they had the upper hand, then the Bosphuraq stepped in and the Ruhar had to bug out.”

  “Bosphuraq?” Derek expressed alarm. “I thought there was an unwritten rule that species only fight at an equivalent level of technology.”

  “It’s more of a custom,” Perkins replied with an angry look on her face. “Usually the Bosphuraq send the Wurgalan to fight the Ruhar or Torgalau, while the Bosphuraq reserve their own forces to tangle with the Jeraptha. Beating up on lower-tech species risks intervention by the higher-ups. Apparently this time, the Bosphuraq decided that stepping into this battle was worth the risk of the Rindhalu slapping them down. The Ruhar lost a cruiser,” she reported with shock, having just seen that tactical update.

  “A cruiser?” Dave asked, dismayed. The task force only had two cruisers, other than the old training ship. “Does it say what happened to the other task force?”

  Perkins shook her head, causing a lock of hair to swing down in front of her eyes. Dave’s gaze followed the hair, mesmerized. “The star carrier was supposed to pick them up first; we won’t know their status until they jump in here. People, the Toaster could be maneuvering soon, I expect us to be put on Grade-2 alert soon. Let’s get our gear and come back here in-” She was interrupted by a bla
ring alarm, announcing the ship was at Alert Condition Two. “Like I said.”

  They returned in less than four minutes, with everyone dressed in pressure suits and carrying a bag containing gloves, helmets and extra life support packs. In battle, the humans did not have assigned action stations, because the Ruhar did not want lowly aliens getting in the way. Perkins checked with the duty officer to see if she should report to the bridge and was told, politely but firmly, that she could best help the ship’s operations by keeping away of Ruhar engaged in their jobs. Emily Perkins found that mildly insulting, as on the way back to the briefing room she saw young Ruhar cadets racing toward their duty stations. Even Nert was assigned to a damage control party amidships, she pinged him to ask if he was Ok and he replied only with a terse ‘yes’ before cutting the connection. When Perkins got back to the briefing room, her entire team was there. Shauna was wearing a full spacesuit, having been in training when the alert sounded. “Ma’am,” Shauna looked up from helping Jesse attach his helmet. “Any news?”

  “Not much. The Ruhar were hit by a group of Wurgalan ships and the battle was going well enough, then a Bosphuraq cruiser jumped into the action. Our allies think the Bosphuraq stepped in to help the octopussies-”

  “Excuse me, Ma’am, octopussies?” Jesse looked to his companions who were equally confused.

  “I’ve never met one, of course,” Perkins explained. “Like the Thuranin, our info about other species comes mostly from the Ruhar. We know the Thuranin look like little green men, right?” Her team nodded so she continued. “Apparently the Wurgalan are a sort of land octopus, so at HQ we call them ‘octopussies’. The Bosphuraq are worried about the weakness of the Wurgalan so they are assisting them directly. The Bosphuraq think the Thuranin did too little, too late to help the Kristang, and now the Thuranin themselves got beat badly and the Kristang are useless to assist. The Bosphuraq are determined not to let Wurgalan weakness harm their ability to control territory.” Perkins lowered her voice and glanced toward the door to assure no Ruhar were listening. “From the report,” she tapped her tablet, “I get the feeling the Ruhar are very concerned about this development. If the patron species are going to step in directly against the hamsters, then our allies need to reconsider their ability to hold territory they recently took from the lizards.”

  “Hell, Ma’am,” Jesse looked stricken. “Does that include Paradise?”

  “I don’t,” Perkins hesitated because that thought had not crossed her mind. “I don’t think so, at least not now. The concern is about territory the lizards held, until the Thuranin got their asses whipped by the Jeraptha in the past couple years. The Ruhar thought they could just kick the tires and decide which planets they want to keep, now it looks like the Jeraptha may hold them back, until the beetles understand just how serious the Bosphuraq are about defending their coalition’s territory.”

  “Colonel,” Dave asked hopefully, “does this apply only to territory near space controlled by the Bosphuraq?”

  “No,” Perkins shook her head. “The task force was far from Bosphuraq space when they got jumped. This is something new; the Jeraptha may now be fighting the Bosphuraq about who controls territory the Thuranin lost.”

  “Because the Bosphuraq will give it back to the Thuranin once they rebuild their strength?” Shauna asked, though she thought she already knew the answer to that question.

  “No,” Perkins snorted. “The Bosphuraq and Thuranin hate each other more than they hate the Jeraptha. This development is likely the result of the Bosphuraq taking advantage of Thuranin weakness to cherry-pick star systems they want for themselves. My guess is the Jeraptha will need to test the Bosphuraq to see where they will push back. This has got to be,” she let out a long breath and swept her hair back before pulling her helmet over her head, “frustrating to the Jeraptha.”

  “Frustrating? They probably love this,” Dave interjected. “Not knowing what territory the Bosphuraq might fight to hold, is going to provide super juicy wagering action for the Jeraptha. The Ruhar say those beetles will bet on anything, this has got to have them excited out of their minds.”

  “You may be right about that, Da-” Perkins almost used his first name. Blushing inside her helmet, she corrected herself. “Czajka. We may find out when that star carrier returns.” Inwardly, she groaned when another thought struck her. While it was good to observe their allies in real action, the losses suffered by the task force very likely meant the training cruise would be cut short before humans could fully qualify for space duty, and demonstrate their ability to operate effectively alongside the hamsters. If the war in the sector was now entering a dangerous and unpredictable phase, opportunity for further training may be delayed significantly.

  “Hopefully it gets back here soon,” Irene zoomed the display image outward, expanding to show another ship that had jumped in sixty eight lightseconds away and was now accelerating hard to form up with the others.

  “What are they like?” Dave asked.

  “The Jeraptha?” Irene held up her hands. “We’ve never met them.”

  “But you and Captain Bonsu have flown to their ship.”

  “That was only to practice manual docking procedures,” Irene explained. “We flew into one of their docking bays, waited for the clamps to engage and release, then we flew out. Kind of like doing Touch-and-Gos with aircraft. There was a Jeraptha who talked to us, but we never even saw one of the beetles, the gallery above the docking bay was empty. We were told the Jeraptha are not unfriendly to lower species, the crew of the star carrier was just very busy with all the training going on.”

  “Is their ship really called the ‘Deal Me In’?” Jesse asked. “A cadet told me that, and I didn’t know if he was playing a joke on me.”

  “No joke,” Irene assured the soldier. “The name does translate as ‘Deal Me In’, or close enough.”

  “You think the beetles will really bet on what places the Bosphuraq will defend?” Jesse continued.

  Derek answered the question. “From what I’ve heard, the Jeraptha will bet on pretty much anything. What I wonder is whether their intel people base their assessments on wagering.”

  “They would do that?” Shauna was shocked by such an idea.

  “Not based on their own bets,” Derek explained, “I meant based on what the overall Jeraptha public is wagering on.”

  “Yes,” Perkins agreed with a nod toward Derek. “That type of crowd-sourced prediction model can often be more accurate that the assessments of so-called ‘experts’. When I was at the Pentagon, we were looking at using a prediction market system to forecast future threats.”

  “Ma’am?” Jesse blinked. “What kind of market?”

  “Market-based. Think of it like drafting a fantasy football team where you’re using real money, to buy players you think will perform well the next season. At the Pentagon, we experimented with a team of threat assessment people to project the next hotspot. We created a sort of market where people could buy binary options in various potential threat scenarios, with the value of a particular threat rising as the threat became more likely. Before you say it sounds like a crapshoot,” Perkins gave a disarming smile at Jesse, “that system predicted we would be in Nigeria fourteen months before the President pulled the trigger to put boots on the ground there.”

  “Holy crap,” Jesse gasped.

  “Come on, Cornpone, we were talking about us going into Nigeria way back when we were in boot camp,” Dave reminded his friend.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think people were betting on it.”

  “I know it sounds sketchy,” Perkins said with sympathy, “but the Jeraptha might just be crowd-sourcing their strategic intel using real money, through a wagering system,” she added with a faraway look on her face, the wheels turning in her head. As a former intelligence officer, she would love to know how accurate the Jeraptha system was in real life.

  “It sounds crazy,” Derek agreed, “but it may work as well as any system we have.”<
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  “I’ll stick to fantasy sports,” Jesse replied, chagrinned. “Nobody gets killed.”

  “If the Jeraptha intel scopes out right, less people will get killed,” Dave argued.

  “Prediction markets aren’t perfect,” Perkins admitted. “To be useful, you need to filter out what people think will happen, from what they think the popular opinion is. Too many times, people in the market try to guess what the herd is thinking, rather than using their own gut.” The glazing eyes of her audience told Perkins she was getting way too nerdy on that subject. “Health agencies on Earth have been using predictive markets to project flu outbreaks for years, and they work pretty well. If we ever get an opportunity to talk with the Jeraptha, I’ll ask them about it.”

  “Ha,” Jesse laughed. “They’ll want to bet with you about what you think the answer is. Those beetles-”

  Irene interrupted him. “Star carrier jumped in! Damn, they really nailed that jump, exactly in the center of their target Emergence Point,” her voice reflected the admiration she felt. “Two point four lightseconds away, we should start moving-” an alarm blared and Irene smiled. “Like I said, we will start moving soon.”

  Within seconds, they felt a gentle tug to the right as the ship turned, then fired its engines. Irene watched the thrust indicator on the bottom of the display, and was pleased that her guess based on feel matched what the display showed; the Ruh Tostella was not moving quickly. As a noncombatant and not having suffered any battle damage, the training cruiser would be last in line to latch onto the star carrier. It hung back away from the cluster of warships approaching their assigned docking platforms, with the Toaster providing an overall sensor view of the area, and acting as a backup traffic controller to assist the Jeraptha crew of the star carrier. Irene noticed something odd right away, and when she looked up to catch Perkins’ eye, the Colonel nodded with concern. She had seen it too. “Those ships are in a hurry,” Irene said quietly. “A big Goddamned hurry.”