Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  “Eighty two percent is the correct number, I do not think I am giving away any secrets to tell you that,” Ernt confirmed with one eye on a display. “Our last jump was only medium-distance, I think, so there was plenty of charge available when we jumped in here.”

  “Understood. How many, no, wait. Not how many jumps,” Perkins realized she had been about to ask the wrong question. “How far could the Deal Me In jump, with that charge?”

  “I do not know,” Ernt admitted without embarrassment. “As I explained, I am a power technician. It is not possible, I think, for a single jump to use up that entire charge. The greatest power drain I remember from a single jump used up thirty four percent, and that was with the ship burdened by carrying an entire heavy battlegroup of our own fleet. A series of jumps to use up the capacitors,” he rubbed his antenna together as he thought, in a gesture Perkins found fascinating and distracting. “Again, I do not know. It is a complicated question with many variables.”

  “Colonel, the charge in the capacitors is certainly not sufficient for us to travel sixteen lightyears,” Jinn guessed. “If you are hoping to get back on our original flightpath, in case the fleet is searching for us.”

  “What I want to know is, where could we go?”

  The young Ruhar cadet was unhappy about being asked questions she could not find the answer to in a shipboard database. “That, also, is a guess-”

  “Yes, yes, show me a radius of ten lightyears, to be conservative.”

  Jinn adjusted the display to show a sphere around their present position.

  To Perkins, it disappointingly still looked like a whole lot of nothing inside that sphere. “That’s it? Are there any habitable planets, data relays, refueling stations in there?”

  “No,” Jinn shook her head. “Except for what we suspect is a Thuranin sensor station, here. This was Thuranin territory until recently. If there is a sensor station, it would be automated and of no use to us.”

  “Of course,” Perkins reprimanded herself for allowing her frustrations to show. “Wait, what is this?” She pointed to a glowing gold circle.

  “That is an Elder wormhole. But it leads to space controlled by the Kristang,” the Ruhar cadet warned.

  “Space that was controlled by the Kristang,” Tutula corrected. “Reports indicate they were pulling back from that area, even before their latest civil war,” she noted with disgust that her people would regularly kill each other over trivial matters. “They had few assets in that region, and the Thuranin have abandoned that entire part of the sector after their recent defeats by the Jeraptha,” she added the last with a nod to Ernt, who lifted his head with pride.

  “I’ll take your word about that,” Perkins muttered. “Can we go through that wormhole? If we can, what is on the other side, which we could reach? Show me a ten lightyear radius around the other end of that wormhole.”

  “It is possible for us to go through the wormhole,” Jinn agreed unhappily. It took her a few minutes to pull up a star chart showing the other side of that wormhole, as the ship’s navigation system had to retrieve seldom-used data about enemy territory. “Here,” she announced when the display filled in. “Two star systems with habitable planets,” she pointed at two dots on opposite directions from the wormhole. “The closest one is Kormat, the report says it has an estimated population of three hundred, but that data is twenty years old. Kormat was a logistics base that fell out of use, the Fleet thinks the Kristang pulled it out of service.” She looked closer at the data. “Kormat may be on the margin of being considered habitable, it is a very cold world,” she shuddered at seeing some of the climate estimates. “The Kristang there lived in domes under the ice, and the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is low.”

  “Too risky, too many ‘ifs’, too many lizards,” Perkins concluded without thinking she had just said ‘lizards’ in front of Tutula. “You said there is a second habitable planet?”

  “Yes, in the other star system,” Jinn peered closely at the data, and gasped. “Colonel, you know this place! You have been there.”

  “I have? What?”

  “Your people designated this planet as ‘Camp Alpha’?”

  “Holy shit.” Emily Perkins did not have fond memories of that Godforsaken planet. “The Goddamned lizards are still there?”

  “Er,” Jinn searched through the data. “No. Fleet Intelligence does not think the Kristang have maintained a presence there, after your people shipped out. That planet was the property of the White Wind clan, which suffered a severe loss of fortune, then recently was absorbed during their civil war.”

  “How sure is Fleet Intelligence about Camp Alpha being abandoned?” As a career intel officer, Perkins would dearly love to see the raw intel take on that subject. How many times in her career had she published an assessment based on what she thought was solid-gold intel, only to be proved wrong by the messy facts of reality?

  “I, the report, it,” Jinn scrolled down through the data, then held up her hands. “It doesn’t list a confidence factor.”

  “We are certainly not going to the first planet you listed, Kormat or whatever it’s called. Camp Alpha? Goddamn. Never thought I’d ever be setting foot on that-” She paused. She was describing a planet she might be asking the entire crew to land on and live for an undetermined length of time. “That world. Oh, hell,” she forced a laugh to lighten the mood. “It has oxygen and the temperature isn’t bad. No dangerous native life. From what I remember, even when the Kristang were running the place, their footprint on the surface didn’t cover much territory,” her mind raced to remember how much land area the ExForce base on Camp Alpha had covered. At its maximum, the Force that left Earth had consisted of about 120,000 people, with the USA and China contributing 35,000 combat troops each, and the other three nations providing 15,000 each. Support and headquarters units, and ‘observers’ from other nations had rounded out another five thousand. One time only, she had been aloft in a ‘Buzzard’ aircraft on a familiarization ride above Camp Alpha and gotten a birds-eye view of the sprawling but temporary base, and the much smaller and walled-off Kristang facility nearby. From eighty thousand feet up, the base had looked unimpressive, and she recalled another officer telling her the entire base plus wargame training area occupied less space than the state of Connecticut. Since the planet was mostly land with only twenty percent of the surface covered by oceans, that left a lot of room to conceal a single shipful of cadets. “I’ll consider Camp Alpha our best option until I hear otherwise. How long until we can jump?”

  “Colonel? I have no idea. I’ve never seen this emulator model,” she looked to Velt Tutula for help. “I did not know such technology existed until today.” The way she tilted her head, the cadet did not appear to fully buy into the idea of her people having ability to control a Jeraptha jump drive.

  “I have never seen it either,” Tutula admitted. “Colonel, can you access it?”

  Emily Perkins had absolutely no idea what she could and could not do with her full set of command codes, she had never tested the limits. “There is not an icon for ‘magical Jeraptha jump drive emulator’,” she regretted her sarcastic tone. When she was asking others to do the impossible, she should not be bitching about the pressure on her. The real problem was she felt she could not ask for help with simple tasks because that would display her profound ignorance. But she had no choice. “Something like that would probably be highly classified. Anyone got any suggestions?”

  “I do not think the existence of the emulator is a deep secret,” Tutula noted. “The officer who told me said the Jeraptha know about it.” she chuckled, a dry wheezing sound that caused a shiver of fear to shoot up Perkins’ spine. “He said the Jeraptha were probably wagering over how close the emulator is to their own system. Colonel, could it be as simple as searching for ‘Jeraptha jump drive emulator’ in your command codes?”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Perkins observed as she typed the phrase into the handy search box. And, presto, there it
was. “Huh,” she looked up at Tutula. “Good guess. I’m allowing Engineering and the pilots access to the emulator. What I would like to ask the Jeraptha fleet right now is; what are the odds this will work?”

  No one had an answer for her, but Ernt was twitching his legs in an agitated fashion, and the tips of his antenna were quivering. “What is wrong, Arlon Dahl?” Perkins asked with concern. “You think this emulator will not work? Or would it make you uncomfortable for us to attempt to control one of your jump drives?”

  “No, Colonel. It is not surprising that a client species would seek to understand our technology, and I will assist with the necessary connections, for I wish to live,” he twisted his mouth parts in a smile that somehow was less creepy than when a Kristang made the same gesture. “It is just,” he sighed.

  “What?”

  “Wagering whether a Ruhar system could control one of our drives is incredibly tempting action, and I cannot register a bet out here in the wilderness!”

  The alien crewman looked so anguished at being unable to participate in the favorite activity of his species, Perkins almost felt sorry for him. “Arlon Dahl, we have a broken ship staffed by inexperienced cadets, attached to the even more broken ass-end of a star carrier. To get to a habitable planet, we need to jump several times without the ship exploding, transit a wormhole into enemy territory, and probably travel a long distance through space to land on a planet that may or may not have a Kristang presence. So, I will bet you that we will never set foot on Camp Alpha.”

  “Mmmmm,” Ernt’s antenna moved in unison excitedly. “What odds are you giving?”

  Perkins had no idea so she made up a number that sounded good. “Five to one.”

  “Five to one? No points?”

  “No points,” Perkins offered, guessing that points were a bad thing.

  “That is,” Ernt began with enthusiasm before his expression became downcast. “That all sounds good, but I suspect you have nothing to wager with, and also we have no way to properly register the wager.”

  “Arlon Dahl,” Perkins grinned, “we will be dropping off flight recorder buoys before we jump, we can include details of the wager in the buoy databank. And, think about this; the only way we can reach Camp Alpha is by getting this emulator software to work properly. I believe the Ruhar fleet would be more than happy to cover my side of the wager to learn their software is functional.”

  “Oh!” Ernt brightened, his mouthparts moving rapidly. “In that case, I want seven to one.”

  “Deal,” Perkins held out a hand and Ernt held out a leathery claw, and they shook. It took another ten minutes of negotiating back and forth to finalize the wager, with Perkins arguing only because she felt Ernt expected her to.

  “Excellent, excellent,” the very happy Jeraptha declared. “Now, show me this emulator system. I am not a jump drive specialist or navigator, but I do know about the power input requirements. It may be necessary for me to tweak the emulator settings so the drive does not explode.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Perkins knocked on the frame of the hatch leading to the auxiliary helm, interrupting her two pilots who were engaged in a heated but quiet discussion about something. “Striebich? Bonsu? Everything squared away with you?”

  “Yes Ma’am,” Irene lowered her voice with a glance toward the open hatch. The hatch had been jammed and needed to be cut away so Irene and Derek could get out of the auxiliary control center, now the hatch was permanently open and anyone lurking in the passageway could hear them talking. Derek understood why his fellow pilot was being so careful, and he unstrapped from his couch and floated over to the hatch. Sticking his head into the passageway, he gave her a thumbs up. Any listening or recording devices the passageway once contained would have been destroyed in the battle that had bent the heavy hatch. The aux helm had a flight recorder that stored all instrument, visual and sound data, but Derek had learned how to temporarily disable that system and he saw Irene had selected the ‘Pause’ mode. “Colonel, it looks like if this emulator system works as advertised, we actually do have a decent shot at getting the ship to Camp Alpha, we think. It’s risky, but our best shot.” Perkins, nodded so Irene continued. “Before you arrived, Derek and I were discussing that we now have a star carrier. Is there any possibility we can get to Earth from here?”

  Perkins groaned inwardly. She had enough complications to deal with. “Striebich, you’re the pilot, you tell me if we can get there. I thought the wormhole leading to Earth is shut down, dormant or something.”

  “That’s what the hamsters told us, yeah,” Irene lowered her eyelids in suspicion. “I found Earth on the star chart, here,” she tapped the navigation display in front of her couch, letting her finger rest longingly on the symbol for humanity’s home world. Then she tapped the symbol for Camp Alpha. “The trip would require going through multiple wormholes, but there may be a possibility we could get there. We won’t know, until we jump the first time and we see how much that drains the star carrier’s capacitors.”

  Perkins looked without any enthusiasm at the complicated proposed course that would take their busted half-ship deep into enemy territory. “Does that star chart show the wormhole leading to Earth is active?”

  “No,” Irene highlighted the symbol for that now-dormant Elder wormhole. “Not according to the chart. But, you have a full set of command codes. I was thinking, what if that wormhole is not really shut down? The Ruhar did tell us they have no idea why that one wormhole shut down all by itself. That doesn’t sound kosher to me.”

  “It never seemed right to me either, but we don’t know anything about how the Elder wormhole network functions,” Perkins cautioned her pilot. “You’re asking if my command codes reveal a different star chart, one showing that wormhole is still active?”

  Irene nodded silently with an anxious glance to the hatch and Derek motioned her to continue. “Something like that, Colonel.”

  Biting her lip and clicking through the screens on her zPhone, Perkins found the mode to transfer the phone’s screen to the display in front of Irene. “Navigation data is, hmmm, somewhere, here!” Perkins allowed herself a smile of satisfaction at finding what she wanted on the alien device. Ruhar systems were not as intuitive as they could be, or maybe they just weren’t intuitive to humans. “Doesn’t look any different,” she frowned with disappointment.

  “It is a little different,” Derek noted from the hatchway. “That group of symbols in the lower left corner weren’t there before.”

  “Huh, you’re right,” Irene zoomed in that section of the display. “Looks like our hamster friends have been holding out on us. This shows star systems recently surrendered by the Kristang, where the Ruhar fleet has conducted stealth surveys.”

  “Does that help us?” Perkins asked.

  “No. We couldn’t risk flying to any of those systems, and we don’t have the range anyway,” Irene declared. “Going back to the question, the answer is no, dammit. Your star chart also shows that wormhole to Earth is shut down.”

  “If I put my intel officer hat on for a minute,” Perkins mused, “I’d guess if anyone was lying to us about that wormhole being shut down, it’s the lizards. The Kristang told us that wormhole was shut down, before the Ruhar fleet took Paradise back. I can’t see the hamsters have any reason to lie to us about it, but the lizards did. What I don’t see in this chart is the data source, like, do the Ruhar know that wormhole is shut down, or are they only taking the Kristang’s word about it?”

  “That’s a good question, but it’s academic right now, Ma’am,” Derek kept his own voice soft, continuing to scan the passageway. “Unless we, meaning our beetle friend, find a way to recharge the Jeraptha jump capacitors from this ship’s reactor, we will run out of power long before we reached that wormhole. Irene, look, I would love to fly back to Earth,” his tone indicated the subject had been argued extensively by the two pilots. “We need to concentrate on surviving first. Let’s not get distracted, Ok?”

&nb
sp; “Striebich, good initiative on asking that question,” Perkins patted the pilot’s shoulder as she wiped the classified navigation data from the screen. “If we see an opportunity to-”

  “Cadets coming,” Derek whispered from the hatchway, and the conversation ended abruptly.

  “Very well,” Perkins turned to leave. “Ping me as soon as you are confident about the jump solution.”

  “About that, Colonel,” Irene raised a finger. “We aren’t doing anything to get the jump programmed, that’s the cadets and, mostly, Tutula. Without her, we’d be sitting dead in space. When we’re ready, I’d like to offer her my seat.”

  “You don’t want to be the first human to make a star carrier jump?” Perkins was surprised by that.

  “I would only be pressing a button,” Irene explained. “Tutula has been busting her ass, she deserves a chance to make the jump.”

  “Plus,” Derek added without a wink or grin, “if the drive goes ‘kaboom’ it will be all her fault.”

  “Well, there is that,” Perkins also did not see anything humorous in the situation. “About that, make sure we include the jump calculations in the drone we’ll drop off before we activate the drive. If their fancy emulator software doesn’t work, the Ruhar need to know about it. All right, Striebich, I’ll inform our Verd-Kris friend about your offer. I want you looking over her shoulder the whole time. Someday, we may need to do this on our own.”

  The Deal Me In jumped. The ship did not explode. Pieces of it did not go flying off in every direction, and the Ruh Tostella stayed rigidly clamped to the docking platform. “Status?” Perkins asked anxiously, from her awkward position strapped in next to Irene behind the two pilot couches. Unlike their jump in to find the star carrier, when the displays had gone from empty space to space filled with broken ships, this time there was nothing on the display to tell her where they had gone to, where they were now.

  “Sensors are working on it, Ma’am,” Derek reported with a look at Tutula to let the alien know that Perkins was not blaming her for the lack of data.