Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  “Desai,” I ordered, “do it.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” she acknowledged, and I saw in my visor that her suit had less than five percent power left when she cut off the power transfer and disconnected the cable. “Sir? You are still connected?”

  “Yes,” I watched the power meter spiral down toward three percent, then lower. “We need to get this fuel cell working, or everyone dies out here.”

  “There are three other dropships with fuel cells, Joe,” Skippy reminded me.

  “Yes, but we reached this one first,” I protested. Desai and I had been given the closest and easiest target, so we were already aboard our Condor while the other three retrieval teams were still approaching their dropships. “If we can’t figure out how to make this fuel cell work, that’s not good news for the other teams. Once this thing starts producing electricity, I can reverse the power flow and recharge my suit. If we can’t get it working, I’m screwed anyway.”

  “I hate to admit this, but you do have a point,” Skippy sighed.

  “Colonel Bishop,” Desai waved a hand to get my attention, “I should drain my suit also, to give us the best chance to-”

  “Negative, Desai. As long as you still have power, you can talk with Skippy to troubleshoot this damned thing. Look, I’m turning my oxygen mask on,” I told her as my power meter dropped to one percent. “And I’ll crank the handle again,” I hooked my feet under the fuel cell so my motion didn’t send me flying around the cargo bay.

  “Joe, you idiot! That handle can’t provide enough power to get your suit restarted!” Skippy warned. “Disconnect now!”

  “But-”

  “Trust me! Now now now!”

  I didn’t argue, as my visor was already going dim from the power drain. “Done.”

  “Whew,” Skippy exhaled. “That was close. Joe, the amount of power needed to get your suit rebooted from zero is more than you can generate with that crank handle thingy. Speaking of which, get cranking, monkeyboy.”

  “Aye aye,” I shuddered, thinking how close I had come to disaster. With the handle fitted to the gear again, I pulled and pushed. The power meter stayed stubbornly at one percent, but it didn’t drop, so I counted that as a win. “What about the fuel cell?”

  “Give it time. It is warming up slowly, the heat needs time to propagate. Don’t be so impatient, Joe,” he chided me. “And, mmm, yes! Success. The reaction is starting. I’m feeding all the power generated into the heater unit, to bring it up to optimal temperature.”

  Desai and I waited, both of us cranking handles to build up power in our dangerously-depleted suit power cells. It took eight long minutes before Skippy announced we both could use the fuel cell to provide power to our suits. “Is that smart, Skippy? Shouldn’t we get the auxiliary power unit going first?”

  “I said it, so of course it is smart, duh. The APU can’t be restarted until the dropship’s powercells have enough charge to energize the containment field. While we’re waiting for that, you two should take the opportunity to top up your own powercells. You may need to assist the other teams, and you’ll need a healthy charge to do that.”

  “That makes sense, Skippy,” I admitted while connecting a power cable to the fuel cell, and seeing the power meter of my suit glow an encouraging blue as it sucked in fresh electricity.

  We got the Condor’s APU nicely humming along at low power four hours later, and after another hour, Desai and I were blessedly able to remove our helmets and breathe air in the cabin. I was super happy to get the breathing mask off my face, it had scratched my cheek so much I was bleeding. “Ah, that feels good,” I breathed in a lungful of air that had not been recycled a thousand times by my suit. “Oof,” I wrinkled my nose, sniffing. “Damn, is that bad smell me?”

  “It could be me,” Desai admitted.

  “It’s just the two of us, if you want to freshen up in the bathroom,” I suggested, “go ahead.”

  “Thank you, Sir, but I would feel guilty about all the people stuck in their suits out there. Besides, we need to get back into the suits to pick up the crew, and I don’t want to get myself dirty again by sliding back into this suit.”

  “Ah, you’re right,” I agreed, disappointed because I had been looking forward to washing up in the Condor’s tiny bathroom. We had another two hours of doing nothing before we could safely fire up the dropship’s main control systems and begin a preflight check. “Hey, Skippy, you got any crappy 80s TV shows I can watch to kill time?” I did not want him to torture me with bad TV, but I needed to think about how to rescue Paradise from infected Keepers, so watching mindless shows would allow my subconscious to work on the problem.

  “Uh, what?” Skippy could not believe his good fortune. “You want me to entertain you?”

  “No, but I have nothing else to do, and I’m bored, and you’re eventually going to make me watch this crap anyway, so let’s get it over with.” What I didn’t say was old TV shows were a better option than Skippy singing to me. I could turn my brain off to ignore a TV show, but there was no way to ignore the incredible singing talent of Skippy.

  “That’s a good attitude, Joe! As a reward, you can watch ‘Casablanca’.”

  “My Dad had us watch that,” I noted with a wave of nostalgia, “it’s Ok. Thanks, Skippy.”

  “Oh, no, dude,” his evil laugh reminded me of the villain in a James Bond movie. “You are referring to the classic 1942 film? I will be showing you the 1983 TV series.”

  “There was a TV show about Casablanca?” I asked, astonished.

  “Um, sort of. The guy who played Rick was David Soul, you know, the blonde guy from Starsky and Hutch.”

  Damn. The only thing I knew about Starsky and Hutch was the red car, and the only reason I know that is I saw a car painted like that at an old car show in Bangor. “Skippy, I never heard of this show.”

  “That’s not surprising, Joe. They shot five episodes, but the network killed it out of embarrassment after three. Everyone involved would like to forget about it.”

  “Wait just a minute,” I cocked my head, certain he was screwing with me again. “If this show was so bad, why did the studio pay to digitize it?”

  “They didn’t, duh.”

  “Then how do you have it?”

  “Oh, the last time we were at Earth, I paid to have that show and a veritable cornucopia of similar crap digitized for me.”

  “You paid for it?”

  “Well, not me, the contract was arranged through a shell company I named Magnificent Enterprises LLC. Sounds impressive, huh? Don’t worry, no one will ever trace it back to me.”

  “I’m not worried about the stupid TV show, where the hell did you get the freakin’ money?”

  “Oh, that. Joe, I can neither confirm nor deny any scandalous accusations, but there might be a mob-controlled bank in Eastern Europe that is missing some money. Or, it might be missing a whole lot of money. Hee hee,” he giggled with glee, “when the gangsters notice their money is gone, somebody has got some ’splaaainin to do.”

  “Oh, damn it. I am going to walk into a shitstorm if we ever get home?”

  “You? Why? You didn’t do anything.”

  “They’re not going to blame you.”

  “Good point, Joe. Well, nothing we can do about it now. To take your mind off that subject, behold! One of the forgotten classics of crappy 80s TV, ‘Casablanca’!”

  Oh, man, it was freakin’ awful. Basically, it was The Love Boat set in a North African bar in 1941. People come into the bar, the lead character solves their problems, then another person comes into the bar. Cancelling that steaming pile was a mercy killing. Skippy made me suffer through all three episodes in less than two hours, by speeding up the video. I wish he hadn’t, because watching one was enough torture.

  The only good thing about wasting two hours of my life was I now had a piece of truly obscure 80s trivia I could inflict on other people.

  The retrieval teams got four dropships restarted with only minor glitches, and
no one else had to run their suit powercells dangerously low like I did. Desai and I put our helmets back on and I opened the big cargo bay doors at the rear of the dropship. With Desai flying on thrusters alone, she guided the Condor to pick up the eighteen people remaining from the two groups we had left floating in space. I stood in the open doorway of the cargo bay, providing voice guidance to Desai, and tossed a line out to the first group, who had tightened their tethers to pull themselves in a tight formation so they could all fit through the doorway. The line was caught on the first try, and I used a winch to slowly pull the ball of nine people into the bay, then closed the door and repressurized the bay. Nine people were very happy to get their helmets off. Like me, many people commented their arms and hands were cramped from pumping the handle that provided survival power to their suits. I got the first nine into the forward passenger compartment where they could take turns washing up in the tiny bathroom, while I pumped air out of the cargo bay so we could pick up the second group.

  With twenty people squeezed into our Condor, it felt like our uncomfortable flight down to Gingerbread. Fortunately, we wouldn’t be stuck in the cramped confines of the dropship for nearly as long this time. “Hey, Skippy,” I called him while I was still sealed up in my suit, inspecting thrusters to make sure they would be ready for the all-important flight back to the Dutchman. “How you doing over there? You have good news for us?”

  “Hi, Joe. Good work getting people safely into your ship, it looks like everyone is going to come through without any serious health issues.”

  “Yeah,” I had already used my command codes to ping every suit for a status check. Some people were mildly dehydrated, and extended time in suits had caused stiff muscles, but otherwise everyone was going to be just fine. That assumed we could get back aboard a basically functional starship, because our dropships could not get us to a habitable planet from the middle of interstellar nowhere. “Don’t avoid the subject, Skippy. Did your shortcut work?” I was very much hoping he could get the energy virus purged quicker than expected, and not just so we could get the galley back online and making cheeseburgers. Mostly, I was anxious to get moving to help Colonel Perkins and her team, and the entire planet Paradise. The fear that we might already be too late ate at me. If even one infected Keeper landed on Paradise, the Ruhar might take drastic action to safeguard their population, drastic action against all the humans on the planet. Yes, I was concerned for the humans on Paradise, but I will admit part of my sick feeling was that we had gone through enormous risk and effort to safeguard the future of humans there, and now all our hard work might be undone by a small group of hateful lizards.

  Ok, sure, a small group of humans on Kobamik had sparked a civil war that was consuming Kristang society, but that was totally different. I am not a philosopher, so don’t ask me how it’s different, it just is.

  “Um, my shortcut has not worked as well as I had hoped, Joe.”

  “Damn. So, we can’t cut eleven hours off the schedule?”

  “Not quite. At first, the energy virus fell for my trick, but then the stupid thing must be smarter than I thought, sorry about that. The remaining virus scattered itself across several clusters of powercells near the auxiliary reactor, and they are shielding themselves from me so I can’t get at them without destroying the reactor.”

  “Give me the bottom line, Skippy.”

  “Bottom line,” he sighed, “is we can’t cut eleven hours off the schedule. In fact, it now looks like I need to extend the timeline by another forty, perhaps forty eight hours?”

  “Forty hours? Skippy, we can’t wait that long. That ship full of Keepers could be approaching Paradise now.”

  “You’re right, Joe. Don’t forget, we need to refuel the ship before we can go anywhere.”

  “I know that, and we still don’t know where that ship is. Every minute the Dutchman sits dead in space, the danger to Paradise increases.”

  “True. Also, the longer the ship goes without power, the longer it will take me to bring critical systems up to operating temperature. Joe, I am simply out of options. We have no choice but to wait for those remaining powercells to drain completely. If you come back aboard or even close to the ship, the energy virus can infect the dropships, or you monkeys, and we will be in even bigger trouble than we are now.”

  Skippy was out of options, that meant we were out of options. Or, wait, was that true? Maybe our beer can was just out of ideas, not options. And, right then, I had an idea.

  A commander should know every bolt, every weld of his ship. I should know what makes every system aboard the ship work. Because not even our science team understood most of the Thuranin technology that made the Dutchman function, I had no chance to grasp even basic concepts behind the functioning of things like our jump drive coils. But one thing I did know was the physical layout of components making up our rebuilt Frankenship. “Skippy, the only place that energy virus still exists is that one bank of powercells near the backup reactor?”

  “Yes, why? Uh!” He shushed me. “Before you tell me your latest brilliant idea, the answer no, we can’t sacrifice that reactor so I can burn out the virus. I need to get the backup reactor restarted, so it can energize the containment system of the main reactor. So, put that thought right out of your tiny little brain.”

  I was tired and I smelled terrible even to myself, and I desperately wanted to get into a hot shower with a wire brush to scrape the accumulated layers of funkiness off my skin. Also, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that the entire human population of Paradise could be counting down to a death sentence. So, I didn’t take time to savor the joy of out-thinking His Awesomeness. “Skippy,” I said with a combination of weariness, fear and pain from a stiff neck. “All those powercells are attached to a sort of scaffolding, right? I remember when you assembled that section of the ship in the junkyard.”

  “Correct, it was more convenient for maintenance to cluster those powercells together, though that makes the assembly more vulnerable to a single hit in battle.”

  “Yeah, we had to make a lot of compromises. That scaffolding is attached to the hull with explosive bolts?”

  “Yes, that is a safety feature, so we can eject the powercells without damaging the reactor and, and-Damn it! And once again I truly, truly hate you, Joe. You’re telling me to blow those bolts and send those powercells spinning off into space?”

  “You got it,” despite how tired I felt, I grinned. “Can the ship function without those powercells?”

  “It can for now. I will need to pull powercells from other parts of the ship eventually, but, yes, we do not absolutely need those powercells. Joe, I should be insulted that I did not think of such a simple and obvious solution. Maybe I am so emotionally invested in this ship I’ve rebuilt several times, that I failed to consider sacrificing part of the ship.”

  “Skippy, at this point, there aren’t many parts of the ship we can sacrifice, without the whole damned thing falling apart. Will this work?”

  “Yes, it will. Give me three hours to make absolutely certain the energy virus is weakened enough so it can’t try to migrate to another system, and then I’ll blow the bolts. Crap! You’re going to humiliate me about this, aren’t you?”

  “No, Skippy, I won’t tell anyone. You should tell the crew it was your idea.”

  “Uh, what?”

  “The crew have lost a lot of confidence in you, Skippy. You got suckered by that computer worm, your plan to jump into the Roach Motel got the ship torn apart, and we barely escaped from there. Now we took aboard an energy virus you didn’t know anything about. The crew, and Chotek in particular, need to regain their trust in you. I figure that you happily announcing the virus is dead way ahead of schedule will be a big confidence booster.”

  “Oh.”

  “Because otherwise, I would totally bust your balls about it until the end of time.”

  “I would expect no less. Hmm. Joe, I feel like I’m cashing in a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. K
arma is going to come back and bite me in the ass about this someday.”

  “How about you stop educating me about crappy 80s TV shows, and we call it even?”

  “Um, can we compromise, and I’ll take The Love Boat off the schedule?”

  Why was I attempting to negotiate with a being who had fusion-powered stubbornness? “Take Love Boat and Knight Rider off the schedule, and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Deal. Oh, Joe, I can’t wait to show you my surprise; two lost episodes of ‘Casablanca’.”

  “Oh, man,” I groaned. “Can’t they stay lost?”

  Three hours later, Skippy blew the explosive bolts and ejected the contaminated powercells away from our starship, prompting cheers aboard all four dropships. We still could not go back to the ship, because there was no point going aboard until Skippy had power restored. That took a bit longer than the beer can estimated, still we were able to cut more than a full day off Skippy’s original schedule of eighty six hours. There were smiles all around when we detected heat from the backup reactor, and Skippy announced that ‘Spacebnb’ was now accepting reservations for cabins aboard the ship. “It will take another hour before hot water is available for showers,” he warned. “I had to drain all the pipes before the water in them froze while the ship was shut down, and I’m having to let water trickle back in slowly.”

  “No problem, Skippy, it will take us more than an hour to get back and secure the dropships anyway. What about gravity?”

  “The main reactor is just coming back online at minimum power. It should be stable in about twenty minutes, then I can resume feeding power to the artificial gravity plating.”

  “Uh, to do that, you need to divert power from recharging the jump drive capacitors?”

  “I know you are worried that the ship is vulnerable until the capacitors reach a minimum charge for a jump, but don’t worry about artificial gravity. If I keep gravity at one third Gee, that will delay achieving a jump by only thirteen minutes.”

  “All right,” I considered thirteen minutes to be an acceptable risk, and the crew deserved an opportunity to get out of their suits to enjoy a luxurious shower.