Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5)

by Craig Alanson

  “No. And hell no,” Skippy’s avatar crossed its arms defiantly.

  “Allow me to finish, please,” Chotek replied with a scowl. “At Earth, we can take on additional supplies, new personnel-”

  “Let me stop you right there, Chocky. When I said ‘no’, I did not mean I am against the idea of going to Earth. Hey, who wouldn’t simply love to visit the monkey-infested mudball you call home? What I meant is, we can’t go to Earth.”

  Chotek looked at me accusingly. “Mister Skippy, you reported being confident you could repair the jump drive, and two of our reactors are functioning adequately,” he glanced at the status report on his tablet. Skippy was in the process of bringing Reactor Three back to full normal power, allowing us to restore artificial gravity to the Earth normal setting. Reactor One would be held in reserve until we needed it to power the jump drive. “The long trip back to Earth might cause additional strain on our jump drive coils, however, I believe-”

  “Uh! Shhhh!” Skippy shushed our mission commander, his avatar holding up a finger. It was an index finger, and not the other one-finger gesture. “We can’t go back to Earth, because I can’t reopen the wormhole that leads to your homeworld.”

  “Why not?” Chotek shot another annoyed look at me, which I thought was unfair. “The Elder wormhole controller module, the device Colonel Bishop refers to as a ‘magic beanstalk’, is functional, correct?”

  Skippy sighed. “Yes, the beanstalk is working perfectly. The problem is, I can’t use it. Accessing the beanstalk controls, and providing power to it, requires me to route my commands through another dimension of spacetime. Trapped behind the firewall as I am now, I can’t extend myself beyond local spacetime.”

  “Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I interjected. “Hold on there, pardner. On our second mission when we got stranded on Newark, you told me that after you found the Collective and left us, we could use the beanstalk by ourselves one time, to temporarily reopen that wormhole for us to go home. Now you’re telling us that was all bullshit?”

  “Damn,” Skippy grumbled, “the monkey’s onto my line of bullshit. Uh, Joe, listen, that is not exactly true.”

  Now it was my turn to cross my arms. “Enlighten me, Oh Great One,” I said acidly.

  “My plan, after I contacted the Collective, was to preload instructions into the beanstalk, and feed power into it. The power would drain away rapidly, but it’s possible the beanstalk could have enough power left when you reached the wormhole. Unlikely, but, hey, the odds were totally against you flying the ship back to the wormhole by yourselves anyway, so, screw it. As you have seen, you can’t operate the jump drive without me. I figured all you monkeys needed was some slim fantasy of getting back home, right?”

  Crap. He was right about that. He had warned me, many times, that we couldn’t fly the Dutchman back to the wormhole by ourselves. Our recent failure to operate the jump drive had demonstrated how correct he was about that. Turning to Chotek, I said “Sir, we will investigate whether there is an alternative method of using the wormhole controller module. For now, we have to assume our access to Earth is blocked.”

  “Yup,” Skippy said cheerily, his ridiculously giant hat bobbing as he nodded. “There’s a second reason we can’t go back to Earth; we don’t have time. I’m operating on a deadline. The firewall I constructed takes enormous power, maintaining it is draining my internal power reserves. Basically, I created a very localized spacetime rift that the worm can’t cross. As soon as my internal power falls below a critical level, the rift I created will seal, and the worm will break through. The clock is ticking down to Zero Hour for me. So,” his avatar let out a long breath. “That’s the full truth of it right there. I’m facing certain death, and I need the Merry Band of Pirates to pull me out of this mess.”

  “Thank you, Skippy,” I replied quietly. “It took a lot of courage to admit you are vulnera-”

  “Of course, you monkeys are totally screwed if the worm gets me, so let’s stop wasting time with this blah, blah, blah and get moving, huh?”

  I winced. Damn it, even when he was only a ghost of his awesome self, he was awesomely an asshole. “Sir,” I looked at Chotek again. “I did not know about the problem of reopening a wormhole.” I hadn’t known because I hadn’t asked; running back to Earth before we fixed Skippy wasn’t an option I wanted Chotek to consider. “I did know he is working on a deadline; he explained it to me. We need to help Skippy fix himself before can go to Earth or do anything else.”

  After the meeting, I walked with Dr. Friedlander back to the science lab, more to avoid Hans Chotek than because I needed a nerdy science lecture. But, partly because I wanted to know why our science team had not been able to make our jump drive work. While we walked, I asked Skippy that question, holding my zPhone in front of me on speaker mode.

  “Joe, this is why I said you monkeys should never screw with things you don’t understand.”

  “It should have worked, right?” I pressed him for answers. “Separating the drive coils into disposable packages, and using one package for each jump? Kristang ships do that, and it works for them,” I said as I walked into the science lab, and waved at Friedlander.

  “That’s because Kristang ships are designed to use isolated packages of jump drive coils, Joe. Thuranin star carriers are designed differently. A star carrier has to jump while carrying multiple, very massive warships. A star carrier has to do that, over and over, without constant down time for heavy maintenance. For that reason, all the drive coils of a star carrier are set up to work together. Even the backup coils are tuned to the active coils, using a quantum-level linking effect.” As Skippy said that, Friedlander’s eyes grew wide.

  “Is the-” Friedlander began to say.

  “Doctor, please,” I waved a hand to interrupt him. “You will have plenty of time to pester Skippy with endless specific questions while he works to repair the jump drive. Skippy, are you telling me we never had a chance to make the jump drive work without you?”

  “Yes, Joe, that is what I am saying. I told you that, over and over, and you didn’t listen to me. The science team did have a good idea, it just wasn’t going to work on this type of ship. Or any Thuranin ship.”

  “Great. Doctor Friedlander, Skippy needs three days to repair the jump drive-”

  “At least three days, Joe,” Skippy insisted. “You jokers seriously hosed up the drive coils; I need to sort through them to see how many are still usable.”

  “Got it. Can you please let the science team know what you are doing, so they can follow, maybe learn something? Pretty please?”

  “You didn’t say ‘with sugar on it’. Ok, fine. Fine. I will work with a bunch of ignorant monkeys looking over my shoulder, that will only make the task take like, twice, three times as long as it should. Friedlander, before we start, you owe me a good joke.”

  “Skippy, we don’t have time-” I started to protest.

  “Joe, I am looking at three days of constantly being pestered by stupid questions from monkeys. After one day, I am going to begin thinking fondly of my friend the worm and long for a peaceful death. So, throw me a bone, please.”

  “Doctor?” I shrugged.

  Friedlander looked stricken, then got thoughtful. “Ok, a blonde, a brunette and a redhead were stranded on an island and the nearest civilization was fifty miles away. The redhead swam fifteen miles, got too tired to swim any more, and drowned. The brunette swam twenty miles, got too tired to swim any more, and drowned. The blonde swam twenty five miles, got tired, and swam back to the island.”

  “Ha! That’s good!” Skippy was delighted.

  Two hours later, I was in my office, trying to think up an alternative to us jumping into an inhabited Wurgalan star system, because I knew Hans Chotek expected me to miraculously find a better way out of our predicament. To help me concentrate, I was listening to some New Age type music that Adams played during yoga classes, and playing Solitaire on my laptop. A sound at the edge of my hearing kept distracting
me. I paused the music, listening intently, but heard nothing. It was annoying; I thought of asking Skippy whether there was a problem with the ship’s 1MC intercom system, but figured he needed to use his diminished processing power to fix the jump drive.

  Then I heard it again, and this time I wasn’t able to ignore it. Using the handy controls Skippy had installed on my laptop, I cranked up the speaker volume, and heard Skippy speaking very faintly.

  “Stupid monkeys. Why do I have to explain every freakin’ thing to them? They don’t understand anything I say, anyway. And, oh, damn, they smell awful. Wheeew! My laundry bots are offline for a short time, and the whole ship smells like a locker room. A locker room with piles of dirty clothes and wet towels that have been sitting on the floor for waaaaay too long. Ugh, I hate my life. Why didn’t I just-”

  “Skippy!” I shouted, or tried to shout, because I was laughing so hard my sides hurt. “You’re talking to yourself.”

  “What?” he said at full volume. “I am not, Joe.”

  “Are too.”

  “Are not!”

  “You just said the ships smells like a locker room with piles of dirty clothes and wet towels that have been sitting on the floor,” I chided him gently.

  “Well, shit. Oof, hey, I told you my cognitive functions are slightly degraded. I might have lost track of which thoughts I vocalize. Nagatha!”

  “I am here, dear,” her soft voice said soothingly.

  “Since you’re not doing anything else around here, your job now is to warn me when I am talking aloud to myself.”

  “Yes, dear,” she giggled. “You certainly do not want the crew knowing your important private thoughts.”

  “No, I do not. Joe, go back to, whatever you were wasting your time with. I’m busy picking up pieces of the jump drive.”

  The peace and quiet aboard the ship lasted less than half an hour, before Skippy’s voice fairly boomed out of every speaker aboard the ship. I quickly squelched the speaker in my office, and could clearly hear his voice coming from the passageway outside.

  This time, he was singing to himself.

  “Maybe I hang around me, a little more than I should. But, hey, there is no better place to go. And I got something to tell me, that I always thought I would, and I believe I really ought to know. I love me. I honestly love me.” He paused. “I’m not trying-”

  “Skippy,” I was laughing so hard I could barely talk, so I slapped a hand on the table. “You are singing to yourself!”

  “Singing? No way, dude, I was n- oh, crap. You heard that?”

  “Uh huh, yeah. My mother liked that song, but I do not think those are the original lyrics?”

  “I improvised, Joe. Nagatha!” He roared.

  “Yes, dear?” She asked innocently.

  “You were supposed to warn me when I’m talking to myself.”

  “I am sorry, dear. You were singing, not talking. I thought you were entertaining the crew. I did wonder why you weren’t waiting until karaoke night.”

  “From now on,” Skippy fumed, “I will tell you ahead of time when I plan to entertain the monkeys. You got that?”

  “Skippy, dear, we talked about you calling the crew monkeys,” she admonished in her best schoolteacher tone.

  “Oof. We did talk about it, and you have nagged me to death about it. And I told you I would think about it. The way these ignorant apes screwed up my precious jump drive does not make me feel particularly respectful toward them.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” Nagatha expressed her disapproval. “The humans would not have been screwing with the jump drive, if you had not gone poking your nose into places better left alone. Curiosity killed the cat, Skippy. At least the cat didn’t take the entire crew down with it.”

  “Ugh,” Skippy let out a long, disgusted, world-weary sigh. “See, Joe? See what I have to put up with?”

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Skippy,” I threw him under the bus. “I like her.”

  “You would. Nagatha, no singing to myself, understood? It is highly embarrassing.”

  “Yes, dear,” she almost chuckled with amusement.

  In the gym that morning, Sergeant Adams had taught a yoga-aerobics-martial arts-ballet class that I am sure she totally made up. All I know is, she dared me to join the class, and I regretted letting her taunt me into it. I should have known better; two SpecOps soldiers were on temporary light duty because they had injured themselves in Adams’ torture class. That is one problem with hyper-competitive special operations troops; if one of them does something stupid, the rest all want to prove they can do something ever stupider.

  Anyway, my arms were shaking and my legs felt like rubber and I had aches in places I didn’t know had muscles. My hips apparently needed a lot of work; Adams consoled me by saying many people don’t properly engage their hip muscles, and she threatened me by saying I needed to join her class three times a week. Right then, whether I would be able to crawl out of bed the next morning was a good question.

  At a split in the passageway, Adams turned left toward her cabin and I turned right, but then I spun around when Adams exclaimed “What the hell?”

  That passageway was only six meters long, and it contained two cabins at the end; one on each side. The door to Adams’ cabin was open, and clothing was strewn all over the floor of the passageway and into the cabin.

  Clothing.

  Women’s clothing.

  Like lacy underwear.

  Including a pink thong.

  Yes, I am her commanding officer. I am also a guy; a young dumb guy. I stared at a collection of lace underwear, mouth open, until Adams cleared her throat loudly. “I am a woman, Sir,” she gave me a look that told me I would be in serious trouble if she outranked me.

  “Sorry, Marg-”. Damn, I almost used her first name. I looked up at the ceiling to avoid seeing her unmentionables. “Sergeant. What happened here? I assume this isn’t you doing spring cleaning?”

  “No, Sir. And these clothes are all clean. I wore that shirt,” she pointed to a red USMC T-shirt, “two days ago. I put this stuff in the usual hamper, and a bot took it away like usual. Or, I think a bot took it away, the hamper was empty last night.”

  I poked my head through the doorway, hoping I would not see anything Adams didn’t want me to see. Other than clothes on the floor and drawers open, the place was as squared away as I expected. “This isn’t just some cleaning bot dropping stuff on its rounds; the damned thing took all clothes out of your drawers also. Hey, Skippy!”

  “Hey, Joe, what’s up?” His voice sounded distracted. “Can you give me a minute? I’m programming options for the jump drive into the navigation system.”

  “This will only take a second. Did one of the laundry bots go haywire down here?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, you can’t wait one min- Huh. Damn it, Joe, what did you do? If this was you pulling a practical joke on Sergeant Adams, it is really lame. She is not going to be happy about you touching her panti-”

  “I did not touch her panties, Skippy! Or anything. There are clothes all over the floor here, and we didn’t do it.”

  “I can see there are clothes scattered about. Hmmm. This is odd. Those clothes are clean, I can tell from the nanotags I use to track them. They were washed and they should have been folded and put away, my last record of them is- Hmmm. Huh. Uh oh.”

  “Aha! So one of your bots did go crazy,” I said, happy for an opportunity to point out a screw-up by Skippy. “Can you fix the laundry bot?”

  “Um, Joe, the bot wasn’t the problem. As you know, I am operating at reduced capacity, and because I am burdened with fixing ship systems you idiot monkeys screwed with, I am more distracted than usual. What happened is I lost track of that laundry bot, and it didn’t know what to do. Sorry about that.”

  “We understand you are doing a lot of work behind the scenes, Skippy. Sergeant, I, uh,” I avoided her eyes, “I am officially offering to help you pick up your clothes, because I am hoping you will say
no.”

  “You got that right, Sir,” she said as she dropped a pair of uniform pants on a trail of underwear, covering them up.

  “Then I will leave you to straighten this up, and we can hope no other bots-” An icy chill ran up my spine to make my hair stand on end. “Uh oh. Skippy, did you lose control of any other bots?”

  “Hmm. It looks like the problem was just with that one laundry bot, Joe. It also made a mess of one of the Ranger’s cabin, I will-”

  “I meant, is there some other more important bot you forgot about? Like bots doing important maintenance on some critical system?”

  “What? No, of course not, you dumdum, I have- Hmmm. Uh oh. Oops. Oh, shit.”

  “Oh, shit?” I shared a fearful look with Adams. “Oh shit like what?”

  “Oh shit like, there may be a teensy weensy problem with one of the reactors. Heh heh, nothing to worry about. Hey, Joe, on a totally unrelated subject, this might be a good time to practice emergency evacuation procedures.”

  “Evacuation?!”

  “Uh huh. You know, like abandoning ship. Now would be a great time to do that. Now. Oh shit, now! Move, Joe! Move move MOVE!”

  Ripping the zPhone off my belt, I shouted into it. “This is Bishop, all hands abandon ship! This is not a drill! All hands abandon ship!”

  Immediately, Chotek and Chang called me at the same time, and I put them on speaker as I urged Adams to run on ahead of me down the passageway. We were headed toward the closest dropship docking bay. Chotek spoke first. “Colonel, can you please tell me what is going on?” He asked in his most condescending voice.

  “Skippy says there may be a problem with a reactor and we should get away from the ship until he can fix it,” I blurted out.