“I see.”
“When he hears this news, he is going to put all our efforts into setting up camp on this planet, and abandon the Dutchman.”
“You will have to persuade him otherwise, Colonel.”
“That may be impossible.”
“No it’s not. You convinced him to risk exposure to save UNEF on Paradise. And you recently convinced a career diplomat to start an alien civil war. You even got him to plan how to spark that war. Sir, you could sell sand in the desert.”
I was not sure of that. But, I was sure as hell not going to abandon the Dutchman without a fight, or at least without a ‘frank and honest exchange of views’; I think that is the polite diplomatic term for Chotek and me yelling at each other.
“Skippy,” I called him when I got back to my office, “these Guardians can access other spacetimes, right? So, could they contact the Collective for you?”
“The Collective?” He asked, surprised.
“Yeah, you know, the place where all the cool AIs hang out, or whatever it is. You were all hot for finding a working comm node thingy, so you could contact the Collective. So, can the Guardians do that for you?” I was hoping he would say yes. If he could contact other Elder AIs, they surely would help him fight the worm. I hoped.
“No, the Guardians can’t help me there. They are just machines, Joe. Powerful machines, certainly, but they perform a limited set of functions. While I can talk with them on a very basic level, I can’t use them as a communications device.”
“Oh, damn. Hey, what about this conduit thing you want? Can you use that to-”
“No, Joe. I can use a conduit to send a very localized signal through higher spacetimes, the signal would not travel far enough to be useful in contacting the Collective. Besides, I told you, after all the unexplained crap that we know has been going on in the galaxy, I am leery about contacting the Collective. Especially now that I know about worms designed to destroy Elder AIs.”
I sucked in a breath. “Crap, you think the Collective was involved in planting that worm?”
“No, although, damn it, now that you gave me that idea, I am worried about that. My concern was the Collective might reject me as contaminated, if they knew I had been attacked by a worm. They might even take action to purge me from the network, to avoid exposing themselves. Whatever happens, Joe, I am on my own out here.”
“You’re not alone, Skippy, you have the Merry Band of Pirates with you.”
“Oh, great. My best ally is a barrel of monkeys. Somebody, please, shoot me now.”
Chapter Twelve
With the Dutchman surviving off a trickle of power from the lifeboat’s reactor, everyone ate their meals aboard the lifeboat, so rations were simple. For lunches, we ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, and I didn’t even have a jar of delicious Fluff to make it tasty. That day, the bread for sandwiches had been sitting out for a while, like since yesterday or even the day before but we couldn’t afford to waste food. Picking up a slice, I sniffed at it, it wasn’t appealing. “You should eat that bread before it goes bad, Joe,” Skippy suggested in a tone he assured me was not at all nagging. Even though it sure felt like nagging to me.
“You’re right, Skippy. It’s a sad thing when bread goes bad,” I shook my head sadly. “First you notice the vodka in the liquor cabinet is getting watered down, because bread has been drinking it and topping off the bottle with water, like you wouldn’t notice. Then bread starts stealing cash from Grandma’s purse to buy drugs, and it’s all downhill from there. What’s worse is when there’s an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table because bread is in prison, and everyone is awkwardly not talking about it.”
“What?” He sputtered. “Joe, what in the hell are you talking about?”
I winked at him. “You are slow this afternoon, Skippy.”
“Huh? Oh. Oh, I get it! Bread goes bad, hee hee, that’s a good one. Ok, you got me.”
To set an example, I took the two worst-looking slices of bread and slathered them with peanut butter and strawberry jam. Yum. Damn, I ate better lunches in elementary school than I was getting aboard humanity’s first starship.
Before approaching Chotek for an uncomfortable conversation, I checked in with the senior staff, who were all waiting for instructions from me.
“When we get to- hell, we need a name for the place,” I declared. “Saying ‘the planet’ all the time is getting old already. Suggestions?”
“What do we know about it?” Smythe asked, slightly irritated that I was getting distracted by unimportant matters.
“It’s where Elders lived,” I shrugged.
“Elders, hmm. Like Grandma’s house?” Adams asked.
“Uh, maybe?” I didn’t know what she meant.
“You know, Grandma’s house. A place where the Wi-Fi is slow, and her idea of a game console is the Chutes and Ladders game you played when you were four years old?”
“Ah,” I understood. “Not your favorite place?”
“It was fine. She always had fresh-baked cookies,” Adams remembered fondly. “But being there got boring real quick.”
“How do we know this place is like a grandmother’s house?” Lt. Williams suggested. Instead of nice grandmother, maybe the old person living there is a witch, and it’s a gingerbread house.”
“Gingerbread house?” I asked.
“You know, Sir, Hansel and Gretel? A witch lured them into a house made of candy and gingerbread. This planet we’re going to seems like a decent place, but,” he held up his hands.
“Yeah. It sounds too good to be true. Ok, we call it ‘Gingerbread’ until we know more, one way or the other. Any objections?” No one objected, so the planet got its temporary name.
I knocked on the door frame to Chotek's tiny office in the lifeboat, it was really just the end of a passageway were he kept two chairs and a desk. "You wanted to speak with me, Sir?"
"Colonel Bishop," Chotek waved for me to sit in a chair across the desk from him. With artificial gravity at only twenty five percent due to the low output of the lifeboat's reactor, I moved carefully. "Major Simms just left, we completed a review of supplies we could move down to Gingerbread," he pursed his lips in disapproval of our flippant name for the planet. "Given our limited transport capacity."
"Yes, Sir. I discussed that same subject with Simms this morning."
"Your discussion was focused on equipment and supplies needed to conduct a survey of the planet, locate and access a conduit, and return to the ship?"
"Correct," I responded warily. Of course that had been the focus of my discussion with Simms. What Chotek described was our mission, what else would I focus on? I didn’t bother mentioning my discussion with Simms about whether we could survive on food grown on the planet. I sure as hell was not going to tell Chotek abut Simms’ expectation we might need to feed babies someday.
“I thought so,” Chotek managed to sound smug and disappointed at the same time. “My talk with Major Simms was more comprehensive; we reviewed all the equipment and supplies aboard the Dutchman that could be transported by dropship to the surface of the planet. Colonel, we must consider, strongly consider, the possibility that this crew will never be leaving the surface of Gingerbread. The probability that we will be trapped here, if not forever then for an extended period.”
“I know, Sir, but-”
He was on a roll, giving me a speech he had to have rehearsed; there was no stopping him. “Colonel Bishop, I believe we need a contingency plan, and by ‘we’ I do not mean this Merry Band of Pirates,” a corner of his mouth curled up in a quick smile; he did find the name of our bloodthirsty band amusing. “I mean humanity needs a contingency plan. Being out here has taught me that, just when we think our future has been secured, the unexpected happens. There is substantial risk that, despite our best efforts out here, despite our successful efforts, there could be an alien expedition to Earth, and our secret would be uncovered. If, perhaps when, that happens, the survival of our species will be
in doubt. Not only humans on Earth could be enslaved and eventually rendered extinct; I do not think humans on Paradise would survive long if Earth were lost.”
“Sir, the Ruhar have no interest in sending a ship to Earth. And now the Kristang are too busy with a civil war to-”
“Yes,” he waved a hand dismissively. “The Ruhar, and perhaps the Kristang may not be a problem in the short term. That leaves dozens of other alien species, with a half-dozen in our local sector alone. Skippy has told me he fears his manipulation of wormholes has been noticed by the Maxolhx, who may not know what is happening or suspect human involvement, but they will certainly begin asking uncomfortable questions. There are far too many risks for us to consider Earth to be safe; a wormhole shift could reopen alien access to our home planet. We have no way to predict or control wormhole shifts, not even Skippy can do that.”
“I understand that.”
He showed me a sad smile. “Then you see the value of having another world in this galaxy where humans are surviving. Gingerbread. This star system, if Skippy is correct, might be the only place in the galaxy where humans might be safe from alien attack.”
“Sir,” I was alarmed by the turn the conversation had taken. “That assumes we can’t fix Skippy, that we will be trapped here.”
“No, Colonel. It assumes we will be trapped here, whether Skippy can restore his full facilities or not.”
“Sir?”
“Tell me, even if Skippy can restore himself, how are we to escape from this star system? We do not have a starship.”
“The Dutchman is not currently flightworthy, true, but Skippy can perform miracles, given time and resources. On our second mission, while we were on Newark, he rebuilt the ship out of moondust-”
“Partly out of moondust. He had a basic ship to work with back then.”
“Yes, Sir, but-”
“Colonel,” he waved a hand in a not-quite-dismissive gesture, “whether or not Skippy can create a ship from raw materials out here is not the point. The point is, what are we to do if he can’t? What is our contingency plan? If we plan to be marooned here, and Skippy is able to repair the ship, we do not lose anything.”
My mind raced through rewriting the argument I had carefully prepared. Damn it, I wish Simms had given me a heads up about her talk with Chotek, although that was unfair of me; she didn’t have an opportunity. “Sir, you once told me to expect the unexpected, that out here, the unexpected is the most likely thing we will encounter. You expect that at this point, Skippy can’t fix himself, and we will never have a functional starship. It is reasonable to plan for us being stranded here, forever. But, Sir, I strongly urge,” I threw in the word ‘strongly’ because it is a meaningless thing diplomats say, “that we not make plans that render us unable to take advantage of the unexpected. Because the unexpected will happen. Skippy might still find a way to fix himself before Zero Hour. We might find a way to fix the Dutchman, or, or, some other way out of here. We can’t plan for expected, if those plans mean we are unable to deal with the unexpected.”
Chotek’s eyes opened slightly wider, and he sat back just a bit in his chair. The chair he was strapped into because the Dutchman did not have artificial gravity. “Colonel, I am willing to consider any plan that includes us having the ability to survive on Gingerbread,” he almost rolled his eyes and I totally regretted giving the planet that flippant name, “in the long term.”
“That’s all I ask for, Sir. We will need to bring extra fuel with us, and a synthesizer so we can make dropship fuel once we’re on the planet.”
He gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “The synthesizer unit, if I remember correctly, is large and has substantial mass. What would you use as an energy source to power the synthesizer?”
“I’m working on that, Sir. As long as we retain the capability to fly while we are on the planet, and the ability to send a dropship back out to the Dutchman, then I have no problem with the remainder of our dropship capacity being used to carry supplies we will need for long-term survival on the planet.” If the Dutchman didn’t get burned to a crisp while arcing past the star, a dropship could refuel aboard the ship, even if it was a very long flight. “We will,” I added, “need flight capability once we’re down on the planet, to conduct surveys and select a spot to build a settlement.”
“True,” Chotek nodded with a frown, which I thought meant he had not considered that issue. “You also want permission for our three Condors to continue pushing what is left of the Dutchman away from the star?”
I nodded. “We are monitoring the strain on their engines and Skippy says it is not yet a risk. Sir, I know Skippy has not been the most trustworthy, uh, element aboard the ship recently.” Recently? How about ever? I didn’t say that aloud. “But monitoring dropship engines doesn’t require any guesswork.”
“Very well, Colonel Bishop. Work with Major Simms to include the fuel, synthesizer and other equipment you will need, and I will consider it.”
“We will also need weapons, and armored suits.”
He raised an eyebrow, then, “Ah. Expecting the unexpected again?”
“Preparing for the unexpected.”
“Preparing to kill the unexpected?”
“If we have to, yes. There isn’t a lot in the Orion Arm that isn’t hostile to us.”
We compromised by bringing weapons, additional fuel and two synthesizers. Chotek was right, the synthesizers were large and heavy; I justified bringing two of them because they could be used to manufacture a variety of chemicals useful for long-term survival on the planet, not just dropship fuel. That is my story and I stuck to it. Neither Major Smythe nor I was happy about the ‘E’ for Equipment part of our Table of Organization and Equipment, and Smythe gave me the impression he thought I should have pushed harder to include more combat power. Working with Simms, I did the best I could to supply Smythe’s team with a reasonable amount of gear; stuff like guns and bullets are heavy and when loading spacecraft, mass is the limiting factor. While I sympathized with Smythe’s anxiety over the restricted combat capability we would have on the planet, my thinking was that if we encountered hostile Elder technology down there, an extra crate of Kristang rifles was unlikely to be of much use to us.
While I was on the way to a docking bay to see the progress we’d made stuffing Kristang dropships full of supplies, Skippy pinged my zPhone. “Hey, Joe.”
“Hey, Skippy,” I replied distractedly. “What’s up?”
“I found a mystery.”
“Oh, crap,” I groaned. “Not another mystery. Don’t we have enough mysteries we can’t answer, without you looking for more? And, hey, I thought you learned a lesson about poking your nose into things better left alone?”
“Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“You know me better than anyone aboard this ship. Better than anyone in this universe, which shows just how pathetic my life is. Considering how well you know me, what are the odds of me learning a lesson?”
“Zero?” I guessed, hoping I was wrong.
“Exactly! See, you can use math when you need to.”
“Ok, great,” I sighed. “A killer worm isn’t enough to teach you a lesson, so what mystery did you find this time?”
“Technically, this is not a new, separate mystery. And, hey, I just realized that me poking around looking for answers this time is because you asked a question.”
“I did? When was this?” Crap, I had no idea what he meant; I had been too busy surviving to ask deep questions.
“Just before we jumped into this system.”
“Ok, uh, I have no idea what you mean.”
“Oh, your memory sucks. Do you want a hint?”
“Not this time, Skippy. I’m tired and I’m hungry. Just tell me what it is, please.”
“Fine, Mister Funkiller,” he huffed. “You asked why the Elders are protecting this star system. You also asked the larger question of why the Elders cared about anyone screwing with any of the stuff they left behind.
”
“I do remember that. Huh. So, you found the reason they-”
“No, dumdum,” Skippy sounded exasperated. “Damn, do you ever listen? I told you I found another mystery, not the answer to a mystery we already know.”
“Yeah, and a moment ago you said technically this is not a new mystery.”
“Ugh. Are you going to be picky about it? Don’t answer that! Do you want to hear what I found?”
“I’ve been trying to do that, Skippy,” I rolled my eyes.
“I found seven power sinks inside the photosphere of the star. It is likely there are more that I haven’t detected yet, because they are on the other side of the star. Based on the location of the seven power sinks I know of, I expect there are a total of twenty two.”
“Power sinks? You mean like the fake ones we planted on Paradise, to make the hamsters think they found some fantastic treasure?”
“No. Well,” he considered. “No. Those fake things were power taps, not sinks. Power taps pull energy from another dimension, I won’t make your head hurt by explaining it.”
“Thank you.”
“The science team might be able to explain it to you, except their understanding of the subject is pathetically inadequate. And mostly wrong.”
“I can live without an explanation, Skippy. How are the power sinks in the star different?”
“The sinks do not generate power the way a reactor does; they pull power from an external source.”
“Ok, I understood that. An ‘engine’ like in a car generates its own power, while a ‘motor’ has to be supplied power in order to do work.”
“Huh. That is actually correct, Joe. How the hell did that happen?”
“Even a monkey gets things right once in a while. So, these power sinks in the star, I assume they pull power from the star? Not from another dimension?”
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 23
