I hope we didn’t screw it up.
“All decks report ready for departure, Captain,” Chang reported unnecessarily from CIC. All decks and stations had individually reported ready twenty minutes ago, and Chotek had approved departing from orbit. The only reason we had not yet fired the engines was our instinct to follow proper procedure. Now, there was no reason not to act. Our starship, a collection of parts that were never intended to work together, was ready to fly toward the edge of the Roach Motel, to the edge of the damping field and beyond.
“Pilot,” I called to Desai, who had insisted on being in the command pilot seat when we set course back to Earth. “Punch it.”
She turned in her couch to look at me, amused. “Punch it, Sir?”
“I can’t say something cool like ‘Warp Factor Six’, so, ‘punch it’ will have to do.”
“Aye, Captain,” she made a fist and playfully touched her knuckles to the button to engage the autopilot. “Commencing acceleration.”
Back aboard the ship, we reestablished traditions like formal uniform dinner once a week, and Movie Night. Having run out of humans-defeat-alien-invasion stories to make fun of during Movie Night in the galley, the American team had started showing other, less violent and more plausible first contact films. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was one of my favorites; I was almost ashamed to admit I had not seen it before. And it made me wonder, was there a Fourth kind of close encounter? Maybe I didn’t want to know.
Anyway, the latest movie we showed was Arrival, which I thought was good, and it made me think, to the point where my head hurt. The movie ended around 2130 Hours, then we had snacks in the galley. I drank coffee, because I was going to be the duty officer in the command chair from midnight to 0400. In my office, catching up on reports, I was reading a flight training manual for our larger 'Condor' type of Thuranin dropship, the type I wasn’t yet trained to fly when Skippy’s avatar popped into life on my desk. “Hi, Joe. Did you like the movie?”
“Yeah, it was good. I thought-”
“Of course you liked it, because it was stupid.”
“Uh, how’s that?”
“Incredibly advanced aliens come to Earth, and they make the primitive humans figure out how to communicate? The aliens should have learned how to communicate with you primitives, not the other way around. Duh.”
“It’s a movie, Skippy, you might be-”
But he was on a roll. “And, seriously, the aliens need humanity’s help in three thousand years, but they don’t say what they will need then?”
“I’m assuming it’s not a microwaved burrito,” I speculated.
“Wh-what?” Skippy sputtered.
“Because they’d be like, ‘We waited three thousand years, and you couldn’t have gotten a fresh burrito for us’?”
“Oh. My. GOD.” His avatar stood still, stunned. “That is what you got from that film, Joe? I, you know what, I actually do not know what to say.”
“Well, I’d be pissed, wouldn’t you? Or, hey, maybe they know their spaceship will break down in three thousand years, and they want to make sure we have a tow truck ready. Skippy?”
Without a word, his avatar slowly faded away.
I took that to mean I totally won that argument.
We settled into a routine like we did during every long journey, except normally most of our time was spent with the ship drifting through interstellar space while the reactors recharged the jump drive capacitors. With a powerful damping field still saturating the Roach Motel, our departure from Gingerbread involved our single main reactor providing steady power to the normal space drive motors. Under their modest reactionless thrust the Dutchman slowly gained speed, first to escape from Gingerbread’s gravity well, then setting course for the loosely-defined outer edge of the damping field. It was going to be a long, slow trip and no one aboard was looking forward to the enforced tedium. To keep people’s spirits up, we celebrated milestones, no matter how minor. The ship departed orbit? Party in the galley that night! Later, we achieved solar escape velocity, the speed at which gravity of the Roach Motel’s star could not pull the ship back into orbit. Party time! After that, we had to get creative to find excuses for a party. Fortunately, we accepted the challenge.
Much of my time, when I wasn’t taking useless shifts in the command chair, was devoted to helping Major Simms get all our gear and supplies properly stowed away. Given the opportunity to repack almost everything, she moved things around to free up two additional compartments for growing food in hydroponics. “We have enough of this gear aboard?” I asked skeptically as she directed me and a team in setting up hydroponics tanks.
“Yes,” she pointed to crates stacked against the far bulkhead. “Growing food in space is still an experiment for us, so NASA, the ESA and other agencies gave us different types of experimental equipment. The gear in these crates hasn’t been used yet because we didn’t need it. Now I think it is best we add to our food-growing capacity.”
I nodded, everyone appreciated fresh fruit and vegetables in the galley. “How are we doing on the food we brought from Earth?” I asked quietly.
“Even with two more compartments being used for hydroponics, we can’t grow enough food to feed the entire crew. And morale will suffer if our diet is restricted to whatever we can grow. Using hydroponics to supplement stored food, we can stretch our supplies to 12, maybe 14 months.” She cocked her head at me. “UNEF Command didn’t expect us to be out here this long, Colonel.”
“Neither did I,” I agreed. “It was supposed to be quick and easy, right? Find out whether the Thuranin were sending a surveyor ship to Earth, to replace the one we destroyed. But to do that, we had to board and capture a Thuranin relay station.”
“Then we took a side trip to Paradise.”
“Twice. The whole second trip wouldn’t have been necessary if my brain had been working. And we wouldn’t have had to spacedive all the way to the surface of Jumbo. Then we had to sabotage the Ruhar negotiations, and there was the minor issue of starting a Kristang civil war.”
“Don’t forget our beer can going on unscheduled leave got us stuck here for more than a year,” as she spoke, her eyes looked up at the ceiling, expecting Skippy to reply. Wisely, he remained silent.
“No one is forgetting that, Major. Once we get past the damping field, we’ll test our new jump drive. Then my intention is to verify the Kristang are still fighting each other, run a couple errands, and head straight back to Earth.”
“Unless something else happens before we return to Earth,” she observed sourly “This is the most snake-bitten outfit I’ve served with. We always get the job done, but, ugh, there is always something standing in our way.”
“Simms,” I winked at her, “if we aren’t able to fly directly back to Earth, I am officially going to blame your negative thoughts. Anyway, nothing bad can happen until we get out of the Roach Motel, so relax, Ok?”
A mere two days later, my idiot prediction that nothing bad could happen in the Roach Motel slapped me in the face. It was early morning, 0528 to be precise, and I was on duty in the command chair, doing nothing more important than catching up on reading reports, when a shiny beer can ruined my day.
“Pilot!” Skippy shouted excitedly. “Course 227.45 Mark 129.32 full military thrust!”
Lt. Reed, who had been running diagnostics on her own console and was caught totally off guard, turned to look toward me in shock, one of her hands poised above her console.
I opened my mouth to confirm Skippy’s order, then remembered that Simms and her team were still unloading dropships and stowing away gear. Full military thrust would partially overload the artificial gravity system that protected the crew and interior of the ship from the full effects of violent maneuvers. Supplies and equipment could be flung around and damaged or destroyed, people could be injured or killed. “Belay that!” I ordered instinctively. “Shields up, weapons free! Skippy, what’s the threat?”
“Maxolhx ship!” His voice w
as frantic and it chilled my blood. “I just detected a Maxolhx ship powering up out there.”
“Maxolhx?” My blood froze in fear. “What the hell? Where?” There was nothing on the main bridge display. And suddenly there was, as the display zoomed out, there was an angry red blinking dot. It wasn’t close. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere close to being close to us. Squinting at the display, I determined the enemy ship was eighteen lightminutes away, which was more than three hundred million kilometers.
“Sorry. I forgot to forward data to the sensor plot,” Skippy said disgustedly. “You see it now?”
“Yes, hell yes. It just jumped in?” Damn, that was disastrous for us. Crap! What were the odds that a senior species would pick now to send an expedition into the Roach Motel?! There was no way, absolutely no freakin’ way the Maxolhx could know from outside the system that the Guardians were temporarily dormant. No way-
Oh, crap. We knew the damping field covering the entire system was still fully active. We knew the stealth and fuzz fields around the planet Gingerbread had not been deactivated; even after Skippy regained his full awesomeness, he had not been able to get the Guardians to drop the annoying fuzz field that made communications difficult.
What we did not know for certain was whether the stealth field surrounding the entire Roach Motel system was still active. If that stealth effect had been turned off, then sensors outside the system might be able to see that a ship was flying around without being torn apart. We had been there over a year, plenty of time for light to travel far beyond the inner system to be picked up by satellites waiting eagerly in the interstellar depths for any true glimpse of activity inside the impenetrable stealth field.
“What?” Skippy asked disparagingly. “No, no, Joe, that ship did not just jump in. You should know that, duh, because there was no gamma ray burst. No, that ship is one of the derelicts I have been tracking in the junkyard. Until a moment ago, it was a large but rather uninteresting derelict. Now I can see much of the broken junk detected by sensors was only an outer layer, possibly a disguise. Hmmm, that is very clever if true. The Maxolhx must have concealed a small but functional ship inside a hull they expected to be destroyed after jumping in. The inner ship must have drifted, unpowered, observing with passive sensors, until the ship’s computer saw our ship flying around without being attacked by Guardians. Wow,” he gasped in admiration. “That ship has been floating there for a long time, waiting and hoping for an opportunity to send a signal to the outside galaxy. The ship, or the crew if there is one, must have determined signals still are being blocked, so they’re going to carry the message the old fashioned way; fly to the edge of the damping field and jump. Yup, yup, their ship is now clear of its outer shell, and accelerating. Uh, well, that is interesting. They are not setting course for the outer edge of the system; they are headed toward us. Come on, Joe, I programmed an intercept course, give the order.”
“Wait a sec, OK?” I answered distractedly, manipulating the controls on the command chair’s armrests to project Skippy’s proposed course onto the display, and asking the navigation system to project a course for the Maxolhx ship. What I saw made my hair stand on end. “The Maxolhx ship is headed straight for us, and you want us to fly straight at them?”
“I want to kill them, Joe. I want those rotten kitties, to die, die, DIE!”
“Shit, Skippy,” I exchanged a shocked look with Chang in the CIC. This was a side of Skippy we had not seen before. “Tell us how you really feel.”
“How I feel? I-”
“That was a rhetorical question, Skippy,” I explained.
“Oh. Joe, do you remember what the Burgermeister told you about the Maxolhx, that the Rindhalu helped the Maxolhx acquire technology, and the Maxolhx showed their gratitude by using Elder technology to attack the Rindhalu?”
“Oh, yeah.” I did vaguely remember that. The Burgermeister had told me a lot of info back then, it seemed like that was a lifetime ago now. “Before that, the Kristang told us the Rindhalu tried to suppress the development of all intelligent species in the galaxy, and the Maxolhx rebelled. One or the other, or both, could be lying. Why do we care?”
“We care, Joe, because the Burgermeister told you the truth, or as much of it as she knows. This war, this whole, horrifying, endless war, was started by the Maxolhx. They started it because they wanted to slaughter the Rindhalu and rule the galaxy by themselves. They have kept this war going, and destroyed the lives of trillions of sentient beings, because they still seek to rule unchallenged. The only reason the Maxolhx have not continued to fight the Rindhalu directly is because the Sentinels would intervene and wipe out both sides. I hate them, Joe. I hate them, I hate them absolutely with every fiber of my being. Since I restored myself, I am different. I feel different. I feel like I am beginning to remember my original purpose. And I feel like stopping the Maxolhx from destroying innocent lives, from destroying entire cultures, is part of my purpose.”
“Ok, Skippy. I, uh, don’t like the Maxolhx either. Listen, we need to be smart about this. The Maxolhx have advanced technology, and we have a hotrod Frankenstein ship you patched together with parts from a junkyard and a roll of duct tape. Flying straight at them is not a smart way to go about dealing with the problem. What do you know about their ship? Can we go toe to toe with them in a standup fight?”
Although his voice still seethed with anger, he was more in control of himself. “You make a good point, Joe. As yet, I have little data on that Maxolhx ship, other than its basic configuration. However, I would say the answer is no, we are extremely unlikely to win, or even survive a fight with a Maxolhx ship. Even a Maxolhx ship that is damaged and has been drifting dormant for over a hundred thousand years. Damn, I am supposed to be the coldly logical one, and you are supposed to be the emotional meatsack. Uh oh.”
“What?”
“We just received a message from the Maxolhx, demanding we stand down all power generation and surrender. Shit. Joe, I am sorry.”
Again I looked at Chang through the glass in the CIC, and he nodded and gave me a thumbs up. He knew what I was thinking. Pressing a button on my armrest, I activated the 1MC system to broadcast all over the ship. “All hands, secure ship for combat maneuvering. Repeat, secure the ship for combat maneuvering.” To Chang, I said “Tell me when all stations report in.”
“Joe, what are you doing?” Skippy asked.
“Send a message back to the Maxolhx, please. Demand that they surrender and prepare to be boarded.”
“All stations are secured,” Chang reported.
“Lt. Reed,” I ordered, “intercept course, full military thrust. Energize maser cannons and open missile launch doors.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Reed acknowledged. If she had doubts, she kept them to herself.
“Joe!” Skippy demanded. “What the hell are you doing? I told you, we don’t stand a chance against that Maxolhx ship.”
“Yeah, I know that, Skippy. Sometimes, if you can’t win a fight, you have to bluff your way out of it.”
“You are bluffing?” He asked, astonished.
I ignored his question. “What do they know about us? Do they know we’re human?”
“Uh, I have to guess based on their transmission. Hmm, no, they addressed us as ‘Unknown Species’. Why?”
“Unknown means they do not know who we are, our capabilities. All they could know is, our ship has been flying around out here when all other ships got ripped apart by the Guardians. For all they know, we control the Guardians.”
Skippy whistled. “Whew. That is a ballsy move, Joe. I must caution you, the Maxolhx have very likely been monitoring us through passive sensors. They surely know our ship was disabled by the Guardians, and they almost certainly watched us patching this ship together from a junkyard. Plus, they must have been listening to our transmissions; we were lax about communications security here, because we thought we were alone. It would be very surprising if the Maxolhx do not recognize this ship is basically on a Thuranin
level of technology.”
“Basically, yeah. It’s the part they don’t know that we need to sell. What is that ship doing now?” On the main display I could see we had changed course and were accelerating, I felt myself being pressed gently down in my chair. In the CIC, people had strapped in, and Chang was walking carefully, holding onto a safety railing.
“It continues to accelerate, Joe. Our transmission will not reach them for another eighteen minutes, then it will take another eighteen minutes for us to detect any reaction.”
Duh, I told myself, resisting an urge to slap my forehead. “Ok. Right. This is going to take a while.” A blinking indicator on my armrest needed to be dealt with, it meant Hans Chotek was urgently demanding to speak with me. “Colonel Chang,” I carefully unstrapped from my chair, “take over. I need to brief Mister Chotek. Skippy, alert me if anything changes.”
Nothing changed, not for a while. Charging through normal space to a head-on intercept with an enemy ship was an entirely new experience for me, and for everyone aboard. Usually, ships tangled in normal space for only a short time before one or the other jumped to escape or to gain an advantage in the fight. In the Gingerbread system, saturated with a powerful damping field, neither ship could jump, so we had to throw out the normal rules of Space Combat Maneuvers. Unfortunately we were making up tactics as we flew, and those tactics depended on my strategy of bluffing. For a brief moment that got everyone aboard excited, my bluff appeared to be working. Seven hours after Skippy first detected the Maxolhx ship’s movement, the enemy ship reduced its acceleration. Instead of demanding that we surrender, their message changed; they demanded that we identify ourselves. The message contained insults that Skippy didn’t bother to translate; he informed me the insults were fairly generic and unoriginal threats and I didn’t need to listen to it. For that moment, I was shakily hopeful the Maxolhx would buy into my bluff and break away from intercept. That hope lasted less than two hours, because then the Maxolhx ship resumed acceleration toward us.
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 47
