“Crap,” I muttered. “That didn’t work.”
“Mister Skippy,” Chotek asked anxiously. “Can we outrun them?”
“In this bucket of bolts?” Skippy answered. “Are you kidding me? The duct tape holding the reactor together is almost falling apart as it is. Nope, no way can we outrun that ship. The Maxolhx can out-accelerate us by a factor of twenty, at least.”
“Colonel Bishop,” Chotek turned to me, the fear and concern in his eyes unmasked. “Your bluff didn’t work. Do you have an alternative plan?”
Skippy spoke before I could. “How about we challenge them to a pants-off dance-off?”
I cringed. “Skippy, that is not helpf-”
“Ah, you’re right, Joe. You are a terrible dancer. Forget what I said.”
In my head, I had been dreaming up and discarding increasingly desperate and stupid ideas as we charged toward the Maxolhx. None of my ideas had been good enough to mention. Or, I just hadn’t been desperate enough at the time. Now I was. “Skippy, you have restored yourself to Full Awesomeness, right?”
“Exact-a-mently, Joe. Even more awesome than before; I know that blows your mind.”
“Uh huh, yeah. You can create microwormholes again.”
“Please. Ask me for something more complicated than simple party tricks. Making balloon animals is more complicated for me than creating simple spacetime microwarps.”
“A party trick will be fine for now. I want you to load one end of a microwormhole into the fastest, stealthiest missile we have.”
“Doing it now. Missile is ready.”
“Colonel Chang, launch the bird.”
“Done,” Chang replied with a raised eyebrow. He wanted to know what I was planning.
He wasn’t the only one with questions. “Colonel,” Chotek put a hand on the back of my chair. “Please share what you plan to do.”
“It’s another bluff, Sir,” I explained.
“With a single missile?” His hand left the chair, as if he didn’t wish to be associated with me right then.
“No, Sir,” I shook my head. “If it works, they will never detect the missile. And this time, we won’t be bluffing. Skippy will.”
“Me?” Skippy sputtered. “Joe, what in the hell is this crazy idea you have?”
It wasn’t a crazy idea. Stupid, maybe. Possibly futile. Most likely a waste of time. But not crazy.
“Ready?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Joe,” Skippy huffed. “The next time you want me to do some lunatic thing you dreamed up, you should ask me about it first.”
“Is that a yes or no, Skippy?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Well, if this is not within your scope of awesomeness-”
“What?” One thing that had not changed about Skippy was how easily his massive ego allowed me to manipulate him. “Dude, please. This is child’s play for me. I can do it, but I question whether it will have the desired effect on the Maxolhx.”
“Me too, Skippy. If only there was a way for us to know if it will work. Hey, here’s a whacky idea: let’s try it and see what the Maxolhx do.”
“Very funny, smart guy. Ok, here goes nothing. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Propelled by our swift and stealthy missile, the microwormhole had sped on far ahead of us, then swung around to fall in behind the enemy ship and fly in formation with it, matching acceleration. Or technically, matching deceleration, because several hours ago, the Maxolhx ship had begun slowing so it would not fly right past us. It was obvious they intended to capture the Flying Dutchman if they could. As our missile neared the enemy, we began transmitting a message that if the Maxolhx did not cease thrust and surrender, we would unleash the Guardians on them.
That was the bluff; even the new, More-Awesome-Than-Before Skippy the Magnificent could not actually control or command the Guardians.
But the Maxolhx did not know that.
After they received our message warning that we would unleash the Guardians on them, the Maxolhx hesitated. That indecision lasted only a short time before they replied, taunting us and stating flatly they did not believe we had any connection to the god-like Elders. The piece of crap ship we were flying was proof of our low level of technology.
Their skepticism was not unexpected, and I had a plan for that. We transmitted a reply stating that we were about to demonstrate our control over the Guardians.
That ‘demonstration’ was Skippy’s part of the bluff. Through the tiny far end of the microwormhole, he projected a hologram behind the Maxolhx ship. A big hologram. He also fed hard radiation through the microwormhole, bleeding charged particles off our main reactor. Finally, he created spacetime ripples that were weak and harmless, except that to the Maxolhx, they appeared to be the beginning of the vicious spacetime sheering effect that had torn apart the Flying Dutchman. And a long time ago, they had torn apart the Maxolhx ship.
The hologram, with the radiation, looked to Maxolhx sensors like part of a Guardian emerging into local spacetime. And it scared the shit out of them.
“Yes!” Skippy exulted. “They’re breaking away! Enemy ship has initiated hard turn to port and has resumed acceleration. Wait, wait, turn is complete. They are now headed away from us, Joe!”
“Outstanding!” I accepted a high five from Sergeant Adams, both of us grinning like idiots. “How hard are they accelerating?”
“Currently, they are thrusting at about forty percent more acceleration than we are capable of, and increasing. Ha! Those rotten kitties sure as hell want to get away from there!”
“If we change course to pursue now, will that make the Maxolhx suspicious?” The main bridge display indicated we were still more than four lightminutes away from the enemy. If we relied on speed-of-light sensor data, we should not detect the other ship’s change of course for another four minutes.
“I don’t think so, Joe. In fact, if the Maxolhx see we changed course now instead of waiting for speed-of-light data, that will reinforce in their minds that we have advanced technology they do not know about.”
“Good, then let’s do that. Pilot, calculate revised intercept course and engage.”
Desai nodded silently, but Chotek questioned my order. “Colonel, you intend to pursue the enemy?”
“Sir,” I turned to look back at him. “I intend to make it look like we are pursuing. We are not capable of catching that ship. We have to make it look like we’re trying to catch them, to sell the bluff. Besides, we need to get to the edge of the damping field before we can jump away, so we might as well follow them out of the system.”
“Ah,” that seemed to satisfy Chotek. “Colonel Bishop, congratulations. We survived an encounter with a Maxolhx ship. I must admit, I had doubts.”
So did I, but no way was I going to tell him that.
We did survive a potentially, almost certainly, fatal encounter with one of the apex species in the galaxy, and I accepted congratulations from the crew. Privately, I was patting myself on the back as the enemy ship drew farther and farther away from us. After two hours, I ordered Desai to reduce acceleration; Skippy was concerned about the strain on our junkyard reactor and we weren’t going to catch the Maxolhx anyway.
My self-congratulation tour lasted two full days and reached the point of me eating a second piece of chocolate cake after dinner, even though I had not done any meaningful exercise that day to burn the calories. Because I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, my after dinner plans included stopping by the hydroponics lab to check on Major Simms, then visit the science team before going to sleep a half hour early. To show my confidence in the command crew, I was not going to visit the bridge to check on them. If I needed to know what was going on, my zPhone could display all the data I needed. It was while brushing the last bit of chocolate frosting from my teeth that Skippy called me. “Hey, Joe.”
“Hey, Shkippy,” I mumbled through a mouthful of toothpaste. “What’sh up?”
“Oh, nothing much
, heh heh.”
Oh shit. I spit out the toothpaste all over the tiny mirror. “Crap! Did that ship turn around?” Damn it! I was totally out of ideas for bluffing, and all we had were bluffs. Through the microwormhole, Skippy had only been able to fake the emergence of a Guardian for eighty seconds before the strain caused the microwormhole to collapse. Fortunately by that time, the Maxolhx were running for their lives and we didn’t need to sustain the illusion. But I had feared all along that those super-advanced kitties would closely examine their sensor data and discover they had been tricked by a fancy hologram.
“No, they have not turned around. The opposite; they increased acceleration thirty five seconds ago, subjective time.” He meant that thirty five seconds, ago we received speed-of-light sensor data showing the Maxolhx had increased acceleration. With the Maxolhx ship now nine lightminutes away from us, the actual event had happened that long ago. “It looks like they are pushing their engines to the maximum, I am detecting signs that their engines are becoming unstable.”
“Aw, that’s too bad. It would be just terrible if their ship, you know, exploded.”
“That might be the best thing that could happen, Joe, because of the other thing that ship did at the same time it increased acceleration. It began broadcasting a message containing sensor data of this ship.”
“Ok, yeah, so? No one will recognize this Frankenstein monster you slapped together.”
“The message also contains this.” The bathroom mirror was not actually a mirror, it was a display screen. Through the splattered toothpaste, I saw the image.
“Oh, shit.”
“This is not good,” Hans Chotek executed the rarely-attempted, difficult verbal combination of a painfully obvious and woefully understated comment.
“No, Sir,” I agreed. With a tap of my zPhone, I ran the video on the conference room display screen again. Only part of the video, because it was nearly eight hours long and we didn’t need to watch all of it. What I showed was a compilation from the compressed Maxolhx message.
The first image was my own stupid face, speaking into my zPhone on Gingerbread. From the background, I could tell the video was from sometime when we were at base camp. The conversation I vaguely recollected; I was talking with a recon pilot, this may have been the second or third day after we landed. The content of the conversation did not matter. Two things did matter in the video. First, the fact that my face was visible, so anyone who saw the video could determine the species responsible for the transmission. Second, in the background, people were walking up and down the back ramp of a Thuranin ‘Condor’ dropship. Anyone zooming into the image could clearly tell it was a Thuranin spacecraft, and they could identify the species that was clearly operating Thuranin technology. Stolen Thuranin technology. “We could not practice normal communications security on Gingerbread,” I offered the lame explanation, “because of the fuzz field.”
“I understand the ‘why’, Colonel. The Maxolhx are broadcasting this message in the clear? No encryption?”
“Yes,” Skippy answered. “They want everyone in the area to see and understand the message, so they included standard tags for interpreting the audio and video. They do not recognize your species or understand human languages, but anyone in the galaxy outside this system will know humans originated the video.”
“How are the Maxolhx able to decrypt our transmissions?” Chotek demanded of Skippy. “In the past, you have assured us that none of our transmissions could be successfully intercepted, because of your advanced encryption methods.”
To my surprise, Skippy did not give a snarky reply. “Normally, all of our transmissions go through me, and I use encryption so sophisticated that even the Rindhalu would think our transmissions are random noise. However, while we were on Gingerbread, I was not able to access my full capabilities, so we had to rely on the Thuranin encryption that is native to the dropships.” Skippy did not add that we had covered that subject in several briefings before we left the Flying Dutchman to land on Gingerbread, so if Chotek didn’t remember that vital info, it was his fault.
“Ah,” Chotek said without apology, a quick flash of annoyance indicating he did remember being given that info. “What can we do about it? If this message gets out to the galaxy-” he didn’t need to finish the thought.
“Skippy assures me the Guardians are still blocking all transmissions from this star system. No one outside will ever receive this message,” I turned the video off as it was displaying Chotek himself, speaking with Smythe. The Maxolhx ship had apparently picked up many of the transmissions we made from the surface of Gingerbread, plus ship-to-ship traffic while we flew dropships to that planet. Any of it was damaging, any of it would be disastrous if it got beyond the Gingerbread system. The secret of humans flying around in a stolen Thuranin ship would be out. Worse, species across the galaxy would learn that humans had survived landing on Gingerbread while all other species had failed. Maybe worse, other species would think that somehow, incredibly, lowly humans could control Elder Guardians.
Earth would soon suffer the consequences.
“If that is true,” Chotek rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “then why are the Maxolhx broadcasting this message all over the system?”
“I suspect the Maxolhx are covering their bets, Sir,” I answered. “If we use the Guardians to destroy their ship, they are hoping some other dormant ship in the system will pick up the signal, and later get away.”
“There are other dormant ships in this system?” Chotek’s eyebrows almost met his hairline.
“Could be,” Skippy admitted. “We don’t know. It is unlikely, but it was unlikely any ship survived, and we know at least one ship did. Plus, we recovered enough bits and pieces to cobble together a functional starship. It is possible someone else out here could do that. The point is, the Maxolhx are taking precautions. Their goal, of course, is to reach the edge of the damping field, jump away, and tell their own people what they found here.”
Chotek let out a long breath. “Colonel Bishop, remind me never to offer congratulations to you. I may have cursed us by celebrating too early.”
“In that case, we will never celebrate anything. Out here, every time we think we’ve accomplished one mission, the galaxy slaps us in the face,” I stated sourly, mentally offering a single-finger salute to the galaxy.
“Very well, Colonel,” Chotek concluded. “We need a way to destroy that Maxolhx ship, before it reaches the edge of the damping field. Do you have a plan to do that?”
“We are reviewing our options,” I replied, and Hans Chotek knew what that really meant. It meant that I had absolutely not one single freakin’ clue how to accomplish our latest impossible mission.
“Mister Skippy,” Chotek automatically looked at the speaker in the ceiling as Skippy had chosen not to distract us with his avatar. “How long until the enemy ship reaches the edge of the damping field?”
“The damping field does not have a sharply defined edge,” Skippy stated. “The field strength drops off as the cube of the distance from the field generators. How soon the Maxolhx can jump depends on the capability of their jump drive, which has been dormant for a very long time. If I was that ship’s commander, I would not attempt a jump until I was very confident my drive could handle the strain. But, you want a precise answer, so I’ll give you my best guess. Assuming they cannot maintain their present rate of acceleration for long, I expect they will not be able to jump for twenty days, most likely longer. The damping field extends significantly beyond the orbit of the farthest planet.”
“Twenty days,” Chotek shook his head, marveling at the incredible distances involved in space combat. “Is there any possibility we could jump before they can?”
“No. Well, extremely unlikely,” Skippy replied. “Their jump drive is Maxolhx technology that was presumably designed to function after being dormant for an extended period. Our jump drive is made from odds and ends I found in a trash bin. We will have to be very careful about jumping ins
ide even a very weak damping field. Also, the enemy ship is moving much faster than us; they will reach jump distance long before we do.”
“We have to destroy a ship that we can’t even catch, using the limited weapons aboard our junkyard ship. Colonel Bishop, I hope you are soon able to complete review of these,” he paused, “options you mentioned.”
“Uh, yeah. Sir,” I stumbled.
Chapter Twenty Seven
After Chotek left the conference room, I was left to kick around ideas with senior staff. It was a thoroughly unproductive conversation.
“There is no way we can catch that ship?” I asked Skippy, fearing I knew the answer.
“In this slapped-together bucket of bolts? You are kidding me?” Skippy scoffed. “Joe, I am amazed every minute goes by that this ship doesn’t explode or break into a thousand pieces. Even when it was fresh out of the shipyard, a Thuranin star carrier is not capable of matching the acceleration of a Maxolhx ship.”
“Ok, yeah, I knew that. My question was, what magical Skippy thing can you do?”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know,” I tried to think of anything Skippy had done in the past that might be relevant to our current problem. Flattening spacetime? No, that wouldn’t work here. Or would it? “What about your trick of flattening spacetime, like you did when we jumped away from that Thuranin destroyer squadron near the star you tore a hole in?”
“Um, I can flatten spacetime to a limited extent, why would that help us now?”
“Because, flattening spacetime would allow us to cancel the effect of the damping field, so we could jump ahead of the Maxolhx and hit them.”
“No,” Skippy chuckled. “Flattening local spacetime would not cancel the effect of a damping field. Joe, damping fields work by preventing formation of a stable wormhole in multiple adjacent spacetimes. Making a minor tweak here would be useless. Hopefully, you have another, more practical idea.”
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 48
