“Yeah we get it.” Everything I heard made me more unhappy about the idea of a Maxolhx being aboard.
Even Hans Chotek’s unflagging optimism about the value of diplomatic discussions was wavering. “Colonel, perhaps we should reconsider.”
“Too late now!” Skippy laughed. “That casket isn’t designed for long-term occupancy. We need to either release that kitty soon, or blow it into space.”
“Sir,” I spoke before I could lose my nerve. “I can’t believe I am saying this, but we’ve come this far already. We may as well open the casket and talk to it.” What I did not say was my real motivation; if Chotek had a Maxolhx to talk with, my boss might leave me alone. Plus, if Chotek realized he was wrong, again, and I was right, again, that could only be good for me. “Skippy, does this thing have a name?”
“It, or he, calls himself Snuxalticut. Or close enough to the correct pronunciation.”
“Snuxal- Oh, forget that,” my tongue couldn’t manage the name. “I’ll call him Mister Snuggles.”
“Mister Snug-” Sergeant Adams thought that was uproariously funny, though her discipline struggled mightily to contain her laughter. She lost.
Because Skippy can never do anything simple, he played ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ over the speakers while his bots broke the seal on the casket and began slowly cranking it open. Hans Chotek had a disapproving look on his face, but I could tell from his shoulders shaking that even he was laughing. When the song got the appropriate part, the lid of the casket was flung open and before the Maxolhx could free himself, a pair of Skippy’s bots reached in and grasped it firmly. Not roughly, just firmly. I didn’t want to actually hurt the thing, and after being asleep for thousands of years, it needed help standing in artificial gravity even though we had gravity in the holding cell set at fifty percent Earth normal.
While Mister Snuggles needed help standing, he did not need assistance issuing what sounded like vile and dire threats against the unknown species he could see through the glass in the hangar bay control center. Snuggles was enraged, so much that spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted at us.
“Can you translate, Skippy?” I asked.
“Yes, but I had better not, Joe. It is pretty foul. Not quite at the level of Kristang insults, but pretty impressive. Hey! Snuggles! You behave!” Skippy warned as his bots struggled against the powerful Maxolhx. “All right, Joe, now he is pissing me off. Time for Snuggles in there to learn a lesson.”
“No-”
I feared Skippy would use a bot manipulator arm to choke Snuggles, but our beer can had another sort of lesson in mind. What I should have remembered was what Skippy personally wanted from having a Maxolhx aboard: entertainment. The two hulking maintenance bots, designed to handle heavy reactor components, grasped Mister Snuggles’ arms and legs, and the advanced being began moving to a thumping beat blasting out of speakers in the holding cell.
Everybody dance now!
Everybody dance now!
Give me the music!
Even Chotek thought it was amusing to see Snuggles being made to dance; the best part was the expression on the rotten kitty’s face. “Mister, Mis- Skippy!” Chotek said when he was able to talk. “This is not helping.”
“You’re right,” Skippy admitted. “Snuggles has no natural rhythm. Maybe something else.”
The music changed and Snuggles began moving against his will.
Won’t you take me to Funkytown?
Won’t you take me to Funkytown?
“Skippy,” I observed, “I don’t think he wants to go to Funkytown.”
“Pbbbt,” Skippy blew a raspberry. “Come on, Joe. Everyone wants to go to Funkytown.”
Adams leaned toward me. “With all the genetic enhancements the Maxolhx gave themselves over the years, they can’t dance?”
“I don’t know, Gunny, Snuggles looks like he’s got moves to me.”
“You would think that, Sir.”
“Did you just disparage your commanding officer’s dancing ability?”
“Not that you know of, Sir,” she winked.
Skippy cut off the music and held the fuming Maxolhx still and upright. Mister Snuggles may not have recognize the music, but he clearly understood he had been humiliated, and he was not happy about it.
Adams snapped her fingers. “I just thought of what he reminds me of. He looks like the bad guy in that first ‘Kung Fu Panda’ movie.”
“Really?” I looked at Snuggles again, considering what Adams had said. “Ok, I see it,” I agreed. “Yeah.” Snuggles didn’t have spots on its fur like a leopard did, at least the exposed skin of Snuggles wasn’t spotted, although its face and the back of its hands were covered in a fine, grayish fur. His eyes were yellow, surrounded by white fur outlines in black. Fangs extended through his lips from his upper jaw. And, like a cat, he had triangular ears set high on each side of his skull. He did look sort of like a cat. The images Skippy had shown me of Maxolhx had not appeared quite so cat-like, it was different seeing one for real.
I left Chotek to deal with Mister Snuggles, after Skippy demonstrated his pair of bots could easily handle the Maxolhx. Skippy did not like the idea of me letting Chotek speak one-on-one with Mister Snuggles. “Joe, you can’t leave Count Chocula alone in there, that Maxolhx will play Chocula like a fiddle at a hootenanny.”
“A hoot- what?”
“A hoedown, Joe. Ugh, didn’t you learn anything about culture from Cornpone? A folk dance where fiddles are played.”
“Yeah, I figured that. Crap. I don’t want to be stuck in there for hours and hours while Chotek tries to make friends with the devil.”
“You don’t have to, Joe. Damn, you’re supposed to be captain of this ship. Split the duty with your crew.”
“I don’t want to make them sit for hours, but I agree our fearless leader needs adult supervision.”
So, I took the first duty shift, mostly sitting next to Chotek while he attempted fruitlessly to engage Mister Snuggles in a discussion. With me, I brought our resident CIA officer Dr. Sarah Rose; she was excited about interrogating an alien. Unfortunately for her, the interrogation mostly went one way, with Snuggles demanding answers and Dr. Rose trying to stop Chotek from revealing secrets we didn’t want any Maxolhx to know.
Chotek quickly became irritated with Dr. Rose, who he had not invited into the discussion. “To open a dialog, we must provide information. We cannot simply-”
“Yes, Sir,” Rose said gently. “You want the alien to provide information in return. If he,” she jabbed a finger at the tough composite ‘glass’ separating us from Snuggles, “realizes just how little technology we have mastery of, that we are basically passengers on this ship, he will have little incentive to cooperate with us.”
“True, true,” Chotek agreed unhappily. “Negotiation is best accomplished between equals. Very well, let’s set some ground rules for what information it is safe to provide at this point. Colonel Bishop, I am assuming our guest will spend the remainder of his life in custody, either here or on Earth.”
Dr. Rose was with Chotek every long, fruitless hour, while I split duty shifts with Chang, Smythe and others. Dr. Friedlander and his team took turns observing, not that they learned anything useful. All I cared about was we had a military presence with Chotek every time he spoke with Snuggles.
Over the next two days, while the Dutchman sped toward the edge of the damping field, Chotek tried to get Snuggles to ‘open a dialog’, with Skippy translating. If he made any progress, I didn’t see it, and Chotek didn’t say. All I knew was two things. First, Chotek was busy and leaving me alone to run the ship. And second, every time I saw Chotek, usually in the galley, the man looked dead tired; the strain of trying to prove he could successfully conduct a discussion with a Maxolhx had to be getting to him. I stopped by the holding cell once to amuse myself by staring through the tough composite glass at the Maxolhx, like viewing animals in a zoo. Then I got bored with Mister Snuggles shouting and threatening me and demanding t
o be released. And, I didn’t want to get used to seeing a Maxolhx cooped up and powerless in a holding cell. It would be dangerous for me to start empathizing with Snuggles, and think of him and his species as anything other than a dire and implacable threat to the survival of humanity.
“Hey, Skippy,” I asked while in my office enjoying a cup of coffee after breakfast, “how is Chocula-” I glanced through my door just in case my boss happened to be out in the passageway. “How is Chotek doing with our ‘guest’?”
“Not well, Joe. Yesterday morning, I explained to our guest what the name ‘Mister Snuggles’ means and, damn, if he wasn’t mad at you before, he really wants to kill you now. He hates that name.”
“Oh goody,” I laughed. “Screw him.”
“Snuggles is not being cooperative. He wants better food, those sludges I modified for Maxolhx nutritional needs are not appealing to him.”
“Did you explain that we don’t have any other food he can eat?” Maxolhx biology was incompatible with humans, so a cheeseburger would make Snuggles sick and not provide any energy.
“I told him to shut the hell up and drink the sludges or starve.”
“Ah, close enough. It’s not like he can give us a bad review on Yelp.”
“In other news, Chotek told him all about Earth, he is going to find out anyway once we get there. Our fearless leader tried telling Snuggles that Earth is peaceful and does not want any trouble; that only made our guest see humans as a weak, easy target. The strategy kind of backfired on Chotek, and he’s depressed about it. That’s what he wrote in his diary.”
“He keeps a diary?”
“It’s more of a journal, I guess. Anyway, Mister Snuggles is stringing Chocula along, while he tries to escape from his cell and take over the ship.”
“He what?”
“Maxolhx have extended their biology with nanoscale technology, for example they have nanobots in their blood and throughout their tissues to regulate metabolic functions, enhance strength, utilize energy more efficiently, prevent infection and heal wounds. Snuggles is modifying a portion of his internal nanobots to take control of the maintenance bot I kept in his cell. He plans to use that bot to cut a hole in a wall, so the nano machines can infiltrate the ship’s control systems and allow him to seize the ship thru his brain implants.”
“Holy shit!” I pulled out my zPhone and opened the Big Red Button app. “Should I blow the airlock?”
“Huh? No,” Skippy laughed. “Relax, dude, I got it covered. Snuggles is not taking over anything; in the meantime trying to seize control of the ship and kill the crew in the most painful way imaginable is keeping Snuggles busy and happy, so there’s no harm letting him continue.”
“If you’re sure about that.”
“Totally sure.”
Snuggles had bad timing, or good timing which meant he knew the ship’s crew schedule, a thought I found disturbing. He launched his attempt to seize control over the bot in his cell just as I was walking into the galley. Skippy beeped my zPhone so I stepped back into the passageway. “What’s up?”
“Snuggles just tried to use his nano machines to take control of my maintenance bot. I let him think he was making progress, then locked him out. Hee hee, bad kitty.”
“There’s no danger to us?” I had moved the Big Red Button app to my zPhone’s home screen, just in case I needed to use it quickly.
“The only danger is to Mister Snuggles’ morale. He is very frustrated right now; he can’t understand why his nanobots were not successful. Uh, hmmm. He just began modifying more of his nanobots so they can be used to take over the ship. He needs to be careful about that; Snuggles is not a healthy kitty, he spent too long in hibernation. If he uses up too much of his nano supply, he won’t be able to continue the process of replacing damaged tissues.”
“Shit. Ok, uh, let him continue trying to kill us for a couple hours, then tell him we knew what he is doing and we stopped him. So he shouldn’t waste his time or nano trying to escape. Because he can’t.”
“Fine,” Skippy grumbled. “You spoil all my fun, Joe.”
Because the universe hates me, and because Mister Snuggles had terrible timing and hates me too, it happened at 0214 hours. Skippy woke me out of a pleasant dream. “Joe! Joe Joe Joe-”
“What?” I fumbled for my zPhone under my pillow.
“Mister Snuggles. He’s, um, he’s dead, Joe.”
“What? How?”
“He used his nano to kill himself, fried his brainstem. It just happened. A couple hours ago, I informed him that we knew he was trying to take over the ship, and that he was never going to be successful. That got him depressed, Joe. He actually sat in a corner and was crying. That was a disturbing image.”
“Oh, crap.”
“I can understand his pain. He was asleep for a very long time, he wakes up not knowing where he is and what happened to him, and he gets stuck on a ship full of ignorant monkeys. That would depress anyone. Anyway, I saw he was modifying more nano, but I didn’t know what he planned to do with it. Before I could stop him, he built up an electrical charge at the base of his neck and killed himself.”
“Damn. Chotek is not going to be happy about this.” And, I thought to myself, he is going to find some way to blame Snuggles’ suicide on me.
“Maybe less than you think, Joe. Chotek’s diary entry last night concluded that our guest was never going to be cooperative, and that it may have been a mistake to bring a Maxolhx aboard this ship. Also, our fearless leader was very concerned about the prospect of bringing a Maxolhx down to Earth; he realized he agreed with your fears about nations fighting over access to our guest.”
“Well, that’s not a problem now, huh?”
Chotek acted like he was upset about the death of Snuggles, but he didn’t blame me. He declared we needed to conduct a funeral service for the two deceased Maxolhx, rather than simply having Skippy’s bots toss the bodies out an airlock like I wanted. Fortunately, Chotek himself spoke at the funeral, because my mournful words would have been something like “Lord, please don’t let me be an asshole like these two losers. Can I get an Amen?”
Hey, that is nicer than anything Mister Snuggles would have said after he killed me, so screw him.
Chapter Thirty
After the two Maxolhx were buried in space, we continued flying toward the edge of the damping field at a slow but steady rate of acceleration. Skippy did not want to strain our new used reactor or our new used normal-space drive system, and I wanted us to get the hell out of the Roach Motel as fast as possible, so we compromised by running the drive at only twelve percent of full power. Even at full power and without the lifeboat and starship docking platforms making the ship lighter, the new Frankenstein version of the Flying Dutchman was significantly slower than it had been before we lost the original engineering section.
Our gentle rate of acceleration would be barely enough for us to feel, even if the artificial gravity system had not been compensating. But our acceleration was constant, for months. We built up a lot of speed, faster than starships normally traveled through space. With the ability to jump instantaneously from one spot to another, starships did not need to travel quickly through normal space, except for high-speed maneuvering in combat. Because combat engagements tended to be short, the high Gee burns of ships did not go on long enough for ships to acquire lot of speed.
So, as we approached the vaguely-defined edge of the damping field, the Flying Dutchman was traveling much faster than the ship probably ever had. It might have been the fastest any ship in the galaxy had traveled in a very long time. Such speed sounds like it should have been a point of pride for the Merry Band of Pirates, but it was actually a problem. Several problems, to be accurate. First, after we jumped away from the Roach Motel, we would need to reduce our speed or we would zip helplessly past any planet, relay station or whatever other object we may need to rendezvous with. Matching speeds with any object was always a tricky navigational exercise, but we were helped by
the fact that most star systems in the local sector of the Orion Arm were rotating around the center of the Milky Way galaxy at roughly a half million miles an hour, and rotating in roughly the same direction. I said roughly, Ok, so don’t geek out on me and do the math yourself, because no one cares. Anyway, when we traveled between star systems, we could count on our destination star system having a roughly similar course and speed as the star system we departed from; we only needed to adjust for the speed and direction of the planet, moon or other object we wished to rendezvous with in the destination star system. We were now moving so fast that once we jumped away from the Roach Motel, we would need to push our delicate normal-space propulsion system hard to slow down, and hope we didn’t break anything critical in the process.
That was the first problem, a problem we didn’t need to deal with until after we could say a joyous goodbye to the Roach Motel. The second problem was a danger to us as we zoomed through space. At our speed, a small rock could punch through the Dutchman nose to tail if our defense shields failed even for a moment. The high-speed impact of stray hydrogen atoms made the forward shield glow with hard radiation like X-rays. While I did know the supposedly ‘empty’ vacuum of space was in fact filled with atoms and fine dust, especially so deep within the solar wind of a star, I had no idea the cloud of particles was so thick. Looking at particles slamming into our forward shields, I felt like the ship was flying through a sandstorm. For certain if we encountered a problem that required people going outside the ship, they could not survive unless the defense shields were operating at full strength.
Anyway, our shields did protect us and all our cobbled-together components worked well enough during our long voyage to the edge of the damping field. As we got farther from the star, Skippy was able to create a map of the damping field and we adjusted course to escape from the field a couple hours earlier than expected. The main reactor once had to be shut down for three heart-stopping hours, forcing us to cut thrust so the backup reactor could provide power to life support and shields. Other than that one problem with the main reactor, we had nothing worse than minor glitches. Skippy had done a truly awesome job of building a working starship from a pile of junkyard parts, and after him hinting over and over that he was desperate for praise, I grudgingly acknowledged that although I was bitterly disappointed he hadn’t been able to build a hotrod Maxolhx battleship for us, he had done Ok.
Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Page 53
