Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  That was true, and it was also irrelevant. The rotten kitties were coming to Earth sooner or later, and they were going to turn our homeworld into a radioactive wasteland. After that battle, Valkyrie probably would not exist, so we wouldn’t have an opportunity for payback. That was why we were hitting the enemy now. You know the saying ‘Payback is a bitch’?

  Payforward can be a bitch too.

  Anyway, that was our Happy Time.

  Until it wasn’t.

  I’ll get to that later.

  Over sixty-four days of Happy Time, we conducted a dozen attacks. To reduce our risk, and the distance we had to travel, we clustered strikes in one area, then moved on before the Maxolhx could reinforce their presence there. In sixty-four days, we destroyed twenty-seven ships. Not all were warships. In two attacks, we hit a convoy of cargo ships that were escorted by frigates. Our tactics for those convoy attacks were to knock out the escorting warships first, then hunt down and blow up the merchant ships at our leisure. The powerful damping field projected by Valkyrie prevented ships from jumping away from us, and heavily-laden merchant ships could not run away from us. The last cargo ship we destroyed discarded its cargo containers in an attempt to escape. We were busy chasing a ship in the opposite direction, so I reluctantly ordered one missile launched to target the daredevil drag-racer. That cargo ship was nearing the edge of our damping field and had a point-defense system roughly equivalent to that of a Maxolhx frigate, so the success of our single missile was not guaranteed. Knowing that it faced significant opposition, that Valkyrie’s supply of missiles was limited, and that all the other missile guidance AIs aboard our ship were watching, that missile was determined to win the coveted Weapon Of The Month award.

  The award comes with a nice plaque and a prime parking space, but sadly, the winning weapon never gets to use it.

  It’s the thought that counts.

  What our brave little missile did was calculate the explosive force needed merely to disable the target cargo ship, and separated most of the bomblets of its atomic-compression warhead so they could be loaded into the decoys it carried. The decision was made while the missile was still surging down the launch tube, and the work was accomplished in flight. Sending the decoys on ahead, it guided them to approach the target ship in waves. With a large number of nimble, small objects to intercept, the cargo ship’s defense systems concentrated on identifying which threats were decoys and which was the stealthy missile itself. Testing its guesses required firing on several objects, but the defense system was dismayed to see large secondary explosions when its maser beams intercepted the inbound objects. With so much high-energy clutter in the area, the defense system’s sensors lost track of the rapidly-maneuvering missile, especially after the missile ordered random decoys to release the containment field on their payloads and explode.

  Instantly, space between Valkyrie and the cargo ship was saturated with short-lived hard radiation. The radiation bath lasted only a few seconds before the cargo ship’s active sensors burned through the clutter, but by that time, the missile had already transmitted back a message to its fellow guidance AIs. The message was ‘That’s how you beat the odds, bitches’.

  Its fellow guidance AIs burned with jealous rage, as our lone missile plunged into the cargo ship’s primary reactionless engine, and tore it apart.

  By the time Valkyrie was within directed-energy weapons range of the disabled ship, I almost felt sorry for that crew.

  Almost.

  Knowing the doom of their ship was inevitable, the crew had scattered in dropships and escape pods by the time we were within comfortable weapons range. The crew could have made our task easier by instructing their ship to merely drift, but the culture of assholeishness is deeply embedded in the Maxolhx psyche, so their AI was popping thrusters randomly to screw with our targeting. The uncertainty of where the target was located forced us to hold fire until we were within two lightseconds, then I ordered our cannons to saturate the target zone.

  Two seconds was not sufficient time for a bulky cargo ship to move a distance that could dodge speed-of-light weapons.

  We took our time slicing up that ship, making a show for the crew and anyone else recording sensor images. Like I said before, we wanted the Maxolhx to get a good look at our fearsome ghost ship. By that point, they had to know someone was flying a captured and much-modified Extinction-class battlecruiser. Even more than the havoc we were causing across a wide swath of their territory, the Maxolhx would be terrified to know an enemy had boarded and taken one of their capital ships. Implied in an enemy’s control of a former Maxolhx ship was that whatever secrets the ship had possessed were surely now in dangerous hands. The Maxolhx were highly confident in their data encryption, but control of a warship meant that an enemy had thoroughly cracked that encryption.

  Before jumping away from the convoy battle, which had really been a convoy slaughter, Skippy transmitted an updated version of our standard manifesto. The statement was by now a hate-filled long, rambling and incoherent screed of contradictory ideas, threats, vague demands and promises of a better future for all client species if they joined the glorious rebellion. It was sort of like a typical political party’s campaign platform, if it had been written by a terrorist group high on meth.

  Skippy was quite proud of his manifesto, so much that it inspired him to write yet another operatic masterpiece.

  I suggested that we add being forced to listen to one of Skippy’s operas, as a threat listed in the manifesto. Surely that would cause the Maxolhx to throw up their paws and surrender.

  Skippy was not amused.

  CHAPTER TEN

  While Skippy worked to repair Valkyrie’s minor battle damage, I flew a dropship over to the good old Flying Dutchman. The dropship was a Panther, one of the spacecraft we found inside Valkyrie’s docking bays after we captured the ship. When I say that I flew it, I was at the controls, but Skippy watched my every move. He was such a whiny pain in the ass, second-guessing everything I did, that I felt like throwing up my hands and telling him to fly the damned thing. Because that would have deprived him of endless entertainment, he encouraged me to keep fumbling around randomly until I either crashed or blew up the Panther.

  It might have been to spite him, but I was super focused and made a perfect docking aboard the Dutchman. We did not need the crash netting that Skippy insisted be set up in the bay, and the docking clamps locked onto us without any of the usual rocking side to side as the clamps try to move a dropship into position.

  Did Skippy apologize for his disparaging remarks about my flying skills? Of course he did.

  Not.

  It was nice being back aboard the Dutchman. Nostalgia was not the purpose of my visit, that was just a nice bonus. In the Panther, I ferried over several people who wanted a change of scenery, plus Major Kapoor and six members of the STAR team. Kapoor wanted them to practice an opposed boarding action on a different ship, he feared that the familiar configuration of the Valkyrie was making people’s improvisational skills go stale.

  While Kapoor took his people away to have fun, I met Chang in my old office. It looked the same, except it felt weird to sit on the other side of the desk, with Chang occupying my old chair. We caught up, mostly it was me recounting recent battles. Sure, he had been able to watch our flight recorder data and experience each battle in simulation, that was not the same as being there. Usually when someone is telling war stories, they bore their audience, so I looked for signs that Kong was bored. The opposite happened, he caught me yawning.

  “Joe,” he stood up. “Let’s get you a cup of coffee. We have a special dinner planned for you.”

  His crew was tiny, and I did not want to give them extra work just because some senior officer jerk decides to take a vacation. “Ah, you didn’t have to-”

  “It’s salad, with Cajun grilled chicken.”

  “Mmm,” I moaned instinctively. Chicken we had plenty of aboard the Valkyrie. It was the thought of eating a fresh salad
that got my mouth watering. The hydroponics gardens were still all aboard the Dutchman, we had not moved any of the equipment over to my ship. Dropships had shuttled supplies between the two ships, and we had stuff like fresh onions. What had not been on the menu for weeks was any kind of salad, and I found myself craving fresh veggies like I always crave cheeseburgers. “Ok, thank you. That would be great.”

  On the way to the galley, we passed my old cabin. Kong paused, pointing to the door. “We moved your gear in there,” he knew I planned to stay overnight.

  “You didn’t take this cabin?” I was surprised. It was the closest sleeping quarters to the bridge. The cabin he had been assigned, when he was my executive officer, was down the passageway and around two corners.

  “No, we’re keeping it as sort of VIP quarters,” he explained. “It’s always-”

  “Plus, Joe,” Skippy interrupted. “No one else wants to go in there. I mean, wow, you do not want to look around your old cabin with a blacklight. Whoo-hoo. It looks like a murder scene in there except with, you know, different fluids.”

  Sadly, I had not brought along a sidearm, because eating a bullet would have been really tasty right then.

  “Skippy,” Nagatha came to my defense. “You are being disrespectful to Colonel Bishop. Do not worry, Colonel. After you left, we thoroughly cleaned your quarters. Well, as best we could, you understand. One of my cleaning bots had a nervous breakdown and I had to-”

  “Yeah, that’s uh,” if the deck had opened and ejected me into space, I would not have objected. “That’s great, Nagatha.”

  She continued, not taking my hint. “There was an oddly persistent film on the walls of your shower, I was not sure how to-”

  Kong raised a hand. “Nagatha, we do not need details, please. Joe,” I noticed he avoided looking at me. “Let’s get coffee, then I’ll show you the hydroponics. They’ve been expanded using the spare parts we were carrying.”

  We did get coffee, then Kong got called away to deal with some problem. Instead of interfering with his command of the Dutchman, I strolled down to the hydroponics bays by myself. It was kind of taking a walk down Memory Lane, with every step I remembered one crisis or another we had dealt with. We had successfully dealt with each crisis, and each time, we at least for a while had the illusion that we had Saved the World.

  Damn, those were the good old days. Now, we had no illusions about the ultimate future. Whatever we did, no matter how badly our one warship hit the Maxolhx, our homeworld was going to be turned into a lifeless ball of radioactive ash.

  Shit.

  Maybe we could get enough people to the beta site, so humans had a viable population there. That would be small consolation, unless the Rindhalu really did have their own Elder AI. If that was true, even the beta site in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy would not be safe. Everything we had accomplished, all the blood we had shed, all the people dead and seriously injured, would all be for nothing.

  By the time I reached the hydroponics, my mood was as gloomy as humanity’s prospects for survival.

  “Colonel Bishop!” The familiar voice of our friendly local rocket scientist called from the other end of the converted cargo bay.

  “Hello, Doctor,” I waved vaguely in his direction, unable to see him through the lush vegetation. Tomatoes, lettuce, stalks of corn and every other plant my parents had in their kitchen garden were sprouting and hanging from the tanks of nutrient fluid. Against the far bulkhead, raspberries or maybe blackberries were growing along a wire grid. Dwarf trees had oranges and apples ripening. Everything looked healthy, making me glance down with guilt at my boots, which were not covered with protective coverings. Nor was I wearing gloves or a facemask.

  Friedlander’s legs dropped down from a rack on the other side of the bay, and he stepped out into a narrow pathway between tanks. Walking down the pathway, he casually plucked a cherry tomato from a bush, and tossed it to me.

  “Mm,” I bit into the ripe tomato. “Hey, should I be wearing, you know,” I pantomimed a facemask. He wasn’t wearing protective gear, but he had been living aboard the Dutchman, and Nagatha’s sensors knew what pathogens he might have been carrying. Having just come from the Valkyrie, I could be carrying a whole host of critters that could be hazardous to our growing food supply. We were not concerned about microorganisms left by the Maxolhx, their biochemistry was incompatible with Earth-based life. The problem was that, even with self-cleaning surfaces and Skippy’s bots scrubbing and disinfecting twenty four hours a day, our battlecruiser was a petri dish for growing nasty things. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit. You could eat off the floors of our ship, even in the gym. Still, it was possible that some combination of nasty micro-bugs, or a mutation of normally harmless bacteria, could cause havoc to the precious plants in the hydroponics gardens.

  “No, it’s not necessary,” the good doctor assured me. “We have nano-mites constantly scanning and sampling the air in here. They alert us to any pathogens, and usually take care of the problem on their own.”

  “Nano-mites?”

  He lifted an eyebrow, setting down the gloves he had been wearing. Those gloves were thick leather, used for protecting him against the raspberry vines, not protecting the vines against him. “You didn’t know?”

  “I know what nano tech is. What’s a mite?”

  “Like a tiny spider or insect.” Touching thumb and forefinger, he pretending to peer through the nonexistent gap. “A tiny creepy-crawly thing. So small, you can only see them with a microscope.” He tilted his head. “Skippy didn’t tell you about this? He was quite proud when he introduced the technology here.” By Friedlander’s rueful expression, I knew that ‘quite proud’ meant Skippy had boasted about his awesomeness when he brought in the nanomites, and had expected endless praise for everyone aboard the Flying Dutchman. The burden of giving that praise had probably fallen on the good doctor.

  “Uh, no.” Often, I forgot that Skippy talked with everyone aboard Valkyrie, and everyone aboard the Flying Dutchman when we were in range. As much of a pain he was to me, he could be even more annoying to other people. Fortunately for me, the two of us had worked out a workable relationship. Other people considered Skippy amusing, or at least a tolerable annoyance, but some people could not stand him. We tried to select prospective crew persons on the basis of whether they could get along well with others in the confined environment of a starship, and whether they were a good fit with Skippy. Despite all our efforts, we still took aboard people who found Skippy too irritating. In those cases, I asked Skippy to leave the guy alone, as if that was going to make any difference. “What’s so special about these nano-thingies?”

  “They are Maxolhx tech. Skippy repurposed them for use here,” he waved a hand to encompass the garden.

  “Is this another thing we monkeys can’t possibly understand, like Thuranin doorknobs?”

  “Colonel?”

  That made me cringe. “Can you call me ‘Joe’, please? You’re a civilian.”

  “You have the power of life or death over everyone on these ships.” His words were not intended to be unkind, he was just stating a fact. “Will you call me ‘Mark’?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “Not when I’m on duty.”

  He gave me a half-smile. “When are you not on duty?”

  That made me snort. “When I’m dirtside, I guess. Except for the times I’m on duty there also. Can I call you ‘Doc’?”

  “As long as you don’t greet me with ‘What’s up Doc’?”

  “Deal,” I agreed with a laugh.

  “You said something like, we don’t understand Thuranin doorknobs?”

  “You said that. I think that was during our Zero Hour mission?”

  “That was true back then. It’s not true now. Skippy has been sharing information with us.”

  “I know but, that’s limited. He is only nibbling around the edges of what’s out there.”

  “That’s partly true. What he has been able to share has been blowing our minds
. It blew my mind, that’s for sure. The real breakthrough came when you captured the Dagger.”

  “It did?” What I said aloud was better than my brain’s internal reaction of ‘Duh’? We had taken the Kristang troopship Ice-Cold Dagger to the Heart when we had trouble on the Homefront. “That ship’s technology wasn’t any better than the stuff aboard the Yu Qishan, except for the sleep chambers.”

  “It’s not the tech. It’s the user manuals, what you soldiers call a Dash Ten?”

  “Oh. Shit. Yeah! I hadn’t thought about that.” User manuals printed by the US military have a designation ending in a ‘-10’. To learn how to use a rifle or any other piece of equipment, you ask for the Dash Ten. Way back when we captured the ship we named the Flying Dutchman, I hoped we could get access to the ship’s database, which was a treasure trove of Thuranin technology. Both the Kristang and Ruhar had refused to share technology, or even information about basic science with us lowly humans. We had obtained fragments of knowledge anyway, enough to be confusing and not enough to help. The Flying Dutchman, I had hoped, was our ticket to joining the big leagues, to acquiring technology to boost humanity at least up to the level of the Ruhar. At the time, I had not told Skippy about the treasure I was hoping to bring home, because it was sort of my backup plan if he refused to help us.