Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  All my hope was for nothing. Either Skippy had locked us out of the database, or he had erased any info he wasn’t allowed to share with us, because what we got out of the Flying Dutchman’s computers was a whole lot of nothing. “The Dagger’s database is intact? We can read it?”

  “Intact and, since Nagatha erased and replaced the original AI, very cooperative,” Friedlander confirmed. “We got theory on basic science, guides on how to operate and maintain every piece of equipment aboard the ship, more than we ever could have hoped for.”

  I lowered my voice, which was not necessary, and even useless. Trying to whisper only attracted Skippy’s attention. “And Skippy is Ok with this?”

  “He must know about it,” Friedlander’s gaze automatically went to the ceiling, but Skippy didn’t answer. “The information we recovered from the Dagger is just the tip of the iceberg. We now have access to the database aboard Valkyrie.”

  “Holy shit,” I gasped.

  “You got it. We are still digging through it, of course,” he wiped a hand across his face. “I’ve been reading files nonstop since I came aboard. Of the science team who went to Avalon, not many had a background in physics. Working in the gardens here is the only,” he yawned. “Break I get.”

  “Wow. We will know what the kitties know?”

  “That’s not the best part,” he grinned.

  Before I responded, I sat down on a bench, making sure I didn’t crush a precious plant. “Hit me with it, Doc.”

  “Some of the capabilities of the Valkyrie, like how Skippy can enhance the throughput of the power boosters, relies on Elder technology.”

  You know how, when you want something really badly, you are afraid to ask for it, in case the Universe decides to kick you in the balls that day? That was me right then. “Go on.”

  “To use those power boosters properly, the Valkyrie’s database needs to know how they operate. Not just the basics of pressing buttons, but the theory too.”

  “You’re telling me that,” I swallowed hard. “We have access to Elder technology? We know how their stuff works?”

  “A tiny bit of it. Colonel, if what I think I understand about how those power boosters function is correct, then the universe is stranger than we could have imagined.”

  “Would it blow my primitive monkey brain to learn about this?”

  “It is blowing my monkey brain.”

  “In that case, I’ll leave the science stuff to the experts.”

  He didn’t protest. I wasn’t insulted. “You realize what this means? Colonel, if we can get back to Earth, then eventually, humanity will no longer be on the bottom of the development ladder. We will be at the top of the ladder. We will have knowledge that even the Rindhalu don’t possess. That will give us a fighting chance.”

  “Against the whole galaxy,” I said to remind him of the odds against us. “That’s all good, the problem is time. You’re an engineer, right? Knowing mind-blowing facts only helps us if we can put it into practice. Build a war fleet. Build the tools to build a war fleet. Hell, build the tools to build the freakin’ tools to build ships.”

  “I hear you,” his shoulder slumped. “It’s a challenge. Those power boosters? Just the basic units the Maxolhx have, not the fancy ones upgraded with Elder tech? Making those requires a facility that closely orbits a neutron star. We can’t build a neutron star. We can’t even work with one. Just dealing with the tidal forces and the time dilation would make my head hurt. Skippy told me it took the Maxolhx seven hundred years to set up their first factory that makes power boosters.”

  “Ok,” I took in a chest-filling breath. “We need time. Damn it, we always need time. That’s one thing Earth doesn’t have, no matter how we look at it.”

  “We might have to,” he looked down at the deck. “Have to consider building our technology base at the beta site.”

  “Avalon? It’s mud and giant ferns.”

  “It’s giant ferns now,” he insisted. “The whole point of the beta site is that aliens can’t get there. If Earth is gone,” his knuckles went white. “Then we build a war fleet out there, beyond the galaxy?”

  “Build a fleet to get payback?”

  “For wiping out our homeworld? Yes!”

  He had to know the survival of the beta site depended on aliens not being able to get there, depended on the Rindhalu and possibly the Maxolhx not having their own Elder AI. There wasn’t any point to making plans if the senior species had an entity that might match Skippy’s awesome powers, that would be Game Over for us. “Doc, this is all great news. There’s not much we can do with the info out here, is there?”

  “No,” he shook his head, and his eyes flashed anger. Whether his anger was directed at the alien threat, or at me for reminding him of the enormous task ahead of hm, I didn’t know. “We need to get back to Earth, give this data to the right people.”

  “Skippy would say it’s bad enough that monkeys have access to nukes,” my attempt to lighten the mood fell flat. “You, uh, want to give me a tour of the gardens?”

  “Not now,” he threw the gloves in a bin. “I have real work to do.”

  Margaret’s condition improved rapidly, you might almost say miraculously, after Skippy began the nanobot procedure. Either Skippy absent-mindedly forgot to be his usual absent-minded self with her, or he paid extra super-duper careful attention to all of his patients, because he worked with her twenty-four seven. Even when she was asleep, Skippy was closely monitoring her brain activity and tweaking the activities of the nanobots. The good news was the bots were learning how to assist and enhance her brain function. They transmitted signals, dampened the actions of misfiring neurons, and acted as supplemental memory storage for her. Over time, as her organic brain repaired itself, the nanobots could be deactivated. That was the good news.

  The bad news was, with sophisticated alien machines doing part of the thinking for her, she was not one hundred percent Margaret Adams. Her personality had changed in subtle ways. She was more open, less reserved that her previous self. She laughed more easily, and she seemed to enjoy laughing, while I always got the impression she was self-conscious about it. When I asked Skippy about it, he told me the personality changes were hopefully temporary, a result not of the trauma but how the nanobots were interacting with her organic brain. When he was able to fully deactivate the bots, she should return to her previous self, although he expected that the experience would change her, and there was nothing he could do about that.

  I understood.

  Armageddon had changed all of us.

  Part of the reason for her new personality was the nanobots did not necessarily store information the same way her brain would have. The associations between pieces of information might be different from the associations her brain would have made. The bots also did not know her real personality, so they did not understand which information was important and which was useless. At first, her speech patterns were noticeably different, her language was more formal. It was like the nanobots were guessing what she wanted to say, and they had just learned from a stack of children’s books. She could hear herself talking and she knew it didn’t sound like her. Skippy asked her to be patient and to speak more slowly. Privately, he told me that he was having to intervene directly with the nanobots so they didn’t make her sound like a five-year-old girl.

  Once Skippy began intervening, and he was able to reprogram the nanobots, Margaret’s dark mood lifted. She could see the improvement she was making, see progress every day. The day she stood and walked for the first time, I was there with Smythe. Smythe was there because he was also relearning how to walk, and he thought it would make Margaret feel better to see she was not the only clumsy person aboard the ship. My purpose for being there was officially to assess her progress for her personnel report, but that was pure bullshit. I was there in case she fell, to provide physical as well as moral support.

  No, that was also bullshit.

  I was there because I had to be. No way could
I not be there. If Margaret was embarrassed at her initial awkward attempts to stand on her own, and her first lurching, halting steps, she didn’t say anything to me. We even high-fived after she walked across the compartment, turned around and walked back. If I had to be extra careful to slap her mis-aimed hand for the high-five, neither of us mentioned it.

  Being able to walk again, even if she stumbled like a toddler, was a great boost to her spirits. Being able to speak, to communicate her thoughts and to understand what other people were saying, was another huge milestone in her recovery. If she stuttered and occasionally forgot words, that did not bother her. She knew, or hoped, the stuttering would eventually go away. And she could track the progress of recovering her verbal memory, in the word-association games and other work she did for therapy.

  One day, when I was helping her with a word-association exercise, we came to a section of the text that Skippy must have written. Without thinking, I read aloud the word “Knucklehead”.

  Adams automatically replied “Bishop”.

  There was not even a microsecond of embarrassment for either of us. She burst into laughter, and patted me on the shoulder.

  Then she leaned her head on my shoulder, pressing her forehead into my chest, still while we were both laughing.

  When she pulled away, she looked at me. “Oh, Joe, th-that was a g-good one.”

  A thousand volts ran up my spine. “Joe?” I stared at her in surprise. Oh, shit. I should not have done that. Using my first name could have been a faulty association caused by the alien machines in her head. Pointing out her mistake might be discouraging.

  My fears were for nothing. She tapped my shoulder with one finger. “D-don’t worry. I know w-what I said. Joe.”

  “Wow.” That was not the smartest thing I could have said at that moment, but it was the most honest. She knew that. “You have ever only called me ‘Sir’ or ‘Colonel’ before.”

  “I might have c-called you knucklehead once or t-twice,” she replied with a twinkle in her eyes. Damn, it was good to see her being happy. “But not that y-you know of,” she winked.

  “Why the, uh, change now?”

  She looked away as a shadow fell across her happy expression. When she turned back, her grin was gone, but her eyes were still smiling. You know what I mean. “Reed told me w-what happened, during,” she screwed up her face and pronounced the word slowly, deliberately. “Ar-ma-ge-ddon. After my dropship got hit, you t-took, Val-ky-rie,” slowly again. “Away to stop an enemy s-ship.”

  “Mar-” Crap. She had used my first name. That did not mean she was comfortable with me assuming the same familiarity with her. Figuring it would be awkward if I called her ‘Adams’ or ‘Gunny’, I simply avoided the issue. It was awkward anyway. “Please understand, I didn’t have a choice. That ship would have-”

  “Y-you d-did have a choice. Skippy told me that my brain damage,” she looked me straight in the eye and pinned me with her gaze, not letting me get away. “Was worse because Valkyrie delayed rescuing me.”

  “Shit.” Did I say that aloud? Yes, I did. Double shit! It was time to own my actions, and deal with the consequences. “Ok, yes. I knew people, my people, were injured and dying. I made a choice to pursue that Maxolhx ship, instead of-”

  “That,” she poked my chest with her index finger. It was not an accusing jab. It was not angry. It was gentle. It was, affectionate? WTF? “Is w-why I called you ‘Joe’, J-Joe.”

  “Uh-” What I know about women could fit into a thimble, with plenty of room for, whatever people put into thimbles. My mind was racing to guess what she meant, and all I could come up with was my mind scratching its head and saying ‘I dunno’. “I’m gonna need some help on that, if you don’t mind, please.”

  “It’s simple.” She glanced at the clock on the bulkhead, then at the airlock. Justin Grudzien was coming in next to help her with therapy, they were scheduled to work on her eye-hand coordination. “I think,” her eyes flicked back and forth, searching mine. “I know how y-you feel about me.” Her eyes cast down at the deck, in a coy gesture. “I hope you know h-how I f-feel about you.”

  “Uh-” Damn it. I needed to stop doing that.

  She bailed me out of my awkward silence. “The Army bans re-relationships like,” she waved a hand, frustrated she couldn’t get the words out.

  “I’m your commanding officer,” I said sourly.

  “R-right. The Marine Corps has the s-same regs. I th-think those regs are a g-good idea.”

  “Oh.” The deck opened beneath me and I fell into a black hole, or that is how it felt.

  “I think th-they are a good idea normally,” she added, and the black hole sent me back. “A c-commander can’t favor one s-soldier, or Marine,” she emphasized. “That is bad for g-good order and discipline. You,” her finger poked my chest again, and lingered there. “Proved you do n-not play favorites. You left me out there to d-die, because you put the m-mission first. You p-proved to me that you s-see me as a Marine first. That is all I n-need to know.”

  “Uh, Ok.” My mind was reeling. Mostly because her finger, resting and slowly tracing circles on my chest, had most of my blood flowing away from my brain, if you know what I mean. “I risked your life, and that was a good thing?”

  “You risked m-my life for the good of the m-mission.”

  “Ah. Margaret,” I said without thinking. “If you had died out there-”

  She raised her finger to my lips, silencing me. “A lot of p-people did die out th-there. Th-they were d-doing their duty. You expected me to do no l-less.”

  “I did,” I whispered, my lips touching her finger. She looked at me and for a moment, a glorious moment, I thought we were going to kiss.

  She pulled away, folding her hands in her lap. It was a gesture that sometimes went with sadness, but she was giving me the side-eye, and the smile on her lips was definitely not sad.

  I took a breath. “What,” I laid a hand gently on her shoulder, and she leaned into me just a little. Enough to let me know my touch was welcome. “Is next? For us?”

  “You’re a s-soldier. I’m a Marine, to the core,” she pulled her shoulder back proudly. “The military s-says we c-can’t be together.”

  “That’s it, then?” I did not believe it.

  Turning to me, she took my hand off her shoulder and held it in both of her hands. “Joe, you j-jumped a starship th-through an Elder wormhole. It is impossible f-for us to be together. For y-you, impossible is j-just a speed bump,” the twinkle was back in her eyes, and that twinkle outshone the brightest star. “F-find a way.”

  “Just like that? Make it happen?”

  “J-just like that,” she agreed.

  She had full faith in me. I had no faith in myself. That was not a great combination.

  Her eyes glanced at the clock. Grudzien was scheduled to be there at 1400. It was 1350 at that moment. In the military, if you’re not early, you’re late. We both knew he would be there soon.

  “Ok. I will make it happen. Don’t ask me how, because right now, I have no idea.” That was not true. I did have one idea. With Valkyrie cut off from Earth, and the Pentagon’s influence and relevance dwindling by the day, I could simply say screw the regulations, and declare the Merry Band of Pirates to officially be a pirate operation.

  But that would mean Margaret having to give up her beloved Marine Corps. I wanted to make her happy, not unhappy. So, that was a last resort. “Grudzien will be-”

  “I know,” she finished my thought. “Joe. I won’t b-be calling you that again, until-”

  “Yeah. I know.” Crap. No pressure on me!

  What I was hoping for was a kiss. Ok, I was hoping for a lot more. Right then, a kiss would have been everything. She kissed one of her index fingers and held it up to me.

  Returning the gesture, I kissed my finger, and our fingers touched. “Margaret-”

  “Oh,” Grudzien said in surprise as he came to the open airlock. “You are already on the eye-hand coordination ex
ercises?” He asked in his Polish accent. “That is good,” he clapped his hands, “very good!”

  Justin Grudzien was a dedicated STAR team soldier, who came to us from the Polish GROM special forces. He was a skilled operator, he was dedicated, and right then, I wanted to stuff him out an airlock.

  Instead, I excused myself, a bit more stiff and formal than needed, and walked out.

  Margaret wanted me to-

  No. She had faith in me. She didn’t just want, she expected me to find a way.

  Would it be difficult, if not impossible?

  Yes.

  Was I going to figure out a way to make us work?

  Oh, hell yes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Illiath feared that, compared to the next phase of the investigation, the analysis of the star at Quraqua had been simple. She took her cruiser to the site of the battle where the rogue Bosphuraq had destroyed the two ships traveling to Earth. No, she reminded herself. It was an alleged battle, and the Bosphuraq had only allegedly been involved. That was the whole point of her ship being there. Her warship. The distinction was important because the Maxolhx Hegemony had been attacked by a ghost ship, and fighting ships were needed for actual combat missions for the first time in many millennia. As a patrol cruiser, the Vortan was too lightly-armed and armored to take on the ghost ship, but it could be used to search for and track the enemy vessel. Since the first attack at Koprahdru, Illiath had been waiting for, and dreading, a recall order. At some point, she was certain, the Fleet would decide they needed a patrol cruiser to do something more useful than verifying information they already knew. The only possible reason she could think of, for why she had not been given a recall order, was that someone in Fleet Intelligence had read her report about the discrepancies between the condition of the star at Quraqua and the confession message. One lightly-armed cruiser could not make a significant difference in the hunt for the ghost ship, but if Illiath could prove the confession message was a fake, that would raise a lot of questions. Such as, perhaps the ghost ship was not controlled by a rogue faction of birds, as the propaganda diatribes claimed. If that were true, then the Maxolhx war fleet was fighting the wrong enemy, and needed to change strategy immediately.