Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  If that were true, the fleet needed to know immediately. Privately, Illiath had begun to suspect the Rindhalu were somehow involved in the incidents that were blamed on the Bosphuraq. She had no solid evidence to back up her suspicions, and she told no one. She also told herself to keep an open mind, and seek the truth, rather than sorting through data to find only those elements that supported her theories.

  Reaching the site of the alleged battle, her ship was quickly able to confirm that two Maxolhx warships had indeed been thoroughly torn apart there. Sensors positively identified the remains of the ships as those which had been flying toward the wormhole near the planet called ‘Earth’ by the primitive natives of that backwater world. Further investigation revealed that one ship had been subjected to an extremely violent spacetime distortion, of a type unknown to the Maxolhx. The other ship appeared to have been destroyed by release of energy stored in its jump drive capacitors. The fate of the second ship was slightly puzzling. It had been damaged by the same type of spacetime distortion that had ripped apart the first ship, yet the second ship had survived for a time. What could not be explained were indications that the second ship had been shattered by a severe vibration, from a source that was not only unknown, it was unimaginable. It appeared the second ship shook itself apart, an event that was impossible.

  Having determined that two warships of the Maxolhx Hegemony had been destroyed at that location, matching the claim in the confession document, Illiath then directed the cruiser’s sensors to dig deeper, looking for signs of the ship or ships that had dared attack. At first, the sensors merely confirmed what the first investigation had found; evidence of a Bosphuraq ship having been involved.

  Then Illiath directed the Vortan to release a cloud of specialized nanomachines to scour a small section of the battlespace. The tiny machines fanned out, examining any particle larger than the atomic level. The section the nanobots analyzed was larger than a typical gas giant planet, and even with over one hundred sixty thousand nanomachines at work, the task would take many days for results to even begin to flow back to the Vortan’s AI.

  Illiath and her crew waited, and waited, and waited for results. Every day, she checked the progress of the sensor sweep, and waited for the AI to announce a preliminary result. Every day, she was disappointed. Until that day.

  “Commander Illiath,” the AI spoke abruptly, while she was engaged in studying a report about the ghost ship’s latest attack.

  “Yes?”

  “Preliminary results are now available.”

  Pushing the report to the back of her mind, she ordered her couch to bring her upright. “How preliminary?”

  “The sensor machines have completed scanning only twelve percent of the target zone. However, I have seventy-nine percent confidence that scans of the remaining area will not conflict with the current results.”

  Illiath had already downloaded the file and was sorting through it. It was a veritable mountain of data. “Are there any immediate surprises?”

  “Yes. Sensors have detected evidence of a Bosphuraq ship, but also many other ships, from multiple species. That is surprising, given the remote location of the battle.”

  “Show me,” she ordered, irritation creeping into her voice.

  “Yes, Commander. Before I do that, might I be permitted to tell you the most surprising result so far?”

  “Permission granted.” The machine was assuming too much familiarity. That would require an adjustment to its programming. “What is it?”

  “While it is not unexpected to find biological markers at the site of a battle, one of the markers cannot be explained.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Human DNA.”

  After the devastating and shocking attack that blew two of their warships to dust, the Maxolhx appeared to have left the research base on Koprahdru alone, other than a half-dozen ships jumping in to recon the area within a week of the battle. When those recon ships jumped away, and the research base was left alone for forty-three days, some of the inhabitants began to dare hope they would survive unscathed. The Maxolhx had bigger problems to worry about. Or they had reached a deal with the Bosphuraq government. Or, the ghost ship was so powerful, it had forced the Maxolhx to surrender!

  The residents of the research base simply did not know what was going on in the wider galaxy. They had no ship capable of faster-than-light travel, and their Navy sent no ships to communicate with them, so they could only wait fearfully, watching the sky for telltale gamma ray bursts. If the burst was barely detectable, that would be the death sentence of a Maxolhx ship arriving. A stronger burst would hopefully be a friendly ship coming to defend the base, or pull the entire population off the desolate planet and take them away to safety.

  When the days dragged on with no sign of either impending destruction or salvation, the administrator began to lose control of his team, as baseless rumors began to spread. People in desperate need of hope heard what they wanted to hear, and the administrator had no hope to offer. The rumors offered comfort. The ghost ship that blew up the two destroyers was so powerful, the Maxolhx dared not attack any planet under the ghost ship’s protection. The ghost ship was striking widely across Maxolhx territory, forcing the patrons of the Bosphuraq to pull their own warships back to defensive positions. No, the ghost ship was still lurking near Koprahdru, ready to pounce on any ships that dared attack the defenseless world. No, the ghost ship had already forced the Maxolhx to negotiate a ceasefire with the Bosphuraq.

  All the rumors had one thing in common: the administrator had received communications from outside, and was concealing the truth. He did not want the people to know the truth, so he could rule them by fear.

  On the forty-fourth day as measured by the rotation of the Bosphuraq homeworld, the agitators had enough of waiting. Their leader urged his followers to march on the offices of the administrator, and forced the man out. As the base was a science station, the administrator had not been provided with any weapons, and the two-person military security team decided to stay out of civilian disputes.

  In the administrator’s records, the agitators found no hint of communications from the outside, but their leader assured them that only meant the dastardly former occupant of the office had erased the evidence. Do not worry, their new leader told the unhappy crowd, he would get to the truth. To his trusted inner circle, he told them to stall while he ransacked the office for valuables. A bottle of thirty-year-old shaze was the only worthwhile item he found, so he got some glasses and enjoyed the fiery liquid with his friends. The crowd outside would wait while he thought of what evidence to fake.

  The first hint of approaching trouble was an early warning satellite going offline, which rated the defense AI to alert the administrator’s office, where three people were sleeping off the effects of consuming an entire bottle of vintage shaze. Thus, the initial warning was ignored.

  The next sign of trouble was a brief but odd sensor reading, captured by a satellite in low orbit. There was a moment of terrified excitement by the defense AI when the high-energy sensor reading was confused for a gamma ray burst. Then when the reading was evaluated and corrected, it too, was consigned to the status report. The scientists who could have confirmed or disputed the sensor reading, were mostly gathered outside the administrator’s office, blissfully unaware of any alert.

  Thus, when the twenty-meter-wide asteroid impacted the planet’s surface directly above the buried research base, moving at thirty-one percent of lightspeed, it was a complete surprise. The asteroid had dropped its stealth field only two seconds before it contacted the atmosphere, leaving no time for base personnel to react to the AI’s frantic alert.

  The only good news was that someone got to enjoy an excellent bottle of vintage shaze, before the bottle and the planet’s crust in that area were obliterated.

  Our Happy Time was a busy and satisfying two months. For me, it was especially happy, because Margaret Adams was making slow and steady progress. She did
not do anything spectacular, that was the point. Yes, she had bad days, discouraging days. Of course, her progress was slower than she wanted, and exactly on the schedule Skippy recommended. By the end of three weeks after she woke from the coma, she was able to speak normally, if a bit slower than she had before and with a stutter she hated. Skippy assured her, and me, that her speaking ability would make a full recovery. He gradually deactivated the nanoprobes in her brain, as her own neurons regrew and made new connections. Though I knew the little machines were helping her make faster progress, it was still creepy to think of alien bots crawling around inside her head.

  I was not the only person who did not like the idea of nanobots artificially enhancing the natural abilities Adams had. The good-faith decision I made for her had consequences, and they weren’t all good.

  Like I said, she had good days and bad days. On bad days, she stumbled while walking, and fell off the exercise bike, and her clumsy fingers shook when trying to bring a spoon to her mouth, and she got so frustrated when trying to talk that she burst into tears. That was really bad, because when she was crying she tended to stutter and babble, which made it even more difficult for her to talk.

  Simms came rushing into my office unannounced one day. “Sir, you need to go to-”

  Skippy’s voice interrupted. “Hey, Joe, I-”

  “Not now, Skippy. Simms, what is it?”

  She looked at the ceiling before answering. “Skippy and I may be talking about the same thing. Is it Adams?”

  “It is,” Skippy confirmed.

  “Oh shit,” I shot up from my chair. The worst things I could imagine raced through my mind in vivid detail. Why is my brain so lightning fast to picture bad things, and so painfully slow when I needed it to do something useful? “What happened?”

  Simms spoke first. “I was helping her with therapy. Cognitive stuff, memorization games, that sort of-” Seeing my impatience with details, she skipped to the end. “She’s having a bad day. A really bad day. She is pissed at you, Sir, for putting nanomachines in her head. She is worried that all of the progress she has made is artificial, that it’s not her making progress, that you’ve turned her into some sort of cyborg.”

  “Shit,” I stared at the floor. I had been dreading that conversation.

  “She is wrong about that,” Skippy assured us. “But, Joe, we have a problem. Margaret wants me to deactivate and remove all the nanobots inside her.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Whoa indeed. Joe, such an abrupt action could be very harmful. It might kill her.”

  “I tried talking to her,” Simms added. “Reason with her. Told her she is just having a bad day. She is adamant, she wants them out of her. She wants to be Margaret again, not some- She said you have made her into a monster. She would rather be dead.”

  I was torn between wanting to race to the medical bay that was set aside for post-recovery therapy, and wanting to take a minute to think first. Confronting her without a plan for what I would say, without having a damned good argument against ripping the nanobots out of her body, would do nothing but piss her off. My feet wanted to move, now. My brain made my restless feet stay planted on the deck of my office. “Skippy, stall her, however you can. Tell her, uh, some bullshit like you have to prep the extraction machines first.”

  “I have already stalled her, Joe. Margaret demanded that it is her right to make medical decisions for herself. My reply was that, as she is partly reliant on alien machines to think for her, she is not legally competent, and you still have power of attorney for her.”

  “I do?”

  “Ugh. No. Try to keep up, please. Joe, I gave her whatever line of bullshit I could think of. Legally, um, it’s kind of in a shmaybe-level gray area? Technically, she has not completed therapy, and she is clearly still impaired. Regardless of the legal rules you monkeys wrote for yourselves, I will not do anything to harm Margaret. Except,” he choked up. “If she begs me, as her friend. Joe, I’m in a very tough spot here,” he pleaded. “You gotta help me. Help her.”

  “Damn it,” I muttered to myself. “I am the last person she wants to see right now.”

  Simms bobbed her head up and down once. “That’s why you need to go talk with her.”

  I knew she was right. That didn’t make it any easier. “Will you-”

  That time, her head shook side to side. “This is all you, Sir.”

  When I reached the therapy bay, Adams was sitting on the deck, trying to pull a sneaker on her right foot. Her hands shook, and her foot kept missing the opening. When she saw me, I held up my hands without saying anything. She turned away from me and angrily threw the shoe across the compartment, except she missed. It bounced off the table opposite her, and flopped back at her feet. She buried her face in her hands and her whole body shook.

  What the hell was I supposed to say? What could I say? There wasn’t anything about this situation in my officer training manuals.

  Not knowing what to do, I fell back on trying to be a decent human being. That is usually a good idea. I walked softly across the deck, and sat down on the floor next to her. “Gunny, can we talk?”

  Without looking at me, face still covered by her hands, she spoke with vehemence. “I w-w-want these alien t-th-thhings out of m-m-my head.”

  “Skippy says they are helping you. Adams, you have made a lot of progress.”

  “The bots in my head have m-made a lot of p-p-progress.” She glanced at me, angrily wiping tears away from her face with the sleeves of her shirt. I knew better than to offer a towel from the bin next to me. If she wanted a towel or anything else, she would ask for one. Or, she would get it herself. “This isn’t me,” she tapped her forehead.

  “Gunny, you had a bad day, that’s all.”

  She reached down to pick up the sneaker. Three times, she missed. As I watched, she concentrated hard on making her hand slowly slide across the floor to the shoe, then laboriously walked her fingers up to hook around a lace. When she lifted the shoe, her hand trembled. “Skippy has been d-d-deactivating the bots slowly. As the b-bots go offline, I have,” she glared at me. ‘What you call ‘bad days’. They are b-b-bad because the bots are no longer doing the work for me. I am not g-g-getting any b-better.”

  Her whole body shuddered. She dropped the shoe and slumped back against the bulkhead, wracked with sobs. The shaking was likely worse because of her condition, not that it mattered. It was time for me to put aside rank structure and military protocol and just be a decent human being. So, I leaned over and put one arm around her. I didn’t say anything, she didn’t say anything. Whether it was because she shook or because she wanted to, she pressed her shoulder against me.

  For her, it was one of the lowest moments of her life.

  For me, it is a memory I will always cherish.

  Skippy could not keep his stupid mouth shut. Damn it, I had a nice speech planned in my head. A tender moment, just me and Margaret Adams. Before I could say anything, Skippy opened his big stupid mouth. “That is not true, Margaret,” he announced cheerily. “While it is true that I am slowly deactivating the nanoprobes, their loss is not causing your bad days. Quite the opposite, in fact. I deactivate bots because they are no longer needed, as your own neural circuitry is able to handle the tasks.”

  “Then why,” she pushed away from me, and just like that, the special moment was gone. She lifted the sneaker and held it up with effort. The shoe wobbled slightly as she cradled it in both hands. “Was I able to put my d-damned shoes on yesterday, and I can’t do it today? I’ve been,” she wiped away a tear as I pointedly looked straight ahead. “P-putting my own shoes on since I was, w-was, a toddler!”

  “Yes,” Skippy’s voice dripped with impatient, clueless condescension. “You did have a good day yesterday. That is why I was able to deactivate another set of nanoprobes. But the loss of that set has nothing to do with the motor-control difficulties you are experiencing today. You would be experiencing even better control than you did yesterday, if I wasn�
�t using other nanoprobes to interfere with the natural wiring in your head.”

  “You’re do-do-doing what?” Adams sputtered, while I only opened my mouth, stunned.

  Skippy replied in his Patiently Explaining Things To Monkeys tone. “I am using-”

  It was my turn for outrage. “We know what you are doing, For God’s sake, why?”

  The heights of Skippy’s arrogance was matched only by his cluelessness. “To accelerate her recovery, duh. By interfering with the signals between neurons, I am forcing those neurons to adapt, to grow stronger, to make new connections. If you monkeys knew anything about how biological brains truly work, you would understand.”

  “You are m-making me,” she held up the shoe with one hand, and it shook. “More clumsy? To help me?”

  “Yes. Ugh,” he sighed. “Try this. I just turned off the interference temporarily.”

  The shoe she was holding no longer shook. Adams carefully pushed back against the bulkhead and stood up. As a test, she used one hand to steady herself while her other hand pulled the shoe on. She still shook a bit, and her voice still had a quivering quality to it, but she no longer stuttered. “I can talk,” she pronounced each work slowly, carefully. “Peter Piper picked a peck of,” she took a breath, “pickled, peppers. Oh!” She gasped. “I didn’t stutter.”

  “No you did not,” Skippy gloated. “I can turn off the interference, but it will delay your therapy, your progress to complete recovery, by several weeks. Possibly a month. Your brain is a powerful and complex but fragile organ.”

  “I can’t- Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because, knowing might change the way you respond to therapy. Besides, you thrive on challenges, right?”