Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  “If you listen to her, Joe. You are nowhere as impulsive and reckless as UNEF believes, but sometimes you still act before you think.”

  “We will establish objectives before each attack. Call me out anytime you think I am going off the rails, Ok?”

  “You say that now, but when I try to talk some sense into you-”

  “I promise to be a better listener, Ok? Hey, I want to thank you for, you know, bailing my ass out of a jam again.” Mentally, I prepared for him to insult me. That was a small price to pay for not being dead.

  “Oh no problem, Joe. I was worried there for a while. It is such a relief.”

  “Hey, we were all worried, you know?”

  He stared at me, uncomprehending. “Um, what were you worried about?”

  Blinking slowly, I stared at him. “Survival? Barely escaping from the bad guys? Does any of this sound familiar to you? Maybe you should check the news feed in your-”

  “Oh, that,” he waved a hand. “You got us in another desperate situation because you didn’t think ahead, blah, blah, blah. That’s nothing new, Joe. Plus, in the end, you monkeys are all doomed anyway. I was talking about something really important.”

  “More important than all of us not dying and dooming our hope of bringing people from Earth to the beta site?”

  “Hey, if you were so concerned about that, maybe we shouldn’t have jumped into a battle we didn’t need to fight. Just sayin’, you know?”

  “I know, I know. That’s on me, it was my fault.” Having beaten myself up about my stupidity, I didn’t need him piling on. Or maybe I did. “What is this really important thing that had you so concerned?”

  “The recent lack of opportunities to demonstrate my awesomeness, of course! Joe, until I created a feedback loop on the enemy damping field, I hadn’t done anything truly awesome since my chain of wormholes thing. I haven’t done an awesome thing in, like, forever! My awesomeness game needs to be kept fresh, Dude!”

  I blinked slowly at him. “Skippy, every time you create a shortcut by altering wormhole connections, you remind us of your extreme awesomeness.”

  “Sure, but, people take that for granted now,” he moped. “I need to perform new and exciting awesomenesses.”

  “Ah.” There it was. I understood the problem. Skippy, despite claiming he did not care what filthy monkeys thought of him, craved praise. He especially needed praise from the Merry Band of Pirates, because he respected us. Or at least, he disrespected us somewhat less than his level of disdain for every other being in the galaxy. “That’s my fault, Skippy. You are so awesome, I never even think about all the stuff you do every day. Hey! Like, I was feeling like crap, and now you have made my day.”

  “That is not exactly awesome.” He rolled his eyes.

  “It is awesome to me.”

  “What-eh-VER,” he tilted his head and made a ‘W’ of his thumbs and index fingers. “My displays of awesomeness depend, ugh, on you. Your monkey brain dreams up crazy crap for me to do, so keep it coming. Actually, hmm. I mostly do new awesome stuff when your idiocy gets us into a desperate mess. So, really, please keep doing short-sighted, stupid things, Joe.”

  “How about I do smart things instead?”

  “Oh,” he snickered. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Simms told me I have to think of a way to save Earth again, and I got nothin’. Have you made any progress on unlocking your memories?”

  “Ugh. Not really.” He took off his ginormous admiral’s hat and scratched his head. “How will my memories save your homeworld?”

  “Well, I was kind of hoping you would remember how to control Sentinels. You know, make them squash the rotten kitties for us.”

  “What? Dude, seriously? That’s your plan?”

  “I told you, I don’t have a plan.”

  “Huh. You can forget about me magically using Sentinels as attack dogs. If they did wake up, they would probably wipe out Earth as their first target.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because, numbskull, we know Sentinels punish species for unauthorized use of Elder technology.”

  “We haven’t used any-”

  “I am Elder technology,” he reminded me. “You monkeys got me to screw with the wormhole network. I broke an Elder wormhole, on your suggestion. You think Sentinels will be happy about that?”

  “Shit,” I slumped back in my chair. Then slid down halfway off the seat, totally defeated. “That was my one last hope, Skippy.”

  “Um-”

  “It wasn’t a realistic hope, but it was the best I got.”

  “Well, look on the bright side, Joe.”

  “The bright side?”

  “Sure. Now you can fantasize about a whole new unrealistic plan to save the world. That should buy you at least a couple weeks of blissful ignorance.”

  Tilting the chair back, I closed my eyes. “Can you go away while I wallow in misery?”

  “I thought misery loves company?”

  “Not today, Skippy. Not today.”

  Admiral Urkan was aboard his flagship when the shocking report reached him. His deputy of operations was there also, and shared the shock, the anger and the sick feeling of impending doom. “A disaster,” Urkan said under his breath as he tore his attention away from the message scrolling through his mind. At such times, he wished the Maxolhx still relied on more primitive means of communication, such as visual display devices. If the report had arrived on a crude tablet or holographic interface, he could have tossed the tablet away, or wiped the hologram out of existence. Instead, the file was cued up in his memory, and it was already there. It lurked in his consciousness whether he wanted to think about it or not. “Two heavy cruisers lost, two others damaged so badly they will not be capable of combat duty for two or three months. Both star carriers had to be self-destructed,” he counted the tally of destruction. Urkan himself had made the call to abandon the damaged star carriers and the last surviving destroyer. With the ghost ship still in fighting condition and possibly lurking in the area, it was too risky to send in salvage ships without heavy escorts. He could not spare heavy escorts, they were all needed elsewhere in the sector. “We threw twenty ships into the fight, and four, four! Came back undamaged. The worst part is the ghost ship taunted us when it jumped back to attack again.” Privately, Urkan thought the truly worst part was the captain of the taunted destroyer had needlessly caused the destruction of his ship, but the admiral kept that to himself. “This was my plan, and it was a complete disaster.”

  Subcommander Seelace could not disagree with his admiral’s statement. He disagreed anyway, because part of his job was to offer differing perspectives to the senior officer. “An unfortunate outcome to be sure, but not a complete disaster. Your forces had the ghost ship surrounded, and nearly destroyed it.”

  “Bah,” Urkan dismissed his aide’s words, knowing them to be false comfort. None of his fellow admirals would see the stunning result of the battle as anything other than a pure disaster. “Nearly is not good enough.”

  “May I remind you that, for the first time, we have detailed data on the capabilities and characteristics of the ghost ship? It is not invincible, you have proven that. That ship is certainly damaged, and where can it go to get replacement components? We have determined that it is, or was, an Extinction-class battlecruiser.”

  “A heavily-modified battlecruiser,” Urkan noted sourly.

  “Nevertheless, it is based on one of our ships. Its performance is in most cases identical to a standard Extinction-class. It is not invincible,” he repeated.

  “It does not have to be invincible,” Urkan refused to be comforted. “The enemy demonstrated a new ability to disrupt our damping fields. Who knows what technology they have not yet revealed to us?”

  “Admiral, we have analyzed the damping field issue. True, that feedback technique is a new capability,” Seelace admitted. “However, if the ghost ship tries to use feedback again, they will encounter a nasty surprise. W
e know how to retune our damping field generators to prevent them from being disrupted by feedback; that information is being distributed in emergency flash messages to all ships and stations.” He did not add what the technology division of Fleet Intelligence had told him: that Maxolhx ships were not able to duplicate the feedback mechanism. The principle of the feedback technique was understood well enough, the problem was that even the incredible AIs of the Rindhalu could not process data and react fast enough to create their own feedback loop. Their AIs simply could not think fast enough, and the idea that the enemy had AIs more advanced was deeply troubling. “The taunting was unfortunate, yet I do see that action as recklessness by the enemy. They are becoming bold to the point of being foolish. Also, we know their ship was damaged in the battle. Their options for replenishment and repair have to be limited. We can run it to ground.”

  “We have to find it first. Luring the ghost ship into an ambush didn’t work. I fear now that Fleet Headquarters will listen to Reichert’s foolish plan to blockade wormholes. That will tie up a large portion of the fleet and accomplish little. Seelace, how could this have happened? We planned an ambush, and somehow, the enemy hit us when we didn’t expect an attack. Before we were ready.”

  “Clearly, the enemy intercepted our communications,” Seelace said, as if it were not blindingly obvious.

  “We were so careful! All orders were given verbally, in person. There were no messages to be intercepted.”

  “Unless someone ignored your instructions.”

  “If some brainless idiot-”

  “Admiral, forgive me for saying so, but I have learned that most mistakes come from someone who did not get the memo. It could be as simple as a junior supply officer sending a request for particular equipment, because they were preparing for their ship’s part in the ambush. My people are investigating. That is not my most serious concern.”

  “It is not?”

  “No. We can accept that the ghost ship might have captured intact quantum interchangers, when they took the ship. That is not supposed to happen, just as battlecruisers are not supposed to be captured.”

  “That problem is solving itself. We are replacing all interchangers tagged to battlecruisers. That process will soon be complete.”

  “While Headquarters did act promptly to replace interchangers throughout the fleet, battlecruisers are not the only vulnerability. We now know that some components of the ghost ship might have come from a heavy cruiser, so those interchangers also need to be replaced. There are many more heavy cruisers than battlecruisers, replacing all of them will be a major, sustained effort. That is also not my greatest concern.”

  “No? What could be worse than our most secure communications method being compromised?”

  “Worse is thinking we have resolved the problem, when we have not.”

  “Explain.”

  “We know about the ghost ship. I fear what we do not know. Consider this, Admiral: the enemy has captured more than one of our heavy ships. We thought such a feat was impossible. Even the Rindhalu lack the ability to board and take one of our capital ships. And turn that ship against us. Whatever enemy we face, if they could take a capital ship, surely they could compromise one of our relay stations.”

  Urkan growled, low and menacing. “Seelace, in ancient times, messengers who brought bad news could be killed, for they were considered tainted.”

  “We all long for those simpler days, Sir,” Seelace did not allow his flare of nervousness to show. “My people have analyzed the attacks, and the message traffic the enemy must have accessed to know the location of the ships they attacked. If the ghost ship is getting information from relay stations, they must have compromised at least five of them.”

  Urkan let fly a string of curses so vile, it had taken his people millennia to invent them. “You are fortunate, Seelace, that I am presently unarmed.”

  “I am grateful for that happy circumstance.”

  “My oversight could be quickly undone.”

  “There is some potential good news. In ancient times, what was the fate of messengers who brought positive tidings?”

  Urkan leaned back on his couch. “They could be showered with gifts. Food, drink, the company of willing companions, other pleasurable enticements.”

  “I seek only the joy of serving my admiral.”

  “If that were true, then you would be a fool. I have no use for fools. What good news could come, from such a disaster?”

  “While we have been talking, my people have engaged the Operations AIs to analyze the battle. They believe the ghost ship was surprised at encountering such a strong force. I agree with the analysis. Nothing else about the enemy’s actions makes sense. Sir, the ghost ship probably thought it was attacking only the small force you used as a lure. That is how they were nearly surrounded.”

  “So,” Urkan considered. “Not a complete disaster,” he reluctantly agreed. “They hit us before we were prepared, where we did not expect to be hit? But they also expected only our decoy force, not to fly into our ambush?”

  “Nothing else makes sense. Also, our AIs have analyzed the performance of the ghost ship. It is powerful, we have no explanation of how that ship could generate so much power. But its actions are slow. And clumsy. The Bosphuraq might have replaced the original AI-”

  “That,” Urkan growled, “is impossible.” He knew how the substrate of AIs were woven into the ship’s hulls. It would be easier to build a new ship than to tear out the AI and replace it.

  “It is more likely they have somehow compromised the ship’s AI, and are forcing it to work with them. A compromised AI could explain why the ghost ship’s actions, its control of weapons, its maneuvering, is so slow compared to the specifications of an Extinction-class ship.”

  “That, at least, is something we can use. Seelace, I will not shoot you this time. Nor will you be rewarded.”

  The aide bowed his head in exaggerated fashion. “To serve is my reward.”

  That drew the only laugh Admiral Urkan enjoyed on that fateful day.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A minor issue we had to deal with, when splitting the crew between two ships, was the exercise equipment. The Maxolhx did not need to lift weights or run or do any other sweat-inducing nonsense to keep fit, their genetic enhancements and the nanomachines embedded throughout their bodies kept them in peak physical condition. Apparently, they did need to practice to maintain eye-hand coordination, balance and other links between their neural circuitry and the muscles, because we found equipment for different types of gymnastics, something like throwing darts, and other recreational gear. Also, they enjoyed playing sports. There was a court for a sport sort of like basketball except the sides of the court curved upward, so players could sprint along the wall, and they must have bounced balls off the walls and even the ceiling to pass and make shots. Some of our STAR team tried playing the game, with a regular basketball instead of the heavy ball used by the Maxolhx. Kapoor put a stop to that game after one of his team, who shall remain anonymous though her name rhymes with ‘Katie Frey’, ran halfway up a wall and came down to slam dunk a shot, slamming into Justin Grudzien and nearly spraining his shoulder.

  Personally, I was disappointed when Kapoor ordered the door to the court locked. As the commander, I understood we couldn’t afford to lose any more people to injuries. As an idiot, I thought the game looked like a fun challenge, and I wanted to play.

  Maybe later.

  Anyway, we were not so lucky with our unenhanced biological bodies. We needed to sweat and run and jump and lift and strain to keep our bodies fit. The small crew aboard the Flying Dutchman needed a gym for their own fitness and morale, so we left a bunch of the equipment there. To fit out a gym aboard Valkyrie, we transferred equipment by dropship, and Skippy had the ship’s fabricators make additional gear. We could have had a wider variety of fitness options, but Skippy needed the fabricators to concentrate on making parts for the ship he had snapped together from Lego pieces
.

  Anyway, I was on a rowing machine, which was one of my least favorite pieces of equipment in the gym. It was a great low-impact workout, I was always dripping with sweat and my arms and legs felt like jelly after a rowing session, but I did not enjoy the experience. Maybe the problem was that rowing was that, unlike running, rowing was just an unnatural motion. While running, or even on an elliptical trainer or an exercise bike, your legs pumped up and down and your muscle memory did most of the mental work. While running or biking, I was able to zone out and let my mind wander. I could listen to an audiobook, and let the narrator’s voice make me forget I was in a gym aboard an alien starship far from home. Sometimes, my workout would be over but I kept running or biking or whatever, because the audiobook was in a suspenseful part of the story and I didn’t want to stop yet.

  On a rower, I had to think too much. Sure, I had been doing it for long enough that I did not actually need to think much, just enough that I couldn’t zone out. To get a smooth motion, I had to coordinate my legs from ankles to hips, with my back and my arms. There is a rumor that more than once, I had not been paying attention while rowing, and pulled back too far so the bar smacked me in the chin. That rumor is vicious and hurtful, although it did not hurt as viciously as my bleeding lip that time I really smacked myself hard.

  So, I was concentrating on not embarrassing myself, when over the hip-hip music thumping out of the gym speakers, I heard a soft, high-pitched whistle. That sound indicated a routine announcement or alert would be made, and a moment later, there was a single soft chime, like a bell. Without needing to look up the significance of the signal on my zPhone, I knew the ship was about to make a minor course correction. Skippy had reprogrammed our new ship’s alert system to use the same sounds as we had gotten used to aboard the Dutchman, and only the new people needed to check their phones or request more information from Skippy. And only a very new person would make the rookie mistake of bothering Skippy for information they should already know. Anyone directly affected would have received a direct call from Skippy or the bridge crew anyway, so the alerts were more of an FYI nature. And if we had people outside the ship, a course correction maneuver would be coordinated with them well in advance. Alerts prevented people from doing something stupid. Since stupid things aboard an immensely powerful alien warship could be catastrophic, it was best to let everyone know what was going on.