Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9)

by Craig Alanson

  “It is not that simple. Crap, I don’t know what Adams thinks about me, or if she even remembers what she said. You can’t give me a freakin’ hint?”

  “Doctor-patient confidentiality, like I told you. Once again, I have a radical suggestion for you: talk to her, you numbskull.”

  “I may need to do that,” I admitted. “Damn, if that conversation doesn’t go well, it will really not go well. Whew. I need to think about this.”

  “Would it help if I designed a super-cool new Pirate uniform for you, instead of that drab Army stuff you wear?”

  “What is wrong with my uniforms?”

  “Ugh. They have no flair, Joe.” He pointed to his royal blue outfit, weighed down with gaudy gold braid. “Look at my uniform. See, this commands respect.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. Uh, hold off on measuring me for a new Pirate costume.”

  “It’s a uniform, not a costume, Joe.”

  “Whatever. I need to do some serious thinking about this.”

  “Sir,” Smythe barked excitedly as he strode into my office.

  “Gaah!” He startled me so badly I felt an icy chill stab down my spine. When he interrupted my thoughts, I was concentrating on watching a replay of our epic thirteenth battle, when we nearly lost the ship. The video recreation was so engrossing, I was in another world when he walked in. “Uh, sorry, Smythe.”

  He peered at my laptop screen. “Ah. Watching our latest near-death experience?”

  Folding the screen down, I sat back in my oversized chair. The damned thing always made me feel like I was six years old and sitting in a big boy’s barber chair, getting a haircut. The seat was too long front to back, if my knees were properly positioned, my back didn’t touch the upright. That problem could have been solved by stuffing a pillow against my back, again, that would make me feel like a little boy. So, not happening. “Yeah. Every time I watch it, I find something new that I should have done better. Or not done.”

  “We can always do better.”

  “Yes, but,” I stole a glance at the closed laptop, wanting to get back to the video like an addict seeking a fix. “I should have committed to fighting it out sooner. My hesitation caused us a lot of trouble.”

  “You are so used to running away, it is difficult,” he shrugged, “to adapt an offensive mindset. You’ll get it, Sir.” He raised an eyebrow, as he must have seen the surprised and hurt look on my face. “When I said ‘you’,” he added, “I meant all of us. We have been avoiding direct combat for so long,” he let his words trail off. “Perhaps our instincts to be aggressive in combat have become rusty.”

  “Oh.” That made it somewhat better.

  “Reviewing an after-action report is useful only if you learn from it,” he chided me. “Not use it to beat yourself up.” His shoulders lifted as he took a deep breath. “Believe me, I know.”

  “You? Doubts?”

  “Ha.” He laughed quietly. “More than you can know.” A shadow fell across his face, remembering fallen comrades. “I keep thinking that if I had ordered Desai to hold us until the first dropship was recovered by the Dutchman-”

  “Smythe, you can that shit right now, you hear me?” I snapped at him with a vehemence that I didn’t know was inside me. “There is nothing to be gained by going down that rabbit hole. I was in command. You did everything by the book. My orders were to egress that station as fast as possible, and I was right about that. You did everything by the book,” I added quietly. “People still died. It’s combat. Shit happens. The only person who fucked up that day was me.” Cutting off his attempt to speak with a gesture, I continued. “At the time, I thought I was making the safe bet. Jump out to a distance where our scanners were effective, look for an enemy ship before it could appear out of nowhere. I was wrong. If the only pieces we had on the board were our two starships, that was the safe bet. The Dutchman could have jumped away. What I didn’t consider were the dropships. They were vulnerable. My move should have been to keep Valkyrie close, where our firepower could provide cover.” Tapping my laptop, I thought of the hours I had spent watching a replay of the battle we called Armageddon. At my request, Skippy had turned it into an interactive simulation so I could try different moves. In almost all scenarios, keeping Valkyrie near the station to cover the dropships was the right call. With a battlecruiser in the area, the enemy ships would not have jumped in to wipe out most of my team. The only way that I should have jumped away to perform a recon was in the unlikely event that the enemy opposition was strong enough to take on a battlecruiser. And in that case, a recon might not have made any difference.

  The fact was, it wasn’t just my fault. The guy I saw in the mirror when I brushed my teeth was humanity’s most experienced starship captain, and even I still could not intuitively grasp the intricate rules of space combat. The Maxolhx had been taking starships into combat since before humans were living in caves. We had no business fighting in space.

  Yet, there was no arguing that monkeys had been kicking ass across the galaxy. We were undefeated!

  Ok, we were undefeated because no one else knew we were in the game, but, still, we were kicking ass all along the Orion Arm and beyond.

  “You should follow your own advice,” Smythe observed.

  “Yeah. The worst Monday-morning quarterback is yourself. Uh, you don’t have those in Britain?”

  “No quarterbacks, Sir,” he grinned. “We do have plenty of people second guessing the striker,” he pantomimed lifting his foot to kick a ball. “Or the coach, or the defense.”

  “Different kind of football,” I nodded. “Same issues. You didn’t come in here to talk football.”

  “No. I had a thought. Our one ghost ship has been causing havoc across enemy space, and that is good.”

  “Next, you’re going to say it is also not enough, that we’re not really doing anything that will prevent the Maxolhx from supporting an offensive against Earth. Yeah, I get it. Uh, sorry.” My habit of interrupting people was Ok with Skippy, because he tended to ramble on in an absent-minded fashion. It was not Ok with other people, and I needed to stop doing that. Smythe looked pained whenever I did it to him, maybe the British were more polite.

  “That is basically true, yes. Also, we can’t expect to repeat our success with hit-and-run raids. The enemy is hunting us and laying traps. Eventually, we will get caught.”

  “And then we won’t be able to exploit the wormhole that will hopefully be near Earth soon. Agreed, Colonel. For now, I’m content for our little armada to act as a threat, keep the enemy off balance.” In naval warfare, there is a concept called ‘fleet in being’. I read about it when I was studying modern and historical navy combat tactics, trying to find something that might apply to space combat.

  Yes, sometimes I do things that are useful, I don’t play video games all day.

  This ‘fleet in being’ concept is that as long as a naval force is intact, it poses a threat to the enemy, and the enemy has to devote some of their ships to monitor and guard against this ‘fleet in being’. If the fleet ventures out to offer battle, the fleet could lose and therefore cease to be useful. So, unless conditions are strongly in the fleet’s favor, it should remain in port and continue to pose a threat, without actually doing anything.

  That was my plan for Valkyrie. Until the enemy was certain our stolen battlecruiser was destroyed, we would tie up a substantial portion of their fleet, without having to commit to battle. The Maxolhx would need to convoy all their merchant shipping, and they could not send out lightly-armed ships without being accompanied by a heavy warship. By attacking with a battlecruiser, we were forcing the enemy to completely change their tactics. Usually frigates and destroyers escorted capital ships, now those smaller ships could not venture away from their bases without the protection of a heavy cruiser, battlecruiser or battleship. Like the mythical ‘fleet in being’, we could lurk as a threat, waiting and watching for a perfect opportunity for another devastating attack. Perfect meant a big
reward with very little risk to us.

  It was unlikely we would find such an opportunity now that the enemy was on the alert for us, but we had an advantage. Through Skippy’s ability to hack into relay station AIs, we were reading the enemy’s messages. We had to be careful not to fall for a trap, for Skippy warned the enemy eventually might suspect we were somehow hacking their communications.

  So, I was not in a hurry to take our mighty Valkyrie into action.

  “That will not last forever. If we don’t conduct further attacks, the kitties,” one corner of his mouth turned upward in a hint of a smile. For some reason unknown to me, Smythe thought it amusing that the Maxolhx had a vaguely cat-like appearance. Maybe he just didn’t like cats. “Will relax their guard, and the strategic situation will return to the previous status. They will hope we have been disabled after our last fight, or that we are unable to keep the ship flying. With only one ship, they have to correctly assume our resources are limited.”

  Nothing he said was news to me. There had to be another reason he was in my office. “You have identified a low-risk, high-reward target for us?”

  “Not exactly. What I have in mind is a high-reward target, the risk might be too great for us to consider.”

  That got me intrigued. He recently had proposed strikes against spacedocks and other warship-servicing facilities, and each time I had decided the risk was too great. The enemy had plenty of spacedocks, hitting one or two would not put a dent in their ability to project force across the galaxy. If Smythe thought the risk of his potential target might be too much, then he must have identified one hell of a tempting target. “Don’t keep me in suspense. What is it?”

  He had a fish on the hook, and wanted to enjoy reeling me in. “The enemy’s Cee Three all goes through their pixie technology,” he stated. By ‘C3’, he meant Command, Control and Communications.

  “Yeah,” I was slightly disappointed by his response. “Skippy says eventually we will need to replace our supply of pixies. I do not want to go back to Detroit.” When we captured the Lego pieces that Skippy used to assemble Valkyrie, almost all of the pixies aboard those ships were damaged by the spacetime distortion of our bagel slicer. Luckily, we found enough intact pixies to add four sets to our collection. That left us thin and we had to be careful how any times Skippy recycled the magical devices. Still, no way did I want to risk another death-defying raid on a pixie factory.

  “Detroit is one of the targets I have in mind,” he said with an arched eyebrow. “As a target, Sir. Another hit-and-run attack, not a heist.”

  “Attack Detroit? Why? Oh,” the obvious slapped me in the face. Sometimes my brain is really slow. “Holy shit. You want to knock out their stock of pixies?”

  “Quite so,” he nodded. He had a bit of the look of a schoolmaster who was pleased a student had given the correct answer. “Not just Detroit. That planet is the factory where they make new paired units. The kitties also have two vaults where they store completed pixies.”

  “Whoa!” Skippy appeared on my desk, waving his hands. “Just whoa. Hold your horses there, pardner. Have you gone completely bloody barmy?”

  “Skippy,” I admonished him. “Let the man talk.”

  “Crazy talk,” the beer can muttered. “It’s impossible, I tell you. Those vaults are too well protected.”

  Smythe was not deterred by discouraging words. “You tend to say everything is impossible until we do it.”

  “Well, well, oh yeah?” Skippy sputtered. “Um, we’ll see about that.”

  “That was a cracking comeback, Skippy,” I winked at Smythe.

  “Oh, shut up,” he pouted.

  Gesturing for Smythe to continue, I glared at Skippy. “Go on. We hit their stock of blank pixies?”

  “Exactly so,” Smythe kept one eye on Skippy, as if daring him to interrupt. “If we can destroy their current supply, and their ability to produce new units, we could cripple their defensive capability for years. They might not be able to stage a strike against Earth, because they will be too worried about their exposure to an attack by the Rindhalu.”

  “I like it.” Tilting my chair back, I stared at the ceiling while I imagined the delicious possibilities. “Damn!” Clapping my hands, I imagined the possibilities. Taking our mighty Valkyrie to hit a truly vital target-

  “Of course you like it,” Skippy snapped. “You are a moron. Let me explain why it would be suicide to even attempt to hit Detroit.”

  He explained.

  We listened.

  We also got chills from hearing how strong the defenses were around Detroit. Here’s a Fun Fact for you: the Maxolhx are not stupid. They had a layered Strategic Defense network around Detroit, that extended three lightminutes from the planet. That SD network covered a mind-bogglingly vast territory, which not even Valkyrie could penetrate and survive. We could try building another DeLorean and jumping it in near the factory, this time equipped with a nuke. But even that wouldn’t harm the kitties’ ability to conduct military operations, because they had enough blank pixies in their vaults to last over two hundred years, even at a wartime op tempo. Unless we could take out the vaults, we couldn’t disrupt their use of pixie technology.

  The vaults? Fugeddaboutit.

  The vaults were inside the core remnants of gas giant planets that orbited neutron stars. Starships could not jump in or out anywhere close to a neutron star, and the planetary cores were so dense, Valkyrie’s weapons could pound away for years without making a noticeable dent. The Maxolhx had designed the defenses of their vaults to be secure against the Rindhalu. By the time Skippy finished explaining how it was impossible, truly impossible, for anyone to successfully attack those vaults, even Smythe had to admit we should drop the idea.

  I was glad that he didn’t expect me to do the impossible again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Some mornings, I didn’t feel like eating breakfast. Maybe I was in a rush, or so groggy that all I wanted was coffee. Yeah, I know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, blah, blah, blah. You’re not my mother, so shut up.

  That morning was a coffee-only event, except for grabbing what I thought was a handful of raisins that turned out to be dried cranberries. After almost spitting them out, I ate them anyway, and they were good.

  By Ten o’clock, I was hungry enough that I couldn’t wait for lunch, so back to the galley I went for a snack. Showing my remarkable self-control, I placed four, and only four, crackers on a plate and got a knife, anticipating slathering peanut butter on the crackers. That would keep me from getting hangry until lunchtime.

  Imagine my shock and disappointment when I reached for the jar of peanut butter that was always on the shelf next to the toaster. The jar looked full. Soon as I lifted it, I could tell the truth: the damned thing was almost empty. Unscrewing the lid showed me there was not enough peanut butter left to bother with.

  Some rat bastard had taken the last of the delicious treat and put the empty jar back, without even notifying the team on duty in the galley to request another jar from storage. We had crates of the stuff, one of the few foodstuffs that was in good supply. That is why I ate peanut butter a lot, everyone else was growing sick of it.

  The heinous perpetrator of the crime had not just casually pilfered my snack and ran. No. Whoever it was had worked at it. From the way the sides of the jar had been scraped clean, somebody had spent considerable time digging out the very last dregs of crushed peanuts. All that effort, so the poor jerk who came all the way to the galley for a snack would think they had a jar full of peanut butter, though actually it was-

  Holy shit.

  The knife clattering on the floor snapped me out of my reverie.

  “Skippy!” I called out as I stuffed dry crackers into my mouth. With our food supplies low, we couldn’t afford to waste anything. Because I had crackers in my mouth, my call might have sounded something like “Fif-fee!”

  “Did you call me, or are you practicing some lame free-association for the spoke
n word event?”

  “Ah,” I took a drink of water so my mouth could function. “I did call you. What spoken word thing?”

  “It’s-”

  “Aren’t all words spoken?”

  “Ugh. Not if you read them silently, dumdum. This event is a poetry slam. People are writing poetry and performing it aloud.”

  “Uh, why don’t I know about it?”

  “Joe, please. You can barely read the label on a tube of toothpaste without getting lost.”

  “Hey! Some of those ingredients are impossible to pronounce.”

  “Riiiiight. Anyway, you don’t know about it because I didn’t invite you.”

  “Oh. Who did get invited?” I figured Skippy had somehow found two or three poets among our bloodthirsty crew of pirates, and his little nerdfest was an exclusive club.

  “Um, Jeez, let me count. Chang, Simms, Smythe, um- Heh heh, it looks like I invited everyone except you.”

  “What?”

  “Dude. Seriously. You want to write a poem?”

  “No.”

  “If you did, would you read it in front of people?”

  “Oh, hell no.”

  “Then what is the problem?”

  There was a problem. I think. Not getting invited to an event I did not want to attend sounded good, except when everyone else did get invited. “Uh, can I get back to you on that?”

  “Yes, if you phrase your statement in the form of a haiku.”

  “Haiku? Is that like a limerick?” I guessed hopefully.

  “No. Google it, knucklehead. Also, if you called me to solve the mystery of the peanut butter burgler, you can puzzle that one through on your own, Nancy Drew.”

  “I don’t intend to press charges, so don’t worry about it.”

  “Then why did you call me?”

  “Oh yeah. Where is Smythe right now?”

  “He just completed a team exercise in powered armor, and is putting his kit away.”