Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7)

by Craig Alanson

  “Hmmm. So, the Rindhalu are ancient and arrogant, and they were alone for a long time,” I paused to see if he caught on to where I was going. He didn’t. “And you think that arrogance is going to bite them in the ass.”

  “Big-time, Joe. The arrogance of the Rindhalu pisses me off, Joe.”

  “You don’t like the competition?”

  “Very funny, smart guy. No, it pisses me off because the spiders, for all their knowledge about the physical universe, have still only barely scratched the surface. And, they have no idea about the true nature of reality.”

  “Mm hmm. You wouldn’t care to share that true nature of reality with me, would ya?”

  “No. That is something I can’t tell you, for, uh, well, for reasons I can’t tell you. It is kind of circular logic, but it is what it is.”

  “Yeah. Well, Doctor Friedlander told me you explained how Thuranin doorknobs work, so we’re making slow progress on you sharing technology with us. We can wait. I hope. Ok, now I need to tell this good news to Chotek.”

  “Um, you may want to wait on that, Joe. Count Smoochula is with a, um, a lady friend, if you know what I mean. They decided to celebrate early, sort of.”

  “Oh, that is just freakin’ great! Of course he is having a good time. Everybody else is happy that we’re going home, and I’m stuck in my cabin with Doctor Doom.”

  “I haven’t dismantled the sexbot yet, Joe. Would it help if she-”

  “No sexbot!”

  If I had been offered a choice between A) telling the bad news to Hans Chotek and B) shaving my head with a rusty cheese-grater, I would go for B) every time. When Skippy told me Chotek was back in his office, it was two hours later. Damn, that guy has stamina. Or maybe Smoochula and his lady friend took a nap after, you know, the fun. That is what I wanted to believe. When I knocked on the door frame, he was smiling and waved me in to sit. Of course he was in a good mood.

  Five minutes later, he was not in such a good mood. I fell on my sword before he could give me a major ass-chewing. “Sir, this is my fault. I did not consider the risk in asking Skippy to adjust the connections of wormholes. When we get to Earth, I will take full responsibility.”

  “No, you will not. It is not solely your responsibility.”

  I just stood there, mouth open. There were a lot of things I found maddening about Hans Chotek. The most frustrating thing about him was that I could almost never predict what he would do in a given situation. The guy was a career diplomat, yet he had planned an operation to spark an alien civil war. “Sir?”

  “Skippy began adjusting wormhole connections during your second mission, based on your idea, correct? You were not able to consult with authorities on Earth about the concept before you had to utilize the ability. Yet, yet,” he waved a finger in the air, “when you returned from your second mission, no one on Earth raised an objection.”

  “They raised plenty of objections,” I reminded him.

  “There were objections to risks you took by landing on the planet Newark,” that drew a smile. He must have had the pleasure of visiting that fair city when he was working at the UN in New York. “None of the supposed experts considered the adjustment of wormholes to be a potential problem at the time. I will remind them of that fact, if they object when we return. Colonel Bishop,” he looked me straight in the eye. “I do not like being second-guessed by what you Americans call ‘Monday Morning Quarterbacks’.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “This news is,” he searched for the correct words in English. “Disheartening. It means our entire mission to the Roach Motel,” he no longer grimaced at the nickname he disliked, “was a waste of time and effort. We took the risk of going there to rescue Skippy, so he could continue to help us safeguard the people of Earth. With the Maxolhx now coming to Earth, all we have accomplished is giving the senior species a fully functional Skippy to fight over.”

  “I, I hadn’t thought of it that way, Sir.”

  “The schofel Katzes are not the immediate problem,” he used a German term for ‘rotten cats’. His opinion of the Maxolhx had changed after his failed attempt to talk and negotiate with Mister Snuggles at the Roach Motel. The only ‘talking’ Snuggles had done was to angrily shout insults and threats at us, mostly at Chotek.

  “Sir?” He had lost me. What could be a bigger, more immediate threat than two supremely powerful warships coming to Earth?

  “The first problem we will need to confront, when we get home, is our governments. Before we departed on our mission to confirm the Thuranin were not sending a second surveyor ship to Earth,” he rolled his eyes, the first time I had seen him do that. “It, seems like that was such a long time ago, no? Such a naively optimistic notion, that sending a starship out to gather intelligence could be quick or simple.” He sighed and shook his head with a chuckle. “I now so much better now. Colonel Bishop, before we left Earth, there was a debate within UNEF, and the wider UN among nations aware of the truth. The debate was between a faction who wished to continue the mission of keeping our secret, and a faction who thought it better to approach one or more alien species to negotiate. I was chosen as a compromise, but as I have told you, I am strongly opposed to revealing the truth to aliens like the Ruhar. Even more now that I have seen the galaxy, I am convinced that revealing the truth about the Flying Dutchman and Skippy is a certain death sentence for humanity.”

  “I was surprised when you told me, Sir. To be frank, I would have thought you would be in favor of negotiating, you being a diplomat.”

  “As a diplomat, I have seen firsthand the limits of negotiation. We have no power to negotiate. As soon as aliens learn about Skippy and the wormhole controller module you call a magic beanstalk, they will simply take those items from us. When we inform the governments of Earth that there are a pair of Maxolhx warships coming to our home world, there will be many people who will think approaching the Rindhalu coalition soon will be our best hope for survival. We must, somehow, persuade the nations of UNEF that is a foolish notion.”

  “How? What else can we offer them as hope?”

  He looked at me and smiled. Not the practiced, controlled smile of a diplomat, this was the weak and frightened smile of someone who does not entirely believe what they are saying. “We can offer them the hope of a miracle,” he held his hands out palms up. “This crew has performed miracles on a regular basis. As Skippy has told me, monkeys are endlessly clever.”

  “Oh crap,” I said out loud before I could stop myself. Damn it. No pressure on me! “Sir, I think the first miracle we need is selling that line of bullshit to the governments of Earth.”

  He laughed. A genuine, hearty laugh. Hans Chotek was loosening up, I guess being with the Pirates had corrupted him. Then he surprised me again by offering a hand for a high five. It was a little awkward, but I slapped his hand. “I came in here thinking you would be much more upset by this development.”

  “Colonel, we were already bringing home the information that within sixty years, our secret will be exposed no matter what we do out here, that Earth is eventually doomed. This unfortunate development merely accelerates the timeline.”

  It accelerates it a lot, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say anything like that. “Sir, I think we should continue with the celebration dinner tonight. Let the crew enjoy one night, we will tell them the bad news tomorrow.”

  “Colonel, I have long experience with plastering a fake smile on my face. You will be able to make merry tonight?”

  “Mister Chotek, one thing I am sure of right now is, I really need a drink.”

  The crew had a great time at our celebration, and I pre-gamed by chugging three plastic cups of champagne before the party started. That buzz allowed me to be happy and smiling and fun and even managed to push the impending doom of humanity to the back of my mind for the evening. I did not spill drinks on my dress uniform, but there were mysterious red dots on my top, maybe it was pasta sauce. The alcohol helped me so much, I got up on the stage and did a ka
raoke duet with Skippy, I forget what song we did. Maybe there was more than one song, I was on stage for a while. I do remember Adams joined me on stage, then Friedlander and some others. By the time I crashed in my bunk, my buzz had worn off, but I was exhausted and slept past my alarm. Skippy had to wake me by zapping my neck with some electrical thing.

  Chotek and I decided to wait until we were two days out from Earth before telling the bad news to the crew. There was no point ruining their good mood before that, and two days was long enough to process the info before we arrived home and got swept up in debriefings.

  CHAPTER TWO

  To avoid scaring the shit out of humanity, we broadcast ID codes and encrypted messages as soon as we jumped into orbit. UNEF Command would be watching the sky, and we knew our new Frankenship version of the Flying Dutchman looked very different from the last time we were at Earth, so we wanted to assure everyone we were not a hostile alien ship.

  We did not need to be hostile, because there was plenty of hostility coming from our governments. At my urging, Skippy insisted part of the crew remain aboard the ship, while the rest of us dropped down dirtside for debriefing. As captain, I remained aboard until all but the skeleton crew were left, plus the Keepers.

  The Keepers we captured while they were on their way to infect the population of Paradise, whether they knew about the deadly infection or not.

  Yeah, they got a hell of a shock when they looked out a viewport in the docking bay and saw the green and blue marble that is our home planet. Under orders from UNEF Command, they were not allowed to send messages, but they were given tablets and could query the internet, TV and radio, social media, all that. No way could any of them ignore the truth at that point. Even Chisolm, still recovering from the tough love Adams had given him, was shaken. He approached me and saluted, as he and the other Keepers were loading aboard the dropship I would be flying. “Colonel Bishop,” his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed hard. There was a tear forming at the corner of one eye. “It has become clear that I was wrong, about everything. That I misjudged you. You are an honorable man.”

  I wasn’t having any of that shit. He wanted me to tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he had done what he thought best. Fuck that. All I did was glare at him, not returning the salute.

  “No excuses,” he shook his head, and that surprised me. “I have been a total Goddammed moron, a traitor to humanity. If you can ever think of something I can do to make amends, please tell me. Otherwise, I won’t bother you again.”

  “Good idea,” I responded lamely.

  “Colonel,” he lowered his voice. “Some of my men are suicide risks.”

  Crap. I should have considered that getting slapped in the face with the reality of how badly they had screwed up might be too much for some of those willful idiots. “I’ll notify the ground team at Wright-Pat,” I said, my mind racing through the dropship’s cabin. We had cleared it of anything the Keepers could use as a weapon, and there would be two guards wearing powered armor in the cabin, but we had not thought of removing items the Keepers might use to harm themselves. Crap. All I could do was warn the guards to be wary of anyone seeking to provoke them into using lethal force. “What about you, Chisolm?”

  “Me? No. I’m an asshole, not a coward,” he shook his head with grim determination. “If there is just one good thing I can do in this world, I’m sticking around to do it. Colonel, I assume we will not be allowed to contact our families, that is good. Some of my people,” he paused, his jaw working side to side. “These people, will not be able to face meeting their loved ones. Not now. Probably not for a long time.”

  “Chisolm, I do think you are an asshole, and I think you chose to betray your people rather than face up to a truth you didn’t want to believe. That is a mark of coward in my book. My real problem with you is the people you convinced to follow you. If there is any way you can make amends for that, well, damn it, you have to stick around to do it.”

  He stiffened, drew himself up to attention and snapped a crisp salute. “Colonel, that is more than I deserve. Via con Dios, Sir.”

  I flew into Wright-Patterson Air Force base like I did the last time, and the fun began. At some point, maybe it was Day Three of me getting grilled, I said something like ‘in my defense’. One of the guys handling the interrogation, I mean, the debriefing, looked at me like I was something he scraped off his shoe. “Sergeant, if you have to say ‘in my defense’, you have already lost the argument.” I had to admit, he made a good point.

  The good news was, I had been promoted to Staff Sergeant in my permanent Army rank while I was gone.

  That was about the only good news.

  I won’t bore you with details of the eight days I spent in windowless rooms enjoying the gracious hospitality at Wright-Pat. Let’s just say that UNEF Command, the US Army, Department of Defense, and the United States government all the way up to our new president, were upset about some little nitpicky aspects of our latest successful mission in which the Merry Band of Pirates had once again Saved. The. World.

  Here’s a tip for you: saving the world is awesome the first time, great the second time, but then it gets expected that you will do incredible things. It’s like the Apollo missions to the moon. The first moon landing was a nerve-wracking spectacle. The next one also had the attention of the world riveted to their TV screens. But by Apollo 13, even though those guys took the same risks with the same astonishingly primitive equipment, people just expected they would land on the moon, collect a bunch of rocks, and fly home. The Apollo 13 crew ironically are famous because their oxygen tank exploded on the way to the moon, and the world watched anxiously as NASA worked miracles to get them home safely.

  So, saving the world again earned me a brief grudging thanks right before it turned into another ass-chewing.

  Anyway, people on Earth were upset about little stuff, like us having conducted two, no, three, unauthorized missions to save the human population of Paradise. I protested that we had only saved Paradise twice, but the Brigadier General conducting that debriefing reminded me we had gone to Paradise once to reactivate the maser projectors, then again to plant fake Elder goodies, and a third time to intercept the infected Keepers. I hadn’t been counting the time we planted Elder tech as a separate mission, but the US government saw it differently. So, we had taken a huge risk on Paradise three times.

  It was not entirely clear what the authorities were most upset about, but the four items at the top of the list were:

  1) Starting an alien civil war

  2) My idiot untrustworthy AI nearly getting killed by a computer worm because he was too stupid not to go poking his nose into dark, scary places

  3) Our being gone for way longer than we were supposed to

  and

  4) Screwing with wormholes in a way that attracted the attention and curiosity of immensely powerful aliens who were now coming to destroy our home planet

  Is that it? Four things? Let me count: one, two, three, four, yup, yeah, that’s about it. There were plenty of other things, actually a very long list of other things, that UNEF Command was unhappy about, but the Big Four kind of overshadowed everything else. By the way, Number Two is definitely listed as MY idiot AI. Anytime Skippy did something UNEF Command did not like, which was pretty much everything, the beer can was my problem.

  I tried pointing out the good news that Skippy could now share technology on a limited basis, and that humans could now fly our Frankenship by ourselves, and I was greatly disappointed by the reaction. We could not yet truly fly the ship on our own, because Skippy was still working out the bugs with our new ship-controller AI. Oh, yeah, UNEF Command thought the beer can was dragging his feet about getting that task completed. The other good news, about Skippy sharing technology, was a big yawn, because Skippy had also told me there was no freakin’ way humanity could upgrade our technology to a useful level within our sixty-year deadline. Less than sixty years. That didn’t matter anyway, with a pair
of Maxolhx ships soon to be headed for Earth. Basically, during the endless debriefings during which I said the same things over and over to a rotating crew of intel people who apparently had gotten together and decided to ask me the exact same set of questions- I mean, Jeez, we all could have saved time if after the first day, everyone who wanted info just watched the video from Day One, you know?

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, I gave the same answers over and over, the dame stuff that was in my written report. I recounted all the amazing things the Merry Band of Pirates had accomplished, but all the interrogators heard me say was ‘blah blah blah killer aliens are coming to Earth because I am a reckless fuck-up’. Oh, also, even if by an incredible stroke of pure freakin’ luck we could somehow stop those two Maxolhx ships, within sixty years aliens will notice that Earth’s wormhole is not really dormant and they will wonder who the hell has been using it. Which, again, was my fault.

  They kind of had a point I couldn’t argue with.

  To make our news about the Maxolhx even more super-duper wonderful, I had to tell the world’s governments that other good news. It was like, listen, heh heh, this is kind of a funny story; within sixty years aliens out there will notice our local wormhole is not really dormant and they will be coming here to investigate. Oh, yeah, and Skippy says there is no freakin’ way Earth’s primitive industries can build even part of a single starship in sixty years. So, really, the Maxolhx coming here now will only hasten humanity’s inevitable demise, and maybe it’s better to just get it over with, right?