“That wouldn’t matter anyway, we can’t establish a colony on a world that has a native intelligent species. Our colony can’t be established by wiping out the existing population.”
“Is that like your version of the Prime Directive?”
“Yeah, if the Prime Directive is ‘do not be an asshole’. You know the Golden Rule, right?”
“Whoever has the most gold makes the rules?”
“No. Ok,” I should have considered who I was talking with. “Maybe that’s the way it really does work. I mean the Golden Rule the way it is supposed to be. You, know, ‘Do unto others’-”
“Ooh ooh! Do unto others before they do it to you?”
“No! Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, uh, something like that. You know what I mean. We can’t commit genocide to save ourselves from extinction. Humanity got ourselves into this mess, we can’t push our problems onto someone else.”
“I actually agree with you. However, that does make the issue enormously more complicated. Joe, the only way to meet all your requirements is to identify dormant wormholes, then go through those wormholes and look for habitable worlds that do not have intelligent life. That could be a slow process.”
“Yeah, but you can narrow the list by looking for dormant wormholes that have G-type stars within, like, fifty lightyears?”
“Better make it twenty five lightyears, Joe, and G-type stars are not the only candidates, or even the best candidates if you want the colony to be there long-term. A yellow dwarf star like Earth’s Sun has a shorter life and is less stable than an orange dwarf.”
“Ok, I will let you handle the sciency stuff.”
“A wise decision.”
“You know what I’m looking for, can you do it?”
“Give me time to think about it?”
“Sure. We are not in a hurry. When we get back to Earth, I would like to propose to UNEF Command the idea of setting up a beta site, and it would be great if we already had a good candidate site.”
“The Flying Dutchman can’t bring many colonists to a new world, Joe. Even if we set up cargo bays as living quarters, the life support systems like oxygen recycling only have capacity for perhaps a hundred people.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. We could add capacity to the life support systems?”
“We could. It would be difficult, and the max I would be comfortable with for a long voyage is maybe another fifty people. A hundred and fifty monkeys are hardly enough to set up a colony. Plus, you would need to bring cows, chickens, hmmm, colonists would probably want to bring pets like dogs and cats with them. All those animals consume oxygen and water.”
“Sure,” I made a mental note to discuss the idea with Simms. Bringing animals with us, like an interstellar Noah’s Ark, had not crossed my mind, but Skippy was right. Unless we happened to find a planet where the native life could provide nutrition to humans, we would have to bring everything we eat with us. That was a lot of seeds and tubers and planets, not to mention animals. Before the first crops were ready for harvest, the colony needed to survive on food we brought from Earth. To be safe, we had to plan for the first set of crops to fail, or get wiped out by a hailstorm, or attacked by native bugs or diseases. Crap. Setting up a colony was complicated. “I wasn’t planning on the Dutchman bringing everyone. The good old Dutchman could do the survey work, maybe bring an initial group to test that we can raise food there, that the native life isn’t poisonous to us, that sort of thing.” It occurred to me that if we could eat the native lifeforms there, then they could eat us too. Maybe it would be better if we did not find a world compatible with human nutritional needs.
“You plan to issue red shirts to the initial group, Joe?” He chuckled.
“Hopefully not! Anyway, if we find a good planet for the beta site, we need to bring a big group of people there to make a viable colony. The Yu Qishan is a troopship, how many lizards was she designed to hold?”
“Hey, dumdum, that troopship is a short-range Kristang piece of crap. It was only designed to travel from the outer edge of a system to the inner planets. It can’t be used to fly from Earth to wherever this beta site is, unless the beta site is one of Jupiter’s moons.”
“I know that, Your Supreme Assholeness. The Qishan won’t be making the trip alone, we can attach it to the Dutchman, construct a new hardpoint for docking. All the Qishan needs to do is provide life support for the colonists.”
“Oooooh, good thinking, Joe. Damn, I should have thought about that. Ok, that is doable. The Qishan is on the small side for troop transports, and part of its berthing space was torn out to provide storage for equipment. What you really want to know is how many humans could the Qishan support? Hmmm, four thousand, shmaybe? Forty-five hundred if we pack people in.”
“Let’s plan on packing people in. Any people who can’t stand the discomfort of tight quarters are not good candidates to set up a colony. The colonists will be roughing it for the first year, at least. Ok, good, we have a basic plan. Now we need a place to go.”
“Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll work on it. Promise me you won’t bug me about it? I will inform you when I have the search complete. Ah, well, this will give me an interesting problem to work on during my downtime.”
“Great and, uh, don’t tell anybody about this yet, Ok? I don’t want people thinking I am planning for failure.”
“Even though that is exactly what you are doing?”
“Because that is exactly what I am doing.”
Despite asking Skippy not to tell anyone about setting up a beta site, I called Simms into my office to get her thoughts on the subject, but instead she immediately wanted to know my progress on planning what to do next about stopping the Maxolhx. “Working on it. Do you have any ideas?”
“Dreaming up wild schemes is your wheelhouse, Sir, not mine.”
“Sit down, please. It helps me to bounce ideas of people, kind of talking out loud, you know?”
“Would it help if we got coffee first, or you,” she waved a hand, “you went to the gym or something?”
“No, we’ll need a break anyway. All right, where do we start?”
She sat down, I noticed she was perched on the edge of the chair rather than getting comfortable. “I don’t know. Do you usually draw up a chart or something?”
“I don’t usually ‘do’ anything, Simms.”
“You sit around until an idea hits you?”
“No, I-” How do I explain what I didn’t understand? “I do work at it. There is just not, um, a process, you know?”
“You have to start somewhere, Sir.”
“Like where?”
“Do I need to remind you of basic training? Step One: define the problem.”
“Good! That’s good. Yeah. Hey, Skippy,” I stood up and took a marker out of a drawer, the first time I had used the set of markers since I drew the Flying Dutchman’s logo. “Can I draw on this wall?”
“It’s not a ‘wall’, Joe, it’s a bulkhead.”
“I’m a ground-pounder, Your Admiralship, give me a break.”
“Also, that bulkhead is not an erasable whiteboard.”
“Your bots can scrub it clean or repaint it later, right?”
“UGH,” he did his trademark disgusted sigh thing. “Fine. If you insist, I can-”
“Great,” I didn’t wait for him. “Problem One,” I wrote on the wall. “We need to kill two Maxolhx warships before they get to Earth.” Standing back, I admired my simple summary of the impossible challenge facing us.
“It’s not that simple,” Simms burst my bubble.
“Um, what?” I hated looking stupid, especially in front of her.
“Maybe we should have started with our end goal, then define the problem.”
“How would that help?” I asked slowly while gears churned haltingly in my head.
“If the goal we’re trying to achieve is only to keep Earth safe for a couple years, before the entire Maxolhx fleet shows up to nuk
e our planet into a crispy cinder, then all we need to do is kill two ships. But,” she held up an index finger, “if we are trying to make Earth safe for the next sixty years, then we can’t simply kill those ships.”
“You’re right.” I groaned and slumped in my chair. “We need to kill those ships and provide a plausible explanation for why they went missing, so the Maxolhx will not get suspicious and send more ships to Earth to investigate.”
“Again, it’s not so simple, Sir. The only way Earth can be safe is if those ships report back to the Maxolhx leadership that they did go to Earth, found nothing interesting, and there is no reason for anyone ever again to go to our dull, uninteresting planet. Then, somehow, on their way back to base, those ships were lost. But,” she tapped her chin with a finger while she thought. “They can’t disappear in a way that would make the Maxolhx want to investigate what happened.”
“How the f-” I dropped the marker, which hit the tabletop, bounced and when I tried to catch it, smeared my hands with black streaks. My juggling act was for nothing, because the marker fell to the deck and rolled over to Simms. “Holy shit. How the hell are we going to do that?”
“That’s Step Two, Colonel. We’re still on Step One, defining the problem.” She was not smiling.
“She is right, Joe,” Skippy scolded me. “Shame on you for questioning Jennifer.”
“I wasn’t question-” Damn it, they made me feel like I was six years old and getting blamed for something my sister did. “Simms, I agree. However the hell we do this, the goal is for the Maxolhx to think their ships went to Earth and didn’t find anything useful, so the rotten kitties lose interest in our planet. So,” I took the marker back from her and looked at the wall, which had only my original scribbled note. Below ‘Kill 2 Maxolhx ships before they reach Earth’, I added, ‘Fake evidence those ships reached Earth and found nothing useful’. Again, I stepped back to admire my work. It sure looked a lot more complicated. In terms of solving the problem, we were going backwards, damn it.
“All right, now we’re getting somewhere,” she was leaning forward over the table, getting into the discussion. Simms cocked her head at my makeshift whiteboard. “Add another line: ‘Provide plausible reason why those ships would not return to Maxolhx space’.”
“Got it.”
“Hey Joe,” Skippy snickered. “Why don’t you add another line like ‘Deliver presents to all the good little girls and boys on Earth’?”
“Not helpful, asshole. Simms, this is great, but my head hurts already.”
“Tackle something easy first, then. Assume we have destroyed those two ships, and we have a plan for preventing the Maxolhx from getting suspicious about why they disappeared.”
“Each of those is one hell of an assumption.”
She ignored me. “That leaves planting evidence. How would we do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Sir, I was talking to the beer can,” she leaned forward toward Skippy’s avatar.
Skippy took a step back. “Why are you asking me? You monkeys are supposed to be the clever ones.”
“Because this is purely a technical question,” she insisted. “How would Maxolhx ships transmit their information?”
“They could send a speed-of-light message from wherever they are, but that wouldn’t do us any good; by the time that message reached the Maxolhx, those rotten kitties would already have sent out a task force to look for their missing ships. You are asking what instructions those ships have for reporting after they return to space controlled by the Maxolhx?”
“Yes,” Simms nodded.
“Well, in that case, I won’t know their instructions until we download their flightplan, so this discussion is way premature,” he paused and I suspect he was about to throw in his usual ‘duh’, but he held back because he was talking to Simms.
“No, it’s not premature,” she insisted. “The Maxolhx Navy must have standard procedures for transmitting data when ships come back from a patrol. They wouldn’t wait until they get all the way back to base.”
“They would not wait that long, particularly on an important mission,” Skippy agreed reluctantly. “Ok, fine, I do know their standard operating procedures. Those ships would contact the nearest frontier data relay station after they returned to Maxolhx territory.”
“There’s the answer, Colonel,” Simms announced happily. “We need to load our cover story into a Maxolhx data relay station, the first one those ships would encounter on their way back from Earth. Then,” she looked at the ceiling in thought, “those ships need to disappear after they contact that relay station, and before they return to base, or wherever they have orders to go at the conclusion of the mission. The cover story needs to explain that also.”
In my mind, she was making the planning more complicated, not less. “Skippy, can you do that? Plant data in a relay station?”
“It can be done, we have the same issue with getting aboard a relay station to download flightplans for the target ships. There are a bunch of problems with planting data. To get data, the station has to accept that we are an authorized Maxolhx ship, so we need pixies first. To plant the data, the problem is twice as difficult because the Maxolhx will be expecting two ships, and I can only create a false image of one ship.”
“Uh,” gears were turning in my head. “For now, assume we have some explanation for why only one ship survived the trip back from Earth. Does that take care of the problem?”
“It takes care of that problem, Joe. Next we have the problem that to plant data, we need to physically access the station. Once we are aboard, I should be able to fool internal sensors so the station computer thinks our crew are authorized Maxolhx. Plus I can erase all evidence of our visit after we leave. But the only way a station would allow us to get close is in a Maxolhx dropship, Joe. From far away, I can fake the sensor data, but once we got close, the station would see right through my masking.”
“Ok, so all we need to do is steal a Maxolhx dropship, which we need anyway to get the flightplan data.”
“All we need to do?” Skippy gasped. “You must be joking.”
“Play along, Skippy. Come on, we are already assuming we can destroy those ships and cook up a bullshit story that the Maxolhx will believe. Assuming we can steal a Maxolhx dropship is Cub Scout-level stuff by comparison. If we can’t get a dropship, we will never know where those ships are and all this discussion is for nothing.”
“Fine, Mister Smartypants,” he huffed. “What about this? Most Maxolhx relay stations along their frontier have crews aboard, because the stations also act as sensor platforms for their attack warning system. We may kill two ships, we may cook up a bullshit story, we may even steal a dropship. How can we get aboard to plant the data? If we kill the crew, the Maxolhx would never trust any data stored by that station, that would be one too many coincidences.”
Simms shrugged. “He’s got us there, Sir.” She shook her head. “Having to keep everything we do secret makes this much more difficult. Maybe this is impossible.”
“Uh uh, no way you’re giving up now, Simms. You dragged me down this fantasy rabbit hole, you’re not quitting now.”
“Never give up, never surrender?” She asked with a wink.
“You got it. Skippy, if we can get aboard that station without being detected by the crew, could you plant our cover story in the computer’s memory?”
“Oh, sure, no problem. I will just ask magic elves to fly into the computer core on their unicorns. Joe you dumdum, you are forgetting one teensy weensy detail. Sneaking past the station’s crew isn’t the only challenge. That crew will want to come to the docking bay to meet our dropship. Duty aboard a relay station is boring, the crew will be eager for any contact with the outside universe. Our dropship can’t sit in the docking bay with the doors closed.”
“What if we posted a sign ‘If the dropship’s rocking don’t come knocking’?” I suggested with a wink.
“Joe,” he sighed and took off hi
s giant admiral’s hat to scratch his shiny head. “Are you sure none of the new people should not be commanding the ship, instead of you?”
“No way, Skippy. If anyone is going to screw this up and doom humanity,” I pointed a thumb at my chest, “it is going to be this monkey right here. Ok, so our plan also needs to explain why the target ships would contact an automated relay station, instead of the one they are supposed to ping on their way back from Earth. Great. Wonderful.”
“We are making progress,” Simms sat back in her chair.
“Backwards progress,” I complained. “Before you walked in here, we needed plans to kill the target ships, and steal or find a Maxolhx dropship, and steal a blank set of pixies, and board a relay station without the AI setting off an alarm. Now we also need to dream up a cover story to explain why the Maxolhx should be totally chill about losing two ships that went all the way to Earth but never made it back home. Oh, and then after we destroy the target ships, we need to board a Maxolhx relay station again, to plant whatever bullshit cover story we dream up. This is fan-tast-ic.”
“I am happy to help, Sir,” she replied with a grin.
“Next time,” I was not grinning, “remind me not to ask you for help.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
To locate the two ships headed for Earth, we needed their flightplan info from a Maxolhx data relay. To get access to a Maxolhx relay station, we needed a set of pixies and a Maxolhx dropship. Since stealing pixies sounded completely impossible, I figured we should start with the simple step of somehow getting a senior-species dropship.
We had no plan to do that either, but lack of a plan never stops a monkey from doing what a monkey has got to do.
Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 18
