Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7)

by Craig Alanson

  “Ok, um, the answer is yes. Or no. It depends. The thing is busted real good, Joe, and it can only be partially fixed, even with the spare parts you brought along.”

  Clustered around the jump computer was a pile of burned-out parts that had been discarded by the bots, and three bins of assorted spares we had brought with us. The bins were still mostly full, that told me whatever the problem was, the computer could not be fixed with the components available. “In what way is the answer ‘yes’?”

  “First let’s start with the bad news. The jump computer can target a distant jump point and project the far-end event horizon near the Flying Dutchman. That is fairly simple math, any unmodified jump navigation system can do that as a basic requirement. The task is made easier because this computer is only being asked to create a very narrow wormhole, that decreases the effect of gravitational distortion on the initial wormhole. Unfortunately, in its current degraded state, the computer is not capable of crunching numbers in the advanced math I created for a secondary jump wormhole to pull you through the initial wormhole. A second wormhole could be created, but without very delicate control of its internal field, the far-end event horizon would be pulled back toward the near end to collapse both wormholes, with extremely violent results. The good news if that happens is the Maxolhx would never know what the hell happened, because the entire factory and a big chunk of the planet would be converted to subatomic particles.”

  Everything we had done up to that point was for nothing, and as the commander, it was all my fault. “That is not actually good news, Skippy.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t the good news, Joe. I mentioned that only as sort of a silver lining if your sudden deaths become inevitable. No, the good news is there is a possibility- Kind of a slim possibility, I will admit. But it is possible, theoretically, that I can act as the jump navigation computer to control the second wormhole.”

  I reached up to scratch my head, forgetting my helmet was still on. “How can you do that? The jump needs to be initiated from here, and you’re aboard the Dutchman.”

  “That is why I said it is theoretical, Joe,” he sighed. “You left the microwormhole in the factory-”

  Seeing Smythe’s look of consternation, I objected. “Yeah, because you told us to do that.”

  “It is necessary, for me to continue monitoring that factory AI until we can be certain the operation was successful, and I can withdraw my presence and erase evidence we were there. And it is not a problem, because there are other microwormholes in or near the cavern. You can go outside and bring one into the Dragon.”

  “Ok, yeah,” I still didn’t know where he was going with his idea. “What good will that do?”

  “Having a microwormhole in the Dragon will allow me to act as the jump controller for the second, inner wormhole.”

  “Uh, are you sure about that? As we go through the wormhole, the microwormhole connection will be severed and you will lose contact.”

  “True, and you saying that encourages me that you are not as dumb as you look,” he smacked me with the back-handed compliment. “I will position one end of another microwormhole here, near where you should emerge. As I lose connection from your end, my hope is that I can reconnect quickly from this end, and keep the inner wormhole from collapsing.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Um, I truly do not know. There are a lot of variables involved, it kind of depends on luck, the way you monkeys think of ‘luck’. That is why I said this is all theoretical, Joe.”

  “Can you give us a solid shmaybe about this working?”

  “Truthfully, I have no idea if this can actually work. There is no way to test it, because any test would need to replicate the exact conditions on both ends at the exact time you jump, right down to the quantum foam level. I do not have all the data needed to lock down the variables.”

  “I am not bursting with confidence, Skippy.”

  “Realistically, you should be trembling with fear.”

  “Crap. Ok, um, the problem is the second, inner wormhole, right? The initial wormhole will be stable?”

  “For a very short time, yes, but long enough.”

  “Good. Is there any way to adjust that initial wormhole so a pair of pixies can go through?”

  “What good would that do, Joe?” He was puzzled. “Pixies will not allow me to control the second wormhole to pull the Dragon through.”

  “No, but having pixies will allow Simms to have a chance to complete the mission.” There was a sharp intake of breath behind me, as someone realized I was considering us getting permanently stranded in a cavern under the surface of Detroit. “This isn’t a game, Skippy. Without those pixies, we are all dead anyway.”

  “Um, while I find your notion of self-sacrifice noble, if misguided, the answer is no. Any pixies you attempt to send by themselves through the initial wormhole would be disassociated by distortion effects and rendered useless. Sorry. The only way for you to complete the mission is for the Dragon to come through the jump, carrying the pixies.”

  “Crap. How much time to we have?”

  “The ship transporting the Grand Poobah is approaching the planet, it will land in approximately two hours. You are running out of time as well as options, Joe. While the factory complex is blind due to my control of sensors there, the approaching ships might be able to detect your outbound jump. The stealth field around the cavern is not perfect, and the effects of the jump-within-a-jump create gamma radiation that is difficult to mask. Your inbound jump damaged the stealth field more than I anticipated, I do apologize for that.”

  “It’s not your fault, Skippy,” for some reason I felt a need to comfort him, though he was safe aboard the Flying Dutchman many lighthours away. “We ask you to do the impossible, stuff that has never been done before. Ok,” I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and turned to face my three companions.

  “If you are asking for a vote,” Smythe told me with a warning look in his eyes, “you won’t get one, Sir. You are the commander.”

  Shaking my head, I looked at the deck. The problem with the Merry Band of Pirates was we were always reacting to a crisis at the last minute, and that was my fault. “No, Smythe. No vote. Several times, I told Chotek that some chance is better than none. Now it’s my turn to sell that same line of bullshit to myself, and it’s not easy. All right, Skippy, this is your big chance to demonstrate, once and for all, that you are the undisputed King of Awesomeness. Do your thing, whenever you’re ready. All we ask is you give it your best shot. I know you’re not happy this might kill us.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that too. What I meant was I am not eager to try something that could end in a very rare failure for me. I kind of have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

  “My heart bleeds for you, beer can. Do it.”

  “Ok. Um, the calculations will take me a couple minutes to prepare. While you are waiting, you should double-check that all the junk in the cabin is secure, and then strap in real tight. This could get a bit rough. Joe,” there was a catch in his voice. “I am serious, this maneuver is extremely risky. I cannot even give myself a shmaybe about this one. If,” he choked up, “if this is the last time we speak, then, well, basically I will be very disappointed that you did not die in a more dramatic fashion.”

  “Thank you so much, Skippy,” I rolled my eyes.

  “Hey, I’m just sayin’, you know?

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  For a moment, Jennifer Simms was tempted to give Porter the command chair, and go into Bishop’s office to speak privately with the beer can. Her legs tensed to push herself out of the command chair, but then she relaxed as she decided against leaving the bridge during such a critical situation. The Flying Dutchman had only two experienced pilots, and only Porter was fully qualified to fly the starship. Reed, although an excellent pilot, had not completed her starship pilot qualification before the ship returned to Earth, mostly because she had concentrated on flying dropships so those were the assignments she dr
ew. Now she was too busy training new pilots to fly Thuranin Falcon dropships, with no time left for leisure-time activities like sessions in the simulator learning to fly the ship. Most of Porter’s time, when he was not actually acting as chief pilot, was taken up by training new pilots to fly the ship. If Porter was in the command chair, that left Alan Edwards, Paul Beazer, Daniel Pope, Harsh Verma, and Giselle Delacroix as pilots or in the Combat Information Center. With the ship lingering just outside a Maxolhx star system, Simms was not comfortable entrusting the pilot duties to anyone but Porter.

  Also, the conversation she wanted to have with Skippy was sensitive, but she could not start hiding uncomfortable facts from their volunteer crew of renegades. Colonel Bishop had far too many private conversations with Skippy and while that ultimately worked for Bishop, Simms did not want to operate that way.

  So, she cleared her throat and summoned His Magnificence. “Skippy?”

  “Kinda busy,” he replied with irritation.

  “That’s what I need to talk about. You are calculating a jump, a type of jump you have never done before.”

  “A type of jump no one has ever done before. Controlling a jump by breaking connection to the navigation system and reestablishing from the far end? That is pretty insane, stuff, I don’t believe anyone has ever even imagined doing something like this.

  “Yes,” she squeezed her hands together to stop them from shaking. “That is the problem. Can you truly do this?”

  “Jennifer,” he dropped the irritated tone and his voice was actually soothing, or as soothing as the Supreme Asshole could get. “I do not know. Really, I don’t. As I told Joe, there are too many variables I can’t control or even measure until the event horizon forms. This maneuver is extremely risky. However, Joe would say that his chances for survival, and mission success, are zero if the Dragon does not jump out of there soon.”

  “There is no other option for them?”

  “There is always an alternative. For example, they could stay in that cavern until they are detected, captured, tortured and killed by the Maxolhx.”

  “Understood. Let’s assume there is no good option.”

  “Do you want me to tell Joe about your concerns?”

  “No. He has enough on his mind. Just,” there was so much she wanted to say, and none of it would make any difference. “Do your best, please.”

  “Always,” he said, surprised.

  “I meant, do not get distracted or bored in the middle of your calculations and start doing a crossword puzzle.”

  “Oh. Fine, I will focus entirely on the jump, until the away team is safely through the wormhole.”

  “Thank you.”

  “After that, I have a medley of new show tunes I would like to-”

  “Oh,” Simms groaned. “Anything but that.”

  “Opera, then?”

  “No opera either.”

  “Well, then, I will just have to-”

  “Do not worry, Colonel Simms,” Nagatha interrupted. “If Skippy starts singing, I will self-destruct the ship.”

  “Ten, nine,” Skippy counted down, “eight-”

  The clock was on the main bridge display so Simms almost told the beer can to stop counting, but she thought arguing with the AI would distract him from his extremely delicate work, so she sat quietly and tried to project a calm confidence. Everyone was focused on their own tasks and with such a small crew, no one had time to watch the ship’s executive office’s anguish.

  “-two, one, jump,” Skippy announced softly.

  The main display zoomed into an empty section of space, showing the view through the microwormhole on the far end of the Dragon’s attempted jump. Simms had argued that providing an image through the microwormhole was not necessary and might restrict the bandwidth through which Skippy needed to control the distant jump navigation computer, but he insisted that he needed the sensor data anyway. She knew the initial jump wormhole would be very small, its event horizon only needed to be wide enough to project the wormhole through which the Dragon would transit, and she knew the whole process would take no more than the blink of an eye. She did expect to see more than a brief flash.

  She expected to see the heavily-modified Dragon. Instead, there was nothing, only blank, empty space backlit by a veil of stars. “Skippy, where is-”

  “The microwormhole I used to control the far end of the jump collapsed just as I warned you it would,” his tone was less snippy than if he had been talking to Bishop. “Ship’s sensor data coming in now, and- Huh. That is odd.”

  Simms blinked to clear her vision, the flash from the initial event horizon forming had been bright even on the display. She was not concerned about what she saw, she was concerned about what she did not see. “Where is the Dragon?”

  “Well, that’s what is odd. I do not know,” he announced, mystified.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Is it out there and we just can’t see it yet?” The procedure outlined by Bishop had not included engaging the Dragon’s stealth field following the jump. Quite the opposite, the Dragon was supposed to send a tight-beam laser beacon toward the Dutchman’s position if the starship did not contact the dropship first. Beacons should not have been necessary as the gamma rays of the inbound jump should have lit up the Dutchman’s sensors like a strobe light, pointing directly to the heavily-modified Dragon.

  “If it is out there close to us, I can’t see it. Hold, wait! Please do not yell at me while I am analyzing the data, I need to concentrate and being very understandably upset with me will not accomplish anything.”

  Jennifer Simms sat helplessly in the command chair, exchanging worried glances with the pilots and CIC crew, while they waited for Skippy to, to do whatever he was doing. What was he doing, Simms asked herself? They had seen the gamma ray burst of the initial wormhole, so either the Dragon was there or it was not. “Nagatha, what is Skippy doing?”

  “As he said, he is analyzing the data and attempting to make sense of it. He has pulled in more than usual processing power until he is currently near full capacity, and indeed he has borrowed some of my own capacity. At the moment, I am running shipboard systems on my own, Skippy has withdrawn his control to concentrate on the problem. Colonel Simms, I have access to the same dataset and I have no idea what happened. It appears an event horizon of the initial wormhole formed correctly, then something happened that I cannot understand.”

  “I can’t understand it either,” the supremely arrogant Elder AI admitted with a weary sigh. “Nagatha is correct, the initial wormhole formed and was stable for point two seven seconds. That is plenty of time for the Dragon to form an inner wormhole and jump through it. The data shows, or I think it shows, an inner wormhole did form, but then it, um, it just wasn’t there. I do not understand this at all.”

  “So,” Simms reminded herself to be patient, “the Dragon did not jump? It is still in the cavern under the factory?”

  “No,” Skippy’s voice took on the frustrated tone he used when trying to explain technical details to Bishop. “That is the problem. It did jump, I know that for certain. I simply have no idea where it went.”

  Simms looked into the CIC, where the duty crew looked back and shook their heads or shrugged. They were not seeing any sign of the Dragon on sensors. “Skippy, do you still have a connection to the microwormholes in the cavern?”

  “No, all those connections were severed. That is one way I know the Dragon did jump away.”

  “How can you be sure about that? You are still connected to the microwormhole that Smythe left in the factory?”

  “Yes, and the factory AI’s sensors did not detect an explosion, if that was going to be your next question.”

  “Then the Dragon could still be in the cavern,” Simms insisted.

  “No. Ugh, this is complicated. I can’t explain to you how I can be certain the Dragon jumped away, but I am certain that it did.”

  Simms clenched her jaw. “You can’t explain it, because I am a dumb monkey?”<
br />
  “Er, um,” the beer can stumbled. “You said it, I didn’t. Hey! Wait! Nagatha is not a monk- I mean, a human. She can understand it, sort of.”

  “That is true,” Nagatha acknowledged. “Colonel Simms, I can confirm that the Dragon did apparently jump away from the cavern,” Nagatha’s tone was extra soothing, as she understood the anguish of the human commander. “Sensors Skippy has access to in the factory do not detect an explosion or unexplained gamma ray burst within range of the sensors.”

  “They did jump, you just don’t know where?”

  “That is correct. I think that is correct,” Skippy added in the interest of full disclosure. “Miraculously, everything appeared to be going well, and then, like poof! The Dragon was gone. It happened from one femtosecond to another, like,” he made a finger-snapping sound. “This is deeply troubling and humiliating for me. If the inner wormhole simply collapsed and the Dragon was torn apart, at least I could understand the event, terrible as that might be.”