Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7)

by Craig Alanson

  “Skippy,” I whispered, while my helmet lights illuminated a hallway that had not been walked on for millions of years, yet was so clean that I felt guilty about the dust I tracked in on my boots. “This place is empty, is that why whoever destroyed the main base didn’t bother to hit this area?”

  “No, Joe,” he answered quickly, excitedly. “Well, maybe. But I found another possible explanation. With the Dutchman’s sensors, I have been scanning the surface, both of this moon and the planet below. There is debris from not one, but two Elder starships. Do not get your hopes up, mine have already been crushed. The destruction of those ships was complete, the largest piece I have found is smaller than a grain of sand.”

  That was disappointing. “So, how do you know there were two ships, if there is nothing left of them?”

  “Not nothing, there is still plenty of mass for me to analyze. The chemical signatures of the hulls are unique, like a fingerprint. Hull plating is exposed to radiation, micro-meteor impacts, even flying through the InterStellar Medium erodes and affects the hull material.”

  “The ISM, yeah, stray hydrogen atoms or whatever,” I remembered him being fascinated by the ratio of hydrogen to helium or some nerdy thing like that.

  “Correct,” he was pleased I remembered the subject at all. “As ship hulls are exposed to different space environments throughout their lives, they are altered in a unique way. In this case, I can tell one ship spent significant time near a supergiant star, while the other ship apparently was in storage for an extended period, because its plating is older but shows few effects of exposure to stellar radiation.”

  “Um, don’t want to complicate things, but couldn’t that be one ship, that had damaged plating replaced with plating that sat on a shelf for a long time?”

  “No, dumdum,” he was peeved. “Without giving you a full explanation which would require a brain transplant for you to have any hope of understanding, a ship’s hull plating is also affected by the ship itself. Radiation from the reactors, plasma leaking from conduits, gasses deposited from dropship thrusters, all are unique. Plus, in this case I can tell one of the ships was in a firefight before, because the hull plating shows effects of scarring from high-energy weapons. That scarring is on the older plating, so unless some Elder shipyard cut corners by reusing plating from a damaged ship, I feel pretty safe stating there were two ships destroyed here. Do you really want to continue questioning my analysis?”

  “No, please,” I would have face-palmed myself for being stupid, if I wasn’t wearing a helmet.

  “You sure? I can go on with the nerdy stuff all day if you like.”

  “I would not like. Please, I apologize for daring to question the Great and Powerful Skippy. Ok, so why does it matter that a pair of ships crashed here? We’ve seen wreckage of Elder ships before.”

  “It matters because, ugh. Why are you so dense? I was hoping you would have guessed by now. My fault for expecting you to use logic. Joe, those two Elder ships were fighting each other. Uh!” He shushed me before I could ask another stupid question. “I know that because the signatures of the weapons involved. Not only do I know the weapons were Elder technology, I know two sets of weapons were used. Therefore, two ships of equivalent technology were involved.”

  “Signatures? Like, the frequency of the laser cannons?”

  “Please, Joe, the Elders did not use anything crude like laser beams,” he scoffed. “These weapons disrupted matter at a quantum level, or created rifts in spacetime.”

  “I thought you said the Elders did not have weapons. They were peaceful and had no enemies.”

  “Apparently I was wrong about that, duh. Try to keep up, Joe.”

  If he saw any irony in admitting he was wrong while slapping me with a ‘duh’, he didn’t show it. Man, being clueless must be so blissful. “I’m sorry, Skippy.”

  “It’s Ok, I should know not to expect you to understand complicated-”

  “I meant, I am sorry for you.” Damn it, why was I trying to comfort him, when he was so determined to be an asshole?

  “Huh? Sorry for me? About what?”

  “Because,” I gritted my teeth, feeling my patience running out. “What you thought about the Elders was wrong, and now you are even further from understanding who you are and where you came from.”

  “Oh.” He went quiet, making me irritated that he might be thinking up a fresh insult to slap me with. “Thank you, Joe,” he finally said without a trace of snarkiness. “You are the only person who truly understands what that means to me. I feel so alone, Joe. And lost. You, and some of the other monkeys, and Nagatha, try to help, but only you really get it.”

  We were having a genuine moment. “You are never alone with us, Skippy.”

  Aaaaand, he could not help being an asshole, because he is an asshole. “Sure,” he muttered, “if I want to consort with ignorant monkeys. Damn, my life is pathetic.”

  “I am also sorry that we monkeys are so filthy and ignorant,” I rolled my eyes, making my faceplate display go haywire because it thought I was trying to eyeclick a command.

  “It is not your fault, Joe. I blame the billions of your ancestors who-”

  “Could we get back to the subject, please? It’s kind of important, you know? Two Elder ships were fighting each other here? You think that is why some structures here survived; the ship that was bombarding this moon to clean up couldn’t finish the job, because it was attacked by a second ship? And those ships destroyed each other?”

  “That is a good guess, Joe, good as my own guess. Yes, that is what I think happened. That is also why I am very, well, somewhat hopeful, that we might find intact Elder artifacts here. As you said, the clean-up job here was not finished.”

  “Ayuh. It also means what was going on was not the Elders tidying up their stuff, so no one could screw with it after they ascended to Shangri-La or wherever. The bombardment of this base was an attack, a hostile action. I’m going to tell Smythe to keep an extra-sharp eye for trouble, and not take any risks.”

  “Come on, Joe,” the snarkiness was back. “This place is dead. What trouble do you expect?”

  “Gingerbread was dead too. You, uh, remember that creepy ancient maintenance bot in the tunnel under Gingerbread? It could have trapped and killed Smythe’s team, if Adams and I hadn’t found a way around it to rescue them.”

  “Oh,” in an instant, he went from snarky to chastened. “I do remember that. Good point, Joe. Please warn the team to be very careful.”

  “Don’t worry about us monkeys, Skippy, we know enough to climb a tree when we see a lion. I am concerned about you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you just learned something surprising, something very bad, about the Elders. That kind of shock can affect anyone, even you. Can you promise me you will do your best not to think about Elder ships fighting each other, until we are done searching this moon?”

  “Again, you do not need to worry about me, I am not a meatsack. Unlike you filthy monkeys, I have complete control over my emotional responses.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I tried to mask the sarcasm. “that’s what I was thinking. We are counting on you, Skippy, do not get distracted and let us down.”

  “Fine, Mister Busybody, have it your way. I just created a submind to ponder the implications of Elder ships fighting each other, and locked that submind off from my higher-order consciousness. That submind will not contact me until after all you monkeys are safely aboard the Dutchman. Will that make you happy?”

  “It will make me happier, thanks.”

  We were extra, super-duper careful, and it didn’t matter. Most of the structures were either empty, or contained equipment that was so decayed by age and exposure, Skippy had to guess the function of some of the gear. The good news is, none of us got killed or even injured unless you count Katie Frey, who had the bad luck of falling through a weak floor. She landed on her feet gracefully though, assisted by her suit. It would be great to say she found a treasure-trov
e of Elder tech under the floor, but she didn’t find anything useful down there.

  We searched all the structures, and we found a grand total of nothing useful. That was maddening, that site was out best opportunity to obtain tech we could use against species like the Maxolhx, and it was freakin’ empty.

  The gooder- Gooder? No, better. The better-than-good good news was that Frey’s unlucky fall had made Skippy scan under the structures. No, there were no hidden chambers of tunnels under the structures- Ok, there were a few chambers for equipment and we did locate one tunnel, but it only contained cabling and a sort of tram that was empty and decayed. To analyze the moon under the surface, Skippy had to closely examine the soil and rocks, and create a model so he could compare what should be there to what the scans were showing him.

  That is how we hit the jackpot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  “Careful, careful,” I urged uselessly. If the work crew had been excavating dinosaur bones with fine toothbrushes, they could not have been going any slower.

  Up in northern Maine, we have three seasons; Winter, Mud and Construction. After the ground thaws out, and the frost heaves crack the roads and then melting snow and spring rains undermine the roads and wash out the ditches and culverts, the beginning of May starts the cycle of Construction season. Until the middle, or if we get lucky the end of October, crews are out repairing existing roads, building new roads, fixing or replacing bridges. The first sign you are approaching a construction zone is the dreaded ‘Construction Ahead’ sign or its spawn-of-evil cousin ‘One Lane Road Ahead’. The first sign causes anxiety because you never know how far ahead the construction zone is, and sometimes you drive slowly until you come to an area where the guardrails on both sides are lined with orange cones or Jersey barriers, and the road is all torn up and muddy with potholes and there is a lonely backhoe awkwardly parked off to the side, sometimes with a once-colorful but now faded beach umbrella on top to shade the operator from the intense tropical sunshine of the North Woods, but there are no humans in sight. For days or weeks, you slow down approaching that spot but you never see anyone actually, you know, constructing anything. Then one day, the backhoe and orange cones and Jersey barriers are gone but the road is still muddy with potholes bigger than ever, and you figure someone in the High Priest Temple of Construction heard a rumor of a snow flurry somewhere in North American and said ‘Screw it, we will wait until next year’.

  Worse is the dreaded One-Lane-Road-Ahead sign, because you can be fairly sure that sign means activity ahead that, while it might not accomplish anything useful, will block traffic. You creep up in a line of bumper-to-bumper cars, to where some person in a yellow vest is playing a game on their phone with one hand, while their other arm is lazily wrapped around a STOP sign. Behind that person is a backhoe and a couple guys leaning on shovels, eating donuts. You wait in line while traffic lurches slowly in the opposite direction, including some out-of-state asshole towing a boat behind their compact SUV and they are going TWO freakin’ miles an hour because they don’t know how to tow a trailer. Just when you are thinking you have four wheel drive and there is really no reason you can’t put it in four wheel low and cut across the potato field next to the road, the sign-holding guy looks up from his cellphone, startled because the walkie-talkie clipped to his vest made a noise. Then, a miracle occurs, or the guys leaning on shovels need to cross the road to get to the box of donuts, because the sign swings from STOP to SLOW and traffic lurches forward triumphantly! Or it would, except the old schoolbus full of organic granola hippies in front of you got a wheel stuck in a muddy pothole, and it is staying in place while one tire spins furiously, spewing mud all over your windshield.

  Where was I going with that story? Oh yeah. At our construction zone, I was the useless asshole wearing a yellow vest, a hardhat and a gosh-darned necktie, shouting at the people moving the ten-ton steel I-beam to be careful, as if that thought had never occurred to them, duh. I was not wearing a necktie, I was wearing a powered armor suit like everyone else. Instead of construction, we were in the process of excavation, of digging an Elder dropship out from under a pile of dirt and rocks.

  Before Frey fell through the floor, Skippy had zero interest in the moon itself, he had concentrated all his efforts on scanning what was left of the Elder base. Because he found tiny pieces of Elder starships scattered across the surface of the moon or buried in the first meter of dust, he had not bothered to look deeper. Literally deeper, like down under the first layer of dust and the dead lunar soil that our nerdnik science team calls ‘regolith’ as if that matters. After Katie had her fortunate accident, Skippy had scanned deeper beneath the surface, at first in case there were dangers hidden beneath the base that might threaten Katie. Either Skippy had a crush on our athletic sportgirl, or he was trying extra hard to impress the new crewmembers, because he broke his recent streak of distracted absent-mindedness and focused intensely on getting Katie out of her predicament.

  She was never in actual danger, a fact Skippy realized with what I thought was undisguised disappointment because he did not have an opportunity to be a hero by saving her. The good news, for both Skippy and his barrel of monkeys, was the virtual model he slapped together to analyze the moon’s subsurface yielded a happy surprise; a crashed Elder dropship that had hit the side of a lunar mountain, then got buried in the landslide. The dropship, technically a small starship according to Skippy, was in one big and many small pieces. What we cared about was the forward section that contained the cabin, where Skippy’s scans indicated we should find several valuable pieces of Elder technology.

  Oh, and, by the way, we also found the body of an Elder.

  It blew my mind when I heard that. Skippy’s voice was shaking when he told me he had found the broken body of a biological being reclining on a couch, and since there were no other intelligent species in the galaxy back then, the body had to be an Elder. We had been to many Elder sites in the local quadrant of the galaxy, even landed on the planet Gingerbread in the Roach Motel, and had never encountered a since speck of evidence about what the Elders looked like. Now we had a dead one, intact.

  That was why we were acting like Indiana Jones on the moon, except there weren’t any bad guys shooting at us, and instead of a cool hat and a bullwhip, we had powered armor suits and makeshift digging tools. Skippy had sent some of his dedicated cleaning bots down to do part of the work, and he demanded to come with them. I had vetoed that idea, too many times the Flying Dutchman had gotten surprised and I wanted our magical beer can with the ship in case it needed to jump away.

  The bots weren’t especially good at clearing away moondust, static made the damned stuff cling to everything, so within ten minutes everyone’s suits were surrounded by a gray outline, as dust was repelled by our suit’s electrical fields. Working at first by using our suits’ power to lift away rocks, then with shovels, then carefully by hand and finally by using brushes to ever-so-softly sweep away the last layer of fine dead gray soil and dust, we exposed the cracked hull of the crashed Elder ship. From Skippy’s scans, we knew what it looked like even when it was still buried; sort of like the smooth, pointy end of an egg. He thought the entire ship had been like an almost featureless elongated egg before it was shot down or whatever happened to it. There was no sign of the power unit that he thought had occupied most of the rear half of the ship, it had likely blown up. Instead of a jagged tear where the forward section had broken loose, his scans showed a smooth outline, which made him think the front section had been designed to physically separate in case of emergency.

  After we got dust and soil cleared away from the rear of what remained of the Elder craft, we set up a tent that acted as a decontamination chamber, to clean dust off our suits before entering the dropship’s cabin. One of Skippy’s bots went first, running through the decontamination process, then waited for a second bot to be cleaned. The first bot was then meticulously examined by the second little robot while I impatiently waited for my sui
t to be cleaned. There was a beep in my helmet speakers when the process ended and my suit was cleaner than when I had gotten into the thing aboard the Dutchman. The two bots were still fussing over each other, so I leaned forward and reached out a hand toward the smooth silvery surface of the dropship’s hull. “Skippy, I don’t see anything like a door or even a porthole here, how can we get-”

  “Do not touch that you filthy monkey!” He shouted, making me wince he was so loud.

  Pulling my gloved hand away before it contacted the dull silver surface, I took a step backward. “Damn, sorry, Skippy,” I muttered, kind of pissed off at him. I know he revered and almost worshipped the Elders, but he had gone too far that time. My team may be filthy monkeys but we were there and we were alive, which is more than I can say for the supposedly great Elders. “Listen, I know the Elders were practically gods to you, but I’m getting tired of hearing humans are not worthy to-”

  “Joe, I am sorry, I should not have said it that way. My bad. Yes, I greatly revere the Elders for who they were and what they did, their accomplishments are still unmatched. And yes, a part of me feels horrible revulsion when I think of your species touching the remains of an Elder or one of their wondrous creations. However, the reason I warned you not to touch that ship is for your own safety. My memory has too many gaps for me to be confident I can anticipate how the hull of that ship might react to you coming into contact with it.”

  “Jeez, Skippy,” I leaned forward and peered at the silvered surface, which under magnification I could see was scuffed and dull. “React how? This thing is dead, it’s millions of years old and busted.”