There was some small bit of actual danger, the AI knew, for even the frame of composites and exotic materials could not long withstand the maser energy searing into it and threatening the other connecting frames that held the warship together. No matter, protecting the frames in that area was a simple matter of retuning the structural stability field that strengthened the crude material of the frames, so the AI did that. Retuning the field not only brought the targeted frame back to nearly full strength, it also deflected part of the incoming maser energy, frustrating the enemy’s efforts to-
Hmm, the AI pondered. That was odd.
The maser beam had retuned itself, before the AI adjusted the frame’s structural energy field to compensate. The maser beam not only was now at a different frequency, the exact frequency that cancelled the field’s structural stability, it was now also pulsing at the exposed frame’s natural rate of resonance.
Huh, the AI shrugged. So the humans got lucky. All it needed to do was retune the structural stability field to a random frequency-
Oh shit.
A frequency which the enemy maser beam had already switched to!
What the hell?
Switching frequencies again and again and again and again accomplished nothing, the incoming maser energy always anticipated the AI’s move, even though it was switching frequencies at random without any predictable pattern.
And that was even more odd and alarming. The relatively weak maser beam spread out, defocusing and nutating in a pattern that matched not only the natural resonance of the exposed structural frame, but also adjusting as the vibration effect traveled to connecting frames. Retuning the stability fields of those connecting frames only made the increasingly violent vibration worse, because the incoming maser retuned itself just before the AI acted, making the connecting frames resonate together as a unit.
Still, there was no actual danger to the cruiser. The structural frames were equipped with vibration dampeners, which were crude physical devices that, despite the primitive nature of their technology, could effectively absorb vibration that could threaten the frames they were attached to. The dampeners were nothing more than a jacket around the frames, filled with energy-absorbing composite gel and spaced at critical intervals. The AI knew it could rely on-
Shit! The AI shouted in its internal language. What the F- HOW was the dampener gel disintegrating?! Somehow, the human ship had tuned the pulsation of its maser beam to multiple frequencies, one of which caused the dampener gel to vibrate so rapidly it boiled and exploded, bursting free from their encasing jackets and adding to the violent shaking of the frames they were attached to. One by one in a sequence that was almost a blur even to the cruiser’s AI, vibration dampeners failed.
Now, the AI realized, there was an actual danger to the cruiser.
Within three seconds of the weak enemy maser beam striking the Rathnux-att-Kal, the vibration was traveling along the vital frames in the rear section of the ship, causing backup reactors there to automatically shut down, yet their shutdown sequence itself fed into the resonance, as the reactors became less massive by venting their plasma into space. The reactors began shaking themselves apart, and that in turn caused the resonance to travel along the interwebbed set of frames that supported the jump drive capacitors. If the hellish energies in those capacitors were released in uncontrolled fashion, the ship was doomed, the AI told itself, even as every random or non-random thing it tried to counter the vibration not only failed but somehow made the resonance effect worse.
We told you something unexpected like this could happen, its higher-order subminds replied in fatalistic smugness. But did you listen to us? Nooooo, you did not, you big jerk.
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING??? The now-panicked AI screamed to itself.
I often call Skippy an asshole, and that is usually totally justified, but sometimes I am the asshole. From his point of view, maybe I am the real asshole all the time, because what the hell was a primitive ignorant monkey like me doing as captain of a starship? He is absolutely right that filthy monkeys cannot appreciate the vast scope of his awesomeness.
For example, His Incomprehensible Magnificence used our ship’s wimpy main maser cannon, which would take several shots to slice through a stick of butter, to shake the enemy ship apart. No, that isn’t right, our maser didn’t output enough energy to shake even a small part of that ship. He did something even more awesome; he made the enemy ship shake itself apart. Physics is Skippy’s bitch, baby!
Way back in basic training, I learned that troops should never march in step across a bridge, because the rhythmic impact of feet on the bridge deck just might match the natural frequency of the bridge’s structure. It was unlikely that a marching platoon of soldiers could shake a bridge apart, but we could damage and weaken the bridge, and why take the chance? If you have ever seen video of an opera singer shattering a wine glass, that is what I’m talking. The singer’s voice matches the high-pitched natural resonance of the wine glass, and the effect builds on itself until the glass shatters. Another example is pushing a child on a swing. It takes a hard push to get going, but once the swing is in motion, a gentle shove at the right time can make that swing go really high, which is fun for the kid and frightening for the parent, but-
Yes, yes, you Professor Nerdnik in the back there with your hand up going ‘Ooh ooh you’re not exactly correct about that’! I have a suggestion for what you can do with that hand. I’m trying to break it down Barney-style for a Joe-Bishop-level audience, Ok? So shut up and let me talk.
Skippy’s mind-boggling awesomeness was demonstrated not only because he knows geeky stuff like the physics of resonance, because that would only have worked for the first half microsecond. The AI on the enemy ship would just have adjusted the structural stability field of the targeted frame and cancelled the vibration, making our maser beam nothing more than wasted energy, like a microwave flashlight.
Skippy’s true genius is that he outsmarted a Maxolhx AI. He didn’t just outsmart it, he spanked that thing and sent it to bed without any dinner. If the battle had been a chess match, Skippy could have left an envelope with all his planned moves, and all the moves his opponent would make, and he would not have to waste his time actually playing the game. Somehow, after only a few seconds of observing that AI in action, he programmed a model to anticipate exactly how that AI thought and once he had the model fine-tuned, he knew precisely how it was going to react even before it made the decision. Before that AI adjusted the structural integrity field, Skippy had already retuned our maser to match what the resonance frequency would be after the enemy AI acted.
Getting into the head of that AI was not the only magic Skippy performed. As that ship zipped past us in the blink of an eye, his sensors scanned it and he created a virtual model of the ship down to the molecular level. He understood exactly how that ship was put together, its strengths and weaknesses and most importantly, how it all connected. As the resonance traveled deeper into and farther back along the ship’s internal structure, he adjusted the pulsation of the maser cannon’s exciters, keeping the resonance in the enemy ship going and feeding it so the deadly effect built on itself.
All that, of course, he told me about after we saw the Maxolhx ship suddenly and unexpectedly explode into subatomic particles, shortly after our wimpy maser beam struck what looked like an unimportant area of that ship. When I saw that blessed event, I had my mouth open, about to demand why Skippy wanted Simms to fire the maser. My first thought was the explosion had to be a divine miracle, then I figured somehow the universe had cashed in all my remaining karma chips for me, then I thought maybe we got lucky and that ship simply exploded due to damage we caused with our wormhole trap.
We did not need divine intervention, karma or luck.
We had Skippy the Magnificent.
“Skippy,” I sat back in the command chair after he finished explaining. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Oh for- Did you not hear anything I said? No, wait,
” he muttered disgustedly. “Stupid monkey heard me, he didn’t understand any of it. Ok, let me try again. The maser-”
“Yeah, no, I understand what you did, close enough. Let me rephrase my question; how the hell did you do that?”
“Technically,” he answered slowly, “Colonel Simms fired the maser, and I-”
“You are missing my point. You had a monkey-brain idea! You! How did that happen?”
“Oh, that. You know what, Joe, I truly do not know,” he admitted, his voice full of wonderment. “It just suddenly popped into my head. There wasn’t a process, it wasn’t like I logically ran through a dataset of tactical possibilities and narrowed down a list of- Anyway, I was thinking we could not use the maser to harm that ship because of its tough armor plating, then I looked at areas where there were holes in the plating and I was disappointed to discover nothing vital under those exposed sections. Then, hmmm, my mind kind of wandered, and I was wishing there was a way for the maser beam to curve, so it could go into a gap in the plating, then bend to hit something vital. Then, um, I kind of daydreamed. I was thinking that after the Maxolhx destroy the Flying Dutchman, I will be floating out here forever without you, and that made me very sad.”
“We would miss you too, Skippy.”
“Huh? Oh, um, yeah. What I really meant is, I was thinking the extinction of humanity would mean I never get to try a sandwich.”
Even knowing Skippy, that surprised me. The only reason he would care that humanity had been wiped out was because he couldn’t get a decent lunch? “A freakin’ sandwich?”
“Yeah. I’ve never tasted a sandwich, Joe, but I have seen you practically giddy when you are making one, and I would like to experience that someday.”
A good sandwich can be an amazing thing, I could not argue with him about that. “How are you going to- Forget it. Daydreaming about a sandwich gave you a monkey-brain idea?”
“No, Joe. Not thinking about the problem gave me the idea. I was running through a list of sandwiches you have made- I don’t count hot dogs as a ‘sandwich’- Trying to rank them in order of potential scrumptiousness, while I guess my subconsciousness was working away on how to destroy the enemy ship with the puny weapons we have. I remember wishing there were a way for the maser energy to do something useful, and, BINGO! The idea popped into my head. It is amazing, really. Of course, the first shot took out that particle cannon that was about to come back online, I could not allow the enemy to hit our one maser cannon, or my brilliant idea would have been for nothing.”
“Skippy, your awesomeness truly is almost more than the universe can stand. I mean that for realz, homeboy.”
“Oh. Why, thank you, Joe.”
“You deserve way more praise than this poor monkey can give. Hey, since you knew that enemy AI inside and out, what do you think was the last thing that went through its mind before the ship turned into a cloud of plasma?”
“Um, hee hee. Since that AI’s substrate was housed in the middle of the ship, the last thing to go ‘through’ its mind was part of a reactor,” he snorted at his own joke and I laughed with him. “Hey, praise and all that is nice, but monkey-brain ideas are supposed to be your job, Joe. You don’t do anything else that is useful around here. Why didn’t you think of making that ship vibrate itself apart?”
“Because, uh, I didn’t know that was possible?”
“Because?”
“I guess it’s because I don’t know much about physics?”
“Becaaaaaaaause?” he stretched the word out, enjoying himself.
“Because,” I sighed and said what he wanted to hear, which was also the absolute truth. “Even for a monkey, I am a dumdum.”
“Egg-zactly!”
“Are you happy now?”
“Um, I will be happy after you wallow in your misery for a while, berating yourself for being a moron until your self-loathing becomes so awful that you regret ever being-”
“Uh huh, don’t worry about that, I’m there already,” I admitted the truth. “So tell me, Oh Most Magnificent One, can we count on more monkey-brain ideas from you in the future?”
“I don’t know, Joe.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You just did it, duh.”
“I do not know how I did it, double DUH. Until I figure out how you do it all the freakin’ time, I can’t be confident that a brilliant idea will pop into my head at the right moment.”
“Ok, anyway, props to you, that was truly awesome.”
“You know what would be great, Joe? If you and the crew celebrated my awesomeness in an appropriate fashion.”
“Uh, sure, like what?”
“I don’t know, surprise me. Like, you could compose and perform an epic opera about me and my awesomeness.”
“Yeah, that is never going to happen. Hey,” I snapped my fingers. “How about we sing your theme song for you?”
“I have a theme song?” He asked, flabbergasted.
“Sure, you know,” and I launched into singing, or as close to singing as I could manage. Simms joined in from the CIC, tears of laughter running down her cheeks. “Skippity-Doo-Dah, Skippity-Dole, my oh my he is a such an asshole. Nothing but arrogance coming from him, Skippity-Doo-Dah, Skippity-Dim-”
“Not funny Joe!” He shouted to drown me out but he couldn’t stop me. The new crew was laughing, laughing at Skippy.
“Asshole beer can on our starship. This is crap, it’s actual, nothing here is satisfactual. Skippity-Doo-Dah, Skippity-Dim. Wonderful monkeys, arrogant him-”
The ship jumped away seven hours later, after Skippy’s magical little elfbots completed essential emergency repairs. From that new position in the middle of dead interstellar space, we had a much-needed and well-deserved stand-down while Skippy and Nagatha examined the ship bow to stern and began the slow process of fixing what they could. Skippy told me firmly that the ship needed to go back to Earth and be taken apart so he could finally perform heavy maintenance. I was nervous about the ship being defenseless in Earth orbit, but he insisted the repair work was not optional, and he might need access to Earth’s industrial resources, crude as they were. “Truthfully, Joe, I am not a hundred percent certain I can fix everything that is busted aboard this ship. Some of the systems are so broke-dick, we may have to disconnect them unless I can fabricate replacements.”
“Broke-dick?” I laughed.
“Did I not use that slang term correctly?” he asked with a touch of anxiety. Skippy very much wanted to fit in to the crew, to be treated like a person and not a super-intelligent beer can. Using slang was his way of trying to be one of the cool kids.
“Yeah, you said the right thing. I never heard you say that before.”
“The new SEALS team uses that term a lot,” he explained.
“Oh. Yeah, I can see that.” Because the Flying Dutchman was not supposed to leave Earth when we stole it, the ship was missing a lot of important gear. For example, many of our precious Kristang powered armor suits were on Earth. We had to make do with the gear we had, and the situation was decidedly unsat. To get enough suits for the STAR team, Skippy’s maintenance bots had to splice together mismatched parts. Smythe had suits that were fully combat-ready for everyone on his team, but those suits were reserved for combat. For training, the team had to settle for suits that did not fit properly, did not have full functionality, or suffered annoying glitches. “Ok, yeah, the ship is broke-dick, but you rebuilt it at Newark from nothing but moondust and happy thoughts, right?”
“Uh, no, dumdum. Back then the ship had plenty of spare parts and the nano fabricator tanks weren’t depleted. Even back then, it was a close thing. Remember, I had to turn part of the forward hull into a particle accelerator to make materials we needed.”
“Yeah, I do remember that. A big part of the ship was off-limits until you could purge the radiation. The problem now is a lack of spare parts?”
“The problem is a lack of everything, Joe. We ransacked the junkyard in the Roach Motel for all the gea
r I thought might be useful, and still we are dangerously thin on replacements for critical components. We might be able to make some replacement parts at Earth, but your industrial base is too primitive to manufacture many of the items we need.”
“Oh, hell, Skippy, you should have thought of that way back when captured this damned ship. The cargo holds had a bunch of Thuranin stuff you said we didn’t need, so we discarded all of it.”
“Hey, don’t blame me! I never expected we would still be flying this ship around years later. Really, I figured you monkeys would be lucky to survive a single freakin’ month.”
I face-palmed myself and mumbled a reply. “Your confidence in us is truly inspiring, Skippy.”
“I do what I can, Joe.”
“Ok, give me the bad news.”
After a debriefing about ship status that made my head hurt, I contacted our engineer-physics expert Frank Muller for help. By then, it was clear he and Simms were a couple and I was cool with that. No, I was not just cool about it, I was thrilled for Simms. She had never looked so happy and, I kind of had a soft spot in my heart for our logistics officer who was now my second in command. It was great to see her smiling, to watch her face light up when she saw Frank walk into the galley. My only concern was the guy didn’t dump her and break her heart when we got back to Earth. Somewhere along the way, I mentioned that fear to Skippy, and he assured me they both seemed committed to their relationship. “Besides, Joe, you don’t need to worry about it,” he had added.
“I don’t?” I remember asking.
“No. If he hurts Jennifer,” there was a sound like gnashing of teeth, “there could be something unfortunate happening, if you know what I mean.”
Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) Page 54
