“Whoa. What?”
“I was trying to make it dramatic, in the spirit of good gossip, Joe. You never let me have any fun.”
“I am truly sorry.” Sometimes it was best to play along with him. “Wow, I did not know Tamika and Johnny were an item. What did the note say?”
“Well,” he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “The note said the UN has decided that, with the recent threat from the Kristang attack on the homefront, we need to send the Flying Dutchman back out, to conduct a recon mission.”
“Huh. Hey, did anyone in the UN hurt themselves from making such a forehead-slappingly obvious decision?”
He chuckled. “They are all under concussion protocol, Joe.”
“So, that is the good news?”
“Yes. The Dutchman will go out, while the Dagger stays here as a gunship, to protect Earth.”
“Makes sense,” I agreed. Our newly-captured Kristang warship was technically a troop carrier like the Yu Qishan, but the Dagger had been substantially modified to serve as an assault transport. It had extra missile launchers, stronger shields, and a railgun for orbital bombardment. The Dagger had a decent chance of protecting Earth from minor threats that originated on this side of the local wormhole. “What about the Qishan?”
“That is the great news I mentioned, Joe! The Qishan will be modified to be a colony transport ship. We will hopefully need to transport colonists soon, because the Dutchman is going out primarily to scout for a beta site. The recon mission is actually a secondary objective.”
“Wow, this is great news.” The beta site, a place where humans and human culture could survive, if Earth was enslaved or destroyed, had been my backup plan during our Renegade mission. To tell the complete truth, finding and setting up a beta site had been my primary plan, because I did not think we had a realistic chance to destroy the pair of Maxolhx ships that were on their way to Earth. And find a reason for the Maxolhx not to be suspicious of their ships disappearing. And find a reason why the Maxolhx should not be interested in sending more ships to Earth. Of all our impossible missions, that had been the worst.
Offering the prospect of a safe beta site was intended kind of a consolation prize for the people of Earth, if the Dutchman had been forced to limp back to Earth and report we had been unable to stop those two Maxolhx ships. Despite me committing mutiny and stealing humanity’s only starship.
The possibility of saving maybe a couple thousand humans from the utter destruction of our homeworld was, I had to admit, a crappy consolation prize.
But it was better than a fruit basket.
“How long will it take for the Qishan to be modified? The Dutchman should be ready to fly again in-”
“Oh, we’re not waiting for the Qishan. As you know, the interior of Kristang troop transports is rather spartan, it would be very uncomfortable for colonists. Now that Earth is not in imminent danger of destruction, we can’t expect colonists to be packed into the ship like sardines, so it could take a year to bring the accommodations up to human standards.”
“Seriously? Going to a beta site will not be a freakin’ pleasure cruise.”
“True, however, I can see the point to making the journey marginally more pleasant. The biggest problem will be providing artificial gravity, so colonists aren’t puking the whole way. Kristang ships don’t have artificial gravity, and the Dutchman no longer has docking platforms to provide a gravity field. We will need to construct a docking platform anyway, so while the monkeys down there are furiously bashing coconuts together to make the crude components I need to refit the Qishan, the Dutchman’s mission will be to scout potential beta sites.”
“And,” I emphasized, “to conduct a recon, so we can be sure Earth is safe.”
“Well, yes, but, um, you kinda screwed yourself there, Joe. Our Renegade mission was so spectacularly successful, the UN is not concerned about further threats from the Maxolhx. The purpose of the recon will only be to determine whether there are any more Kristang ships parked at the edge of this solar system, stuffed full of hateful frozen warriors who want to cause mischief. We will not be hitting up any Maxolhx data relays for info. The UN is preparing mission orders, that authorize you to contact only a Kristang relay station.”
“Ok, fine, whatever,” I could live with those restrictions. “We learned about the Maxolhx sending ships to Earth from a Ruhar data relay anyway. So, the good news is the Dutchman will be going back out, and the great news is we are to find a beta site. What is the super-ultra-mega craptastic news?”
“Remember when you were thrilled that the UN assigned Count Chocula to micromanage your every decision?”
“Oh yeah, that was wonderful. Wait, is he coming with us again?” I asked hopefully. Not hopefully because I wanted someone constantly looking over my shoulder, but because Hans Chotek was at least someone I knew. Plus, during our time aboard the Flying Dutchman, and on various planets throughout the Orion Arm of the galaxy, including the year we spent stuck inside the Roach Motel, we had developed a kind of grudging understanding and respect for each other. The fact that he planned how to plunge Kristang society into a vicious civil war not only earned my respect, it sort of drew us together. We both knew that when we returned home, Hans Chotek the career diplomat would catch hell for sparking an alien civil war. And that I would catch hell for a whole lot of things I did because, well, that’s just my life. So, that shared experience allowed us to rub the rough edges off each other, and work pretty well as a team.
“Yes, Hansie will be coming along on our scouting mission,” Skippy confirmed. “He will be one of the civilian leaders of the long-term survey team, if we find a good candidate site.”
“Uh huh. Did the UN choose him because they respect his experience and judgment, or because he’s now an embarrassment and everyone wants him away from Earth?”
“The second one,” he announced gleefully.
“So, if we find a site that looks good, Chotek will be staying there with a science team, while the Dutchman flies back to Earth to report?”
“Good guess, yes. The UN is authorizing six months maximum for the total mission. It will take longer than that to assure a candidate site is really safe for human habitation. If we identify a prime candidate, the science team will remain there while the Dutchman flies back to Earth to report our findings. A second mission will bring more scientists, and get updated on what the initial team found. It is still being debated, but the UN has been advised they should not plant a permanent colony on any world, until it has been observed for two full cycles of seasons. That is, two of the planet’s years, however long that is.”
“That makes sense. Ok, then there is no rush to get the Yu Qishan refitted for human passengers.”
“Correct.”
“Wow, so far your bad news sucks a lot less than I expected.”
“Dude, you haven’t heard the truly bad news yet. I said Chocula will be one of the civilian leaders. Because he is not in good favor with the United Nations, they are sending not one, not two, but three other bureaucrats to join our Magical Mystery Tour! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Shit. Who are these three Stooges?”
“Oooh, good one, Joe. I will call them The Stooges from now on. Their profiles are on your laptop. Have fun reading!”
I read the profiles, which I could tell Skippy had supplemented with his own opinions and highlighted the areas he thought I needed to know. Chotek was from Austria, so I should not have been surprised to learn the Stooges were a woman from Japan, a guy from Algeria and a woman from Peru. The military arm of the Expeditionary Force was no longer limited to the five nations the Kristang originally chose to send offworld, but the UN still had to be careful to spread authority around the globe.
I was so looking forward to welcoming my new bureaucratic overlords. Not.
Skippy spoke as soon as he saw I had finished reading the report. “You do know the problem with sending the ship back out to scout potential beta sites, right,
Joe?”
“Like, we don’t know if that is actually possible?”
“You got it! Man, the UN is going to seriously be pissed at you, if they discover this whole beta site concept is just a bunch of bullshit you threw together, to distract from your numerous and flagrant screw-ups.”
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. My proposal had been to find a habitable planet that was not already occupied by an intelligent species. By ‘habitable’ I mean it had to be able to support human life on the surface, including the ability to grow food humans could eat. As a practical matter, to encourage people to move to the beta site, the planet had to be not only habitable, it had to offer reasonably pleasant living conditions. There could not be an over-abundance of dangerous predators, parasites, and other hazardous native organisms. Candidate planets had to be far enough away from an active wormhole that current star-faring species could not get there, but because we needed to get there, a dormant wormhole had to be reasonably close. Oh, also, aliens could not even know that humans lived at the beta site, until the population there was well-established and had at least a hope of defending themselves from hostile aliens. As Skippy reminded me, no single planet could hope to fight off the entire galaxy, but if we gave the beta site strong defenses, aliens would hopefully decide that punishing one faraway planet full of mischievous monkeys was not worth the price they would have to pay. To delay the time when radio signals from the beta site reached another inhabited world, the beta site ideally should be a thousand or more lightyears from alien planets, military or scientific outposts, or relay stations.
All those conditions seemed simple enough, until Skippy analyzed the Elder wormhole network in the Milky Way galaxy, and determined that many of the wormholes that were currently dormant, might become active in the next wormhole network shift. That frightening bit of info wiped out the majority of potential beta sites within our home galaxy.
Skippy had done the math on candidate sites in the Milky Way, without revealing his results to UNEF Command, and the results were discouraging. Areas of the galaxy that were isolated as we needed, were thin on habitable planets for a good reason. Either the entire region had been sterilized by the radiation from the supernova collapse of a giant star, or conditions in the region had not been favorable for the formation of Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone. So, although Skippy had said encouraging things to scientists on Earth, he was pessimistic when he talked with me privately about it.
I was not so discouraged by his results, because my hope had always been for us to locate a beta site outside the Milky Way, in one of the satellite galaxies or star clusters. There were two problems with that idea. First, Skippy had little information about conditions beyond the edge of the Milky Way. What information he had was from observing starlight that was reaching us now, and that was seriously out of date. For example, the Fornax Dwarf galaxy was almost half a million lightyears away, so the light we were seeing now from stars there left its source four hundred sixty thousand years ago. Skippy warned that, in that span of time, an intelligent species could have developed technology and occupied every corner of the star clusters within Fornax, and we wouldn’t know that until our wimpy space truck emerged from an Elder wormhole there.
That is the other problem. Skippy knew from querying the wormhole network that no current active wormholes connected beyond the Milky Way, and he did not know if he had the ability to reactivate dormant wormholes that connected way out there.
He didn’t even know if they could be reactivated.
Because the hope of finding a beta site was the difference between me riding a desk in some windowless office, or commanding a starship, I kept quiet about how slim our chances were of locating a refuge, where human could live without fear of being wiped out by hostile aliens.
The other reason I didn’t tell the whole truth, is because it was possible we might actually find a good candidate site.
But mostly I kept quiet because of the first reason.
CHAPTER THREE
Three days later, I was in my office when an old friend walked in. We hadn’t seen each other since we left the ship at the end of our endless mission that rescued the Expeditionary Force on Paradise, started a Kristang civil war, got stuck in the Roach Motel, and then saved Paradise from a bioweapon. After we both left the ship, I had basically been under house arrest, and we had only spoken on the phone once. With people from both of our governments listening to that one conversation, we hadn’t been able to do much more than talk about the weather.
“Good morning, Colonel Bishop,” Chang greeted me with a salute. He didn’t need to, because we didn’t salute aboard the ship, and because he also was now a full colonel.
Instead of returning the salute, I stood up and offered a handshake. “Hello Kong,” I used his first name. “It’s good to see you!”
We shook hands, and he replied “Hello, Joseph,” with a huge grin.
“Call me Joe, please,” I laughed as we sat down. “I am only called ‘Joseph’ when my mother is angry with me.” I tapped an icon on my tablet to order two coffees brought from the galley. That was something I almost never did, but it was a nice perk of being a colonel. We talked for half an hour, mostly about our families, then got into recent events.
Lowering his voice with a glance at the open doorway, he asked “Would your president really have gone through with a nuclear strike on Dayton?”
I took a sip of coffee that had gone cold, because I needed to think of the proper way to answer. Chang was a trusted colleague and a friend, but he was also a military officer of a foreign power. He was asking me for details of a sensitive military operation, and I was still sort of on probation for committing mutiny and stealing a starship. The US Army would not be happy to hear I was discussing actions of the National Command Authority with anyone.
I should have politely declined to answer, but, fuck it. A professional career officer would have politely declined. I am a mustang colonel and a Pirate. Kong and I had been through a whole lot of shit together. Plus, you know what? With the ever-present threat of alien invasion hanging over our heads, if we monkeys couldn’t stop arguing about bullshit that didn’t matter, maybe we didn’t deserve to survive.
“What would you have done, if the Kristang were in,” I only knew the names of two cities in China, and they were both much bigger than Dayton Ohio. “A mid-size Chinese city, and the lizards were about to capture a wormhole controller?”
“We would have done what was necessary,” he replied, looking down at his empty coffee mug. It wasn’t something either of us wanted to think about.
I hadn’t actually answered his question, so I added “Skippy told me the launch order was with Cheyenne Mountain, and they had already tasked two birds at Minot, when we jumped the Dagger into orbit.” I shuddered when I felt a chill run up my spine. Flight time of a ballistic missile from North Dakota to Ohio was mere minutes, especially on a depressed-trajectory shot. If we had arrived a few minutes later, all we would have seen below us was a mushroom cloud, where a Midwestern city had been. “We would have done what was necessary,” I said. If he was going to report our conversation up his chain of command, I figured it couldn’t hurt that I had confirmed America’s steadfast resolve. “Enough about the past,” I waved a hand to dismiss the unpleasant subject. “I hear you will be commanding the force at the beta site, assuming we find a suitable place out there?”
“Yes,” his face broke into a smile. “Under United Nations civilian leadership, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed. We both knew that, if the beta site found trouble, Chang would be in command. “The mission could last six months. Is your wife?” I left the rest unsaid.
“She warned me,” he wagged a finger like his wife was scolding him. “Not a single day more. Joe,” he pronounced my unfamiliar name awkwardly. “She thought I was dead. My whole family did. She doesn’t want to lose me again. But, I think in a way, she had gotten used to the idea that I wasn’t coming bac
k. It took us months to get to know each other again.”
I nodded, one soldier to another. “I know what you mean. Adams and I were talking, like Earth didn’t feel like home anymore. Like we didn’t belong here, we didn’t have anything in common with the people down there.”
“It took a while. Give yourself time, it will come back,” he assured me. “You have spent too much time up here.”
“That wasn’t by choice,” I said with a shrug.
“It is now. This mission should be a simple recon, you don’t need to go out there.”
His comment surprised me, and I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows. “Do you want command of the Dutchman?”
“No,” he snorted. “No offense, but, I was an artillery officer. If I wanted to be stuck inside a tube for months, I would have joined the submarine service. No, I like the idea of exploring a new world, helping humanity set up a backup site, but I don’t want to be,” he rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead, “in this tin can any longer than I have to. I like to look up and see the sky above me.”
“Yeah,” I agreed wistfully. “I hear you about needing more time dirtside, I’ve been thinking about it.” That was the truth. I had even discussed a potential temporary assignment with the Army. The idea of taking the Dutchman on a dull recon mission did not appeal to me, not after the non-stop excitement of the past years. But Skippy was not certain he could even get a wormhole to connect outside the galaxy, and he wanted me to come with him. Setting up a beta site was my idea anyway, I needed to see it through. “If we find a good candidate site out there, I will give someone else the chair. The last thing I want is to haul trash back and forth to a beta site. Hey,” a thought just hit me. “Will you be my XO again, on the outbound leg?”
“Thank you, but, no,” he declined. “I will be busy enough preparing for landing and setting up a survey. You are thinking about handing the chair to someone? Let them take a turn as your first officer.”
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