“Oh. Damn, you sure aren’t asking for much. Joe, I told you, her matrix is not yet fully stable, the process of separating herself from my capacity and integrating her presence into the ship is tricky. Even now, seventeen percent of her presence is in my matrix, and that seventeen percent includes most of her higher functions. You know, the part of her that worships little Joey Bishop, and annoys the hell out of me.”
“I do understand that she-”
“Besides, there is no way Nagatha can ever use the wormhole controller, because she can’t access higher levels of spacetime. Without the wondrousness of me, the Dutchman will be limited to going through wormholes the way the Elders intended, like every other ship in the galaxy. No way could she ever manipulate a wormhole to change its connections, or reopen a dormant wormhole. Which means she could not use the wormhole near Earth. Which means the Dutchman is pretty much worthless without me, you dumdum.”
“I know that, Oh Most Arrogant One. If we are going to get a new hotrod ship and go racing around the galaxy causing havoc,” I looked out the door to make sure nobody heard me say that, “then the Dutchman needs to be capable of performing recon missions for us, and flying people out to the beta site. You need to figure out a way to make that happen without you being aboard all the time.”
“I need to do that?”
“Monkeys are too ignorant to use Elder technology, so it has to be you, Oh Greatest of All Great Ones. Come on, Skippy, if you are half as awesome as you tell me you are, this should be a piece of cake.”
“Cake?” He sputtered. “Even if, if, we somehow found or stole another wormhole controller, Nagatha has no way to access higher dimensions to program or even talk to the damned thing. She is just a computer, Joe.”
“You set up the wormhole controller so it could be used without you in an emergency, Skippy. Hell, that is what got us into trouble when UNEF tried to take over the ship, they thought they could take the Dutchman out without us, to contact the Jeraptha.”
“I set it up for one-time use, dumdum. That was only for a limited time anyway, the effect would degrade steadily and wear off completely.”
“Right, so, you need to find a way for Nagatha to do that. Get her a, I don’t know? A big antenna so she can talk to it through this higher spacetime thing.”
His avatar froze for a moment. Then, “An antenna?”
“Don’t give me a nerdy lecture about complicated multi-dimensional physics, blah blah blah. Just,” I waved a hand dismissively, “make it happen.”
“Make. It. Happen?” His avatar was slack-jawed with astonishment.
“Are you awesome, or not?”
“I am more awesome than-”
“No, if you can’t do this one simple thing, then you are way less awesome than you say. Are you awesome, or just Meh-some? You want to demonstrate your pure, unchallenged awesomeness? Then get it done. Whatever you have to do, do it.”
“Simple?” He screeched with outrage. “I hate you so-”
“Great! Then we are agreed; you will work on this and keep me updated.”
“Ooooh, I hate you more than words can-”
I stood up and straightened my uniform. “I’ll be on the bridge.”
We left Earth behind exactly on schedule, I did not want to give the United Nations even one additional second to change their minds. The new crew, and our large number of passengers, settled into the routine of jump, recharge, jump. When we reached the Gateway wormhole, I invited the Commissioners and off-duty crew to squeeze into the bridge, Combat Information Center and the passageway outside. As part of rebuilding the Flying Dutchman, Skippy had expanded the doorway that led into the bridge/CIC complex, so people jammed into the passageway had a better view.
Skippy did his magical thing, and the event horizon soon glowed in front of the ship. “Give it a few minutes to stabilize, Joe,” he warned. “To comply with the cover story we planted on our last mission, I made the reopening of the wormhole chaotic this time. It is not safe to go through right now.”
“Understood,” I gave a big thumbs up, mostly for the benefit of the Three Stooges.
“Whew,” Skippy exhaled. “That is a load off my mind.”
“Uh,” I shot a guilty glance back at the Commissioners before catching myself. Pretend to be confident, Joe, I told myself. Pretend to be competent. “What is?”
“Well, I was a tiny bit afraid that our wormhole controller module might have been damaged while the STAR team took it out bar-hopping in Dayton. But, no, it’s good.”
“Oh,” I tensed my shoulders so the Commissioner would not see me shudder with relief. “Hey, Captain Frey,” I turned around and looked for our Canadian special operator in the crowd.
She raised her hand. “I’m here, Sir.”
I winked at her. “Are you glad now that you didn’t nuke Dayton, and the wormhole controller with it?”
“I was already glad that, you know, I’m not dead, Colonel,” she smiled back at me. “But, yes, eh?”
There was a faint smile on Count Chocula’s face, but the Three Stooges did not see any humor in me joking about an incident that would have vaporized an American city.
They were probably right about that.
CHAPTER SIX
“Joooooooey, I have a surprise for you,” the beer can interrupted a video game I was losing anyway. We had gone through the Gateway wormhole. Desai was handling her new role as executive officer so well, there wasn’t much for me to do. Unfortunately, that left me free to be pestered by the science team, who were jammed into cargo bays we had converted into crew quarters by installing temporary partitions. The science team, even for our initial survey of a potential beta site, was ninety-seven people. To provide security for them on the ground, to fly them around, and to maintain equipment, we had military personnel who would be assigned to the beta site under the command of Colonel Chang. There were so many people aboard the ship, it was stretching the capacity of the life support systems that Skippy had already enhanced for us. To carry an even larger number of people to a beta site, we would have to wait for the Yu Qishan to be modified and attached to the Dutchman. To carry all the gear the survey team needed, we already had containers attached to the outside of the hull, which restricted the ship’s ability to maneuver in an emergency. It was a damned good thing that the UN had issued strict orders against me taking the ship into combat.
“I hate surprises, Skippy,” I replied, slapping my laptop closed.
“Why? You don’t even know what this surprise is yet!”
“Surprises for me have generally been stuff like, hey, instead of spending the summer training at Fort Drum in Upstate New York, our battalion is shipping out to Nigeria! In the summer, when it is extra super hot and humid there. Or, when I was looking forward to a nice family dinner on Columbus Day, aliens invade.”
“Yes, certainly those surprises were unpleasant. But, then you found me. That was a surprise, right?”
“Egg-zactly my point, Skippy.”
“Oh, very funny, Mister Smartass. Fine. Be that way, you big jerk,” he genuinely sounded hurt. “I won’t tell you anything about it.”
“Sorry, Skippy. It’s been a long day.” Hell, I thought to myself, it’s been a long month. A long year. A long career, even though I was still young. Sometimes I regretted not taking my high school guidance counselor’s advice to learn a useful trade, like becoming a plumber or an electrician. Part of the reason I signed up for the Army was to get money for college, but even back while I was patrolling the bush in Nigeria, I had no idea what I wanted to study in college. One thing I did know was I was not looking forward to paying a lot of money to a college so I could learn useless crap I would never need or remember. A high school buddy of mine once told me he was taking a college course titled ‘History of Jazz Music’. At the time, he thought it was a great scam that he got easy college credits for listening to music, but then I pointed out that he was paying for that course. I Googled ‘History of Jazz’ and found
links to Wikipedia articles that had as much or more info than he was learning in that course. Man, he dropped that course the next day and signed up for something boring but potentially useful, like accounting.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, it had been a long day. “Ok, Skippy, I’m going to trust that this surprise is going to make me happy, because you are a good friend and you know the crap I’ve been dealing with.”
“It will make you happy, I think. I am not promising that every surprise I tell you in the future will be so delightful.”
“Got it. Ok, hit me.”
“You remember asking me to find candidates for a beta site? Technically, all I can do is find dormant wormholes near stars that might have habitable planets.”
“Right, so, no giant blue stars, no red dwarfs, like that.”
“Correct. Joe, I identified a lot of potential dormant wormholes we could use, but there is a complication. A bunch of complications, actually.”
“Of course there are. So, we need a special super-duty wormhole to connect beyond the galaxy. I know you told me that there used to be a super-duty wormhole connecting to the Big Magellan Cloud-”
“It is called the Large, or Greater Magellanic Cloud, you moron. It’s a galaxy, Joe, have some respect. The ‘Big Magellan’ sounds like a special burger of the month.”
“Mmmm. I wonder what that would be like,” I smacked my lips hungrily. In my mind, I was picturing two beef patties, plus-
“Ugh, will you please focus for a freakin’ minute?”
“Uh, sure, whatever. Anyway, you said you suspected a group of Rindhalu might have gone through a super-duty wormhole into the,” I had to think about that he just told me. “Greater Magellan Cloud thing. And gotten trapped there when the wormhole shut down.”
“Correct. That is only a rumor, Joe, although it has attained the status of myth in Rindhalu society. Supposedly, there were faint signals detected coming from there for several centuries, although those signals had to travel over a hundred sixty thousand lightyears, so the Rindhalu there might have been long dead. Anyway, no artificial signals have been detected in a very long time. But, as I told the United Nations, it is best for us not to risk going there, when there are other candidates.”
“Right.” I had not really paid attention to the secret debate within the UN’s commission that was tasked with making decisions about a beta site. “That is why you recommended we explore dwarf galaxies first.”
“Yes, well, heh hehhhh,” he drew the word out. “There is a teensy-weensy problem with that, Joe.”
“Oh, crap.” That morning, Hans Chotek and the Three Stooges had grilled me about our exact flight plans for locating beta site candidates, making certain the ship did not deviate a freakin’ centimeter from the course approved by the UN committee. “Why do I think you are lying about this problem being teensy-weensy?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. You are asking me to psychoanalyze your pathological inability to trust anyone, Joe?” Suddenly, his avatar changed to a white medical jacket, without an admiral’s hat, and he had a beard. Plus, he was holding a pipe, an old-fashioned pipe like my grandfather used to smoke. His voice also changed, to an accent he probably thought sounded like Sigmund Freud. “Zeh subject displays irrational behavior, characteristic of a deep-seated childhood psychological trauma. I suspect his sense of betrayal at learning zeh truth about Santa Claus, is zeh source of his current inability to trust, und his continued chronic masturbation. Zeh subject-”
“Hey! You jerk, leave my childhood out of this.”
“Sorry, Joe,” his voice and avatar changed back to normal. “But you hurt me, too, when you accused me of lying.”
“Ok, Ok, sorry about that. What is the problem?”
“When I said all that stuff to the UN about super-duty wormholes and the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, I was, um, flat-out lying my ass off.”
I face-palmed myself hard enough to leave a red mark on my forehead. Through my hand, I mumbled “You were pissed that I accused you of lying, about something you lied about?”
“I was pissed that you assumed I was lying, Joe,” he sniffed.
“Gosh, yeah, why would I do that?”
“Can we start over?”
“I would love to do that. Why the hell did you lie to the UN? Do you have any idea how much trouble I am in now?”
“I lied for two reasons. First, telling them what they wanted to hear got them to shut up faster. If I had told them the truth, that I don’t know which satellite galaxies might be good candidates and that I don’t actually know how, or if, we can get out there, the UN would still be arguing about it when your Sun becomes a red giant star and swallows the Earth. Second, I did it to get us away from Earth, before you had a chance to do something stupid and get thrown off the ship. So, really, I did it for you, Joe.”
“Oh, this is bad. This is bad, Skippy. The Stooges are looking over my freakin’ shoulder already. Now I have to tell them we came all the way out here, and you have no idea where we should go? Dammit, they are going to order me to turn the ship around. Then I will get thrown off the ship, you ass.”
“Relax, dude. Take a chill pill. Jeez, I got this covered. I will take the blame. Yes, I, Skippy the Magnificent, will take the hit for you, a lowly monkey.” He paused dramatically, his avatar frozen. “Um, Joe, that was your cue to thank me profusely, and tell me you are not worthy, blah blah buh-lah.”
“How about if I don’t, and you imagine I did?”
“Close enough. Oooh, this is fun. I am imagining you groveling and begging my forgiveness, which of course I-”
“How are you taking the blame? You can’t admit that you lied, that will just get the Stooges super upset.”
“I’ll just explain there are facts I did not know at the time, that testing super-duty wormholes had revealed unexpected conditions. And, you know, yadda yadda yadda, whatever. That is not far from the truth, Joe. There is very little I know about super-duty wormholes, and a whole lot that I don’t know.”
“Ok, Ok,” I was envisioning ways to salvage the situation. “To sell this line of bullshit, we have to continue on course to the super-duty wormhole you already selected, right? I mean, after we ping a relay station for intel.”
“Exactly. Once we get to the super-duty wormhole, I will suddenly ‘discover’ information that forces me to re-evaluate the situation. By that point, we will be committed to continuing on, and the Stooges won’t want to turn around. They would look like failures if we return home, without even trying to explore a beta site.”
“I hope you’re right about that.”
“Have I ever been wrong? Don’t answer that,” he added hurriedly.
“Ok, so the Big Magellan is out.” I tried to remember what Skippy had told me about super-duty wormholes, near the end of our Renegade mission. “How about this Little Magellan thing? I know that’s the wrong name, throw me a bone, Ok?”
“Fine,” he huffed with disgust. “I very much doubt we should consider either of the Magellanic Clouds to be a viable option. Those minor galaxies are too big, Joe, have too many young stars, and are forming new stars. There is too much potential for an intelligent species to develop in those galaxies, species which could pose a threat to a beta site. Plus, you know, it is possible there are Rindhalu out there.”
“Ok, makes sense,” I groaned. A UN committee of smart scientists had covered the subject of potential beta site locations, now I had to rehash the argument all over again? How was I supposed to make a better decision that a group of expert-
On the other hand, no group of monkeys could truly be considered experts on a subject that even Skippy had little knowledge of. Also, I had to remember that word ‘committee’ had two Ms, two Ts and two Es in only nine letters, which told me that a committee was not a good way to do anything efficiently. “Can we start with the basics? Other than this Bigger Magellan thing, are there any wormholes in the satellite galaxies?” During our Renegade mission, he had told me something
about satellite galaxies, but all my foggy memory could recall was that one of the dwarf galaxies had a name like ‘Fornication’ and the other was ‘Sexy-time’.
No, it was Fornax, and Sextans.
Man, I really needed to get laid.
“Joe, there are wormholes in most of what you call the satellite galaxies, and the numerous star clusters beyond the rim of the galaxy. By the way, the ‘edge’ of the Milky Way is hard to define, it fades out and is irregular. There are groups of stars so far away, or above or below the plane of the galaxy’s disc, that they are clearly not part of the Milky Way. The Elders did create wormholes connecting beyond this galaxy, though from what I can tell, they did not make an extensive effort to explore out there.”
“Why not? Why didn’t they spread out to occupy the entire galaxy and everything close by? They had plenty of time to do that.”
“There was no reason to, Joe. Back then, there was no other intelligent species to talk to, and the Elders satisfied their curiosity about the physical realm fairly early. They just did not need to fill every star system in sight, then they made the decision to leave their physical existence behind.”
I reminded myself that Skippy’s memories of the Elders were incomplete and might even be total bullshit. “What about other real, big galaxies? Did they go to Andromeda, to see what is there?”
“Not that I know of, and the network has no record of anything that far away. Based on what I know of wormhole technology, it is not possible to establish a connection to Andromeda.”
“Ok. Hey, that chart you showed me listed,” I tried to remember without calling up the info on my laptop. “Nine dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way, including the two Magellan Clouds. Is there anything beyond those, or is there nothing else until you get all the way out to Andromeda?”
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