“The Maxolhx are not screwing around this time,” he shook his head sadly. “They are sending a full battlegroup to Earth.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After the shock of Skippy’s announcement, I did three things. First, I ralphed up my last meal and crouched on the floor of my tiny bathroom in a cold sweat. Second, while still on my knees from hugging the toilet, I said a fervent prayer to get humanity out of the mess I had created by screwing with wormholes. Third, I called the senior staff together.
I guess taking a quick shower and changing into a fresh uniform was a fourth thing, if you want to get technical.
Given that we had zero chance to stop a freakin’ battlegroup, and even if we did, the Maxolhx would just send two or three more, probably the prayer was the only useful thing I did.
The senior staff sat around the conference table, no one touching the coffee I ordered from the galley, and listened in shocked silence as Skippy explained the situation.
Adams was the first to speak, one of her fists clenched like she wanted to pound it on the table. “I knew we should have told someone on Paradise about us. We should have anticipated UNEF HQ there would try to arrange a mission to Earth. Of course they would do that. We would,” she looked at me and Desai, “if we were still stuck on that rock.”
“Any of us would, if we were there,” I glanced around to include the people who had not gone to Paradise with UNEF. As the commander, I had to be careful not to play favorites, and treat the original Merry Band of Pirates differently from the current crew. “Adams, we made this argument to the UN on Earth, several times. They understood the risk, and they specifically forbade any of us from contacting anyone on Paradise. No form of contact. They were pissed about us starting an alien civil war, but they were absolutely outraged that we took the risk of getting involved with Paradise, and actually landing there twice. As far as the United Nations is concerned, the humans on Paradise are expendable, if sacrificing a hundred thousand lives there saves billions on Earth. Plus,” I held up a finger to forestall her arguing with me. “If Earth is destroyed, humans will not be safe on Paradise. I don’t think any of us really disagreed with that harsh logic.”
“Colonel,” Adams called me ‘Colonel’ when she was being extra formal, like when she was going to openly disagree with me. “I don’t dispute that keeping Earth safe also keeps humans safe on Paradise. I also think we must admit that keeping senior commanders on Paradise ignorant about our existence, has become an absolute disaster.”
“It is a disaster. This could be Armageddon for all of humanity.” As I said that, I thought of Simms, Chang and yes, even Hans Chotek, safely on a habitable world outside the galaxy. In less than a year, Avalon might be the only planet anywhere with human life. Thinking that those three were safe was a tiny, thin silver lining to our situation. “We should have told Perkins, but that is Monday Morning quarterbacking. Do we tell just Perkins, or who else? A handful of generals in UNEF Headquarters on Paradise? Where does the list end? Every single person who knows creates an enormous risk to all of humanity. What if we had only told Perkins, but someone else in UNEF HQ suggested negotiating to send a recon mission to Earth? She would have to warn that person to stop. Then the next person, then the next. No one could have anticipated that a human on Paradise could do something to threaten Earth.”
“Sir,” Desai rose halfway in her seat. “Is this discussion useful? Informing anyone on Paradise is a decision for the UN on Earth to make. We,” she looked around the table, and that reminded me she had not been with us on our Renegade mission. “Do not have the authority. Colonel, how long until the Maxolhx battlegroup reaches Earth?”
“We can’t answer that, without getting their flight plan data from one of their relay stations. What I can tell you is that Skippy thinks they can’t possibly launch the battlegroup for several months. Modifying that many ships for a long-range mission will be a major effort.”
“Very well,” Desai’s eyes flicked to mine, and she sat back down. “We have time to return to Earth before taking, whatever action we can take. The UN can make the decision to-”
“Um, no,” Skippy interrupted. “That is not correct. We can’t return to Earth. Joe, you want to explain the problem?”
“Skippy learned the Maxolhx have already sent an armada of ships to blockade the far end of the Gateway wormhole. They are devoting at least eighty ships to the task initially, with reinforcements to be added within a few weeks. Most of the ships assigned to the blockade are the equivalent of frigates, but there are a lot of them, and any one of them is more than capable of catching and destroying the Dutchman. The full blockade will be in effect before we can get there. Until the blockade is canceled, we can’t go home. We were lucky we just missed them when we went outbound.”
“How is that possible?” Reed was skeptical. She had piloted the Dutchman through many wormholes. “Gateway is dormant, Skippy has to reactivate it every time we go through. The blockading ships must be staking out locations along the emergence points where Gateway appeared before Skippy shut it down. Why can’t we just command it to appear at a new location, where no ships are waiting to ambush us?”
I took a quick breath to give her a long-winded answer, but Skippy beat me to the punch. “It’s technical, and I can send the details to your tablet if you like, Captain Reed,” he said without a trace of his usual snarkiness. He respected Reed, so that explained part of his subdued manner. But mostly, news of the Maxolhx sending an entire battlegroup to Earth had him kind of freaked out. He knew this was the end for humanity, and whatever affection he had for humans as his friends, or pets, made him fearful he would have to witness our extinction. Plus, he had been super proud that we had executed a brilliant plan to stop the Maxolhx, and now it was all for nothing. “I don’t dare reopen Gateway at an alternate emergence point. My screwing with that wormhole has already caused it to become unstable. I fear that if I do anything other than authorize it to resume normal operation, it will sort of reboot, or default back to its original settings. If that happens, we would permanently or at least for a significant time, lose the ability to make it go dormant again.”
“Shit,” Reed expressed what everyone was feeling.
“What about the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ wormhole, the one that is closer to Earth?” Smythe inquired with a grimace. “That is a bloody stupid name for an ancient tear in spacetime, but it is an alternate path back to Earth.”
“Yeah, I asked the same question,” I responded. “Skippy?”
“No can do,” he shook his head sadly. Interestingly, his ginormous admiral’s hat did not wobble much. That told me he could control it independently, so when it flopped around like it was about to fall off, he was doing it deliberately. “Sleeping Beauty and Gateway are not directly linked, but they are part of the same local network node. Most wormholes that we consider dormant are merely not projecting into local spacetime, but Sleeping Beauty is different. Its construct is in flux, the network is not feeding power to it. The process of waking up Sleeping Beauty would require me asking the local network to sort of make room for a wormhole that isn’t supposed to be active. I don’t know exactly what else will happen, but I do know that is very likely to trigger a reboot of the local network, and again I would lose the ability to make Gateway go dormant.”
“But,” Desai spun her coffee mug while she composed her question. “Does that matter? If Sleeping Beauty were active for a prolonged time, aliens could not use it to get to Earth, because they don’t even know it exists, correct?”
My executive officer was asking very good questions, and doing the job she was assigned, and I was growing irritated at her. Her picky attention to detail explained why she was such an excellent pilot, she didn’t like to leave anything to chance. Skippy cleared his throat, he must have noticed me shooting the evil eye at her. “Ahem, that is correct. However, aliens would very soon learn that Sleeping Beauty- Damn, now I agree that is a stupid name for any piece of Elder technology.
That it is open, and the rush to go through will be on. Although the Earth end of that wormhole is remote from anything, the far end is only eighteen lightdays from a wormhole that is frequently used by Thuranin ships. Those ships would quickly notice the existence of a new wormhole, and they would want to send ships through to explore. There is also substantial risk of two bad things happening. The reset of the local network could reopen Gateway. Or, it could trigger a shift that takes both wormholes offline, and we would lose our ability to access Earth, until the network stabilizes within, oh, maybe four or five months. I am guessing, sorry.”
Desai frowned but she gave one curt nod of her head. “Well, shit.” It was funny the way she said it. It was not funny why she said it. “We are on our own, then.”
“Yeah,” I picked up my own mug of coffee, looked at it, and pushed it away. “Whatever we do, we can’t count on reinforcements, or instructions, from Earth.”
“What are we going to do, Sir?” Adams looked at me, and there was fear in the eyes of our tough Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. Something else, too. Not just fear. It was like, she expected me to make the problem go away. To save the world again.
“We barely survived taking on a pair of Maxolhx cruisers,” I reminded everyone around the conference table. “A full battlegroup? No way can we pull that same trick with a battlegroup. Skippy could barely create enough microwormholes to cover two ships, and we had the advantage of knowing almost exactly where they would be. I don’t know what, if anything, we can do to stop a battlegroup. I do know this: if we somehow destroy those ships, that is the end for Earth, one way or another. It will be impossible to explain the loss of an entire battlegroup.”
“Sir,” Smythe said quietly. “When you called this meeting, you said it was about Armageddon. You may be right about that.” There was a look on his face I had never seen before. Defeat. He was staring at inevitable, certain defeat, and there was nothing he could do about it.
The fear on Adams’s face had been replaced with her usual determination. She was either squashing her own fear, or faking it for us. “We are going to try, Sir? Right?”
“Yes, we are. I don’t know how, I don’t know how we could have even a prayer of stopping that battlegroup, but we won’t give up. And,” I took a deep breath, making my shoulders heave. “If we can’t stop the Maxolhx from reaching Earth, I intend to take this ship to Paradise. We will use this ship to transport as many humans as we can, from Paradise to the beta site. Priority will be given to women and children. Skippy is working on a plan to modify life support systems to pack in as many people as we can for the short trip. I will,” I took another breath. “Remain on Paradise, to answer for my crimes against the Maxolhx, or whoever.”
“Sir,” Adams was glaring at me.
Without intending to, I gave her the knife hand, cutting her off. Instantly, I regretted my action. “Gunny, if you are going to say that giving priority to women and children is a patriarchal attitude, I do not give a shit.”
“Colonel, I agree with that,” she tilted her head in an ‘after all these years you still don’t know me’ gesture. She wasn’t angry with me, she looked hurt. “I was going to say, that I will remain on Paradise with you.”
“Joe! Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe-”
I woke up to see Skippy’s avatar standing on my chest while I was trying to sleep that night. Mostly, I had been staring at the ceiling and hating myself. “Gaaah!” Of course I wacked my head on the cabinet. That stupid thing, I should tear it out. “Damn it, Skippy, it’s,” I checked my zPhone. His avatar moved to the top of a cabinet next to my bunk. “Not even two in the morning. Is the ship in danger?”
“Well, duh. I assume you somehow have a lunatic desire to take us into action against a Maxolhx battlegroup, so of course we are in-”
“Is the ship in danger right now? Is this an emergency?”
“The ship is not in danger at the moment. However, this is an emergency, of a spiritual nature.”
If his avatar had hit me over the head with a shovel, I could not have been more stunned. “Uh, what? Spiritual? You?”
“Yes, me. I am a person, you know.”
I did know that. I did not think of the beer can as someone who had a spiritual side. In my opinion, if Skippy met God, he would give the Almighty tips on how to ‘jack up his awesomeness’. Crap. No way was I getting out of what held the prospect of a long, agonizing and sleepless night of listening to an ancient AI moan about his place in the Universe, or whatever the hell he was having a crisis about.
Damn it, on our next mission, I am going to insist the ship have a chaplain, so that person can listen to Skippy.
“Yes, sorry, Skippy,” I rubbed my sore head. “I’m listening.”
“Really? Don’t you need a cup of coffee first? You are kind of a zombie in the mornings.”
“No, I’m good.” Drinking coffee would mean giving up even the slightest hope of going back to sleep that night. “If I go to the galley, people will want to talk with me, and this is too important to delay,” I lied. Really, I wanted to be half asleep, so I could mostly ignore him in my groggy, sleep-deprived state. No way did I want to engage in a spiritual discussion wide-awake.
Note to self: I needed to keep a bottle of whiskey in my cabin.
“What is the nature of your spiritual crisis?” I said in my best Reverend Somber impression.
He hung his head, like he was ashamed to look at me. “I don’t know if I can do this again.”
“Do what?”
“Our usual thing. You know, Earth is threatened, we are faced with an impossible challenge, somehow we pull a crazy solution out of our asses, and barely manage to succeed. Blah blah blah. Rinse and repeat. It feels like freakin’ Groundhog Day. The movie, you know?”
“I know what Groundhog Day is, Skippy. It was like that, way back when I was in Nigeria. Every freakin’ day we went out on patrol looking for the enemy, based on intel that was usually bullshit. Some days we got hit by ambushes, or IEDs, and some days we got lucky and killed a few of them. More popped up to replace the guys we killed, and they blew up a school full of children to retaliate. The next day, we did it all over again. That’s life in the military.”
“How did you do it, day after day?”
“Because that’s the job, Skippy. Lots of people do something like that. Cops patrol the same area and see the same people doing the same stupid, rotten things to themselves and others every day. Truck drivers run the same routes in the same awful traffic and deal with idiots cutting in front of them every day. It’s the job. Somebody has to do it. So, what’s bothering you?”
“The tension is too much. We have faced so many threats to Earth that-”
“Bullshit.”
“What?” He was so startled, his avatar flickered.
“Since we dealt with the White Wind clan here when the Dutchman first came to Earth, we have only dealt with one external threat to Earth.”
“Um, you may want to check your math on that.”
“Nope,” I shook my head empathically. “There has only been one external threat.”
“Wow. My spiritual crisis is on hold, because I can’t wait to hear whatever twisted logic you come up with to-”
“The only external threat we’ve had to deal with is, that the Fire Dragons needed the White Wind leaders on Earth to officially sign over their clan’s assets, so the Fire Dragons could delay a civil war until they were ready.”
“Uh, yes. We had to deal with the Thuranin and then potentially the Ruhar, sending a ship to Earth to pick up the White Wind leaders. That is two-”
“No, that’s not true. That is one threat. The White Wind leaders here were a temptation that we had to deal with twice, technically three times, because the solution I used the first two times was short-sighted.”
“Ok, I am surprised to hear you admitting you were short-sighted. Pleased that you are facing facts, but surprised. Keep going.”
“The first time, my plan was to blow up
the Thuranin surveyor ship before it started its voyage to Earth, hoping the Thuranin would blame the Jeraptha or Bosphuraq for loss of the ship. That worked, but only in the short term. Then, we tried to stop the Ruhar from negotiating a deal with the Fire Dragons-”
“Which did not work,” he reminded me with a touch of smugness.
“It did not, so we started the civil war the Fire Dragons wanted to avoid, so they had no incentive to bring the White Wind leaders back from Earth. That was one threat that generated two problems for us. If we had started the civil war right from the start, the Thuranin would have recalled their surveyor ship, and the Fire Dragons would never have negotiated with the Ruhar for a ride to Earth.”
“Hmm,” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, a very human gesture he must have copied from someone. “Ok, Ok, technically you are correct that the Fire Dragons needing the White Wind leaders was one issue. You are also correct that it sure would have been nice if you decided to start a Kristang civil war during our SpecOps mission, when we didn’t have Count Chocula to deal with. But, Joe, we have dealt with a lot more threats out there.”
“Sure. On our third mission, we stopped the Ruhar from selling Paradise, and the humans there, to the Kristang. That was a super-complicated pain-in-the-ass mission, but it had nothing to do with a threat to Earth.”
“Um, Ok, have to agree with you there. But-”
“But, then after we did get a nice little civil war raging, we had to fix your Zero Hour problem, which was all your own stupid fault and had nothing to do with a threat to Earth.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he mumbled.
“And us swinging by Paradise, to prevent the lizards from wiping out the population with a bioweapon, also did not involve a threat to Earth. We volunteered for that fight.”
“Mm hmm, mm hmm, I see where you’re going with this. However, you can’t say the Maxolhx sending a pair of ships to investigate the Earth end of the local wormhole was not a threat to the mudball you call home.”
Armageddon Page 21