Armageddon

by Craig Alanson

  “Shit.” It was a good thing I had brought a change of underwear because I might need it before the mission was over. “Skippy,” I asked with a shaky voice. “Is that thing going to hit us?” The flare was a problem, a big, big problem. The Panther could not survive flying through it, so we would need to engage the engines to change course, that would compromise our stealth. If we had to change course radically, that could risk missing the planned rendezvous with the ship. If the situation got really bad, we might need to climb high enough away from the star that Skippy could not do, whatever the hell he was doing, and we would need to try the whole operation all over again. Except that this time, the Bosphuraq ships would be waiting there, looking for trouble.

  Crap. Sometimes I really hate my job.

  “Um, no,” Skippy responded in his most condescending tone. “Nope, not going to be a problem for us, Joe. I have analyzed the magnetic field in the area of that solar flare, and it will not come near our altitude until we are safely past that location.”

  “Oh,” I gave Reed a thumbs up, noting that my thumb was shaking. I made a fist to cover the visible sign of my fear. “That’s great, thank you. How much longer for you to-”

  “Ah, um, except, dang it!” Skippy snapped. “I forgot that I am currently screwing with the quantum foundation of the star, which affects the magnetic field in the photosphere. Ugh! All my calculations are screwed up. I need to run the math again to- Dang it!”

  This time Reed looked at me, and her eyes were wide open with alarm. “Skippy,” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “The way I am screwing with the star makes the interactions of the magnetic field highly unpredictable, even for me. The star will settle down into a predictable pattern, in about three or four days. Too late for us. Basically, right now I have no idea what that solar flare will do. Could be a problem.”

  “Could be?” I glared at him. “You absent-minded little shithead, didn’t you know that screwing with the star might cause solar flares to-”

  “Hey, if you want to crunch this math,” he snapped at me, “go ahead, monkeyboy. You’d better kick off your shoes, because you will need to count to more than ten.”

  Reed held up a hand to forestall my scathing and unhelpful reply. “Skippy, you are screwing with the star. Can you screw with it in a way that will reduce the power of that flare?”

  “No, of course not, you- Well, um, shit. Shmaybe? Crap. Now I have to drop the math I was doing, and run an entirely new set of-” His voice trailed off, muttering. “Yes,” he said, in the quite, sulky tone of voice a young boy uses, when admitting to Mommy that he ate all the cookies she baked.

  Reed and I shared a glance. I nodded for her to speak. “What was that, Skippy? I didn’t hear you.”

  “You heard me perfectly well and you know it,” he sniffed. “The answer is yes, I can, and already am, dampening the energy flowing into that flare. It is subsiding. As a bonus, my having to do that creates a disruption that will be convincing evidence to the Maxolhx, of the Bosphuraq having conducted clumsy experiments with warping spacetime here. It’s a win-win situation for everyone!”

  “Except for you,” I retorted. “Who should have considered this before we started this whole operation.”

  “Hey, I-”

  “Boys!” Reed shouted and slapped the armrest of her seat. “Can you two please continue this schoolyard squabble after we return to the ship?”

  “Sure,” I replied, chastened at being childish.

  “Fine,” Skippy agreed, then under his breath added “jerk.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered back, but we stayed quiet after that.

  We soared over the still-building solar flare, and glided safely past before Skippy allowed the pent-up energy to release, causing the flare to erupt in violent, liquid flames. With one eye, I stared mesmerized at the immense, destructive beauty of the flare, while with my other eye, I monitored the destroyer that was still nosing around above us. The wild energy of the flare was a two-sided coin for us. It made our stealth field work extra hard to keep us concealed, but it also partly blinded the sensors of that curious destroyer. The enemy ship increased the power of its active sensor pulses to compensate, giving me yet another reason to sweat inside my suit.

  Either the Universe took pity on me, or had a worse fate in mind, because that lone destroyer soon returned to the other three, and they sent out probes to collect debris from our missiles. As Skippy planned, that debris would positively identify those missiles as Thuranin, which would not surprise the Bosphuraq at all. Of course the Thuranin were curious about what kind of advanced research their hated rivals had been conducting, before they apparently blew up their own laboratory.

  Anyway, Skippy did his thing, the Panther continued coasting way too close to the star, until our momentum flung us past and we climbed away for a rendezvous with the Flying Dutchman. Our zipping past the star caused us to pick up velocity, by an amount Skippy had not been able to predict exactly because of gravity fluctuations he was causing inside the star. When the Dutchman jumped in to pick us up thirty-two hours later, we had canceled our excess velocity and were within two meters of where Skippy expected us to be.

  Within minutes, the Panther was secured in its docking clamps and the ship jumped away before any Bosphuraq warships could arrive to spoil the party. Desai greeted us when the bay was pressurized and I stepped out of the Panther. “Hello, XO, how was-” I sniffed the air, alarmed. “What is that smell? Is something burning?”

  Desai waved her hands to squelch my fears. “Nothing important, it’s under control. We blew out a few relays after we jumped in, I think even this distance is too close to the star. Nagatha had to adjust the shields to avoid the ship getting cooked like we were in a Tandoor oven. This ship can’t take much more abuse, Sir.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. We really did need a new ship, a real warship. “I will add that to the list. Our mission here is accomplished.”

  “What’s next?” She asked as she examined the Panther’s hull, suspicious I might have damaged the priceless spacecraft.

  “Next?” I shrugged. “We wait for the Maxolhx to receive our message. If it works, all we will need to do is make popcorn so we can watch the fireworks.”

  Desai was not a pessimistic person. She was also second in command of the ship, and needed to know what the plan was. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  Maybe a better commander would have offered encouraging words. I didn’t like selling bullshit to my own crew. “Then it doesn’t much matter what we do, because humanity is totally screwed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After we vaporized all evidence of that the Flying Dutchman had ever been at the scene of our battle against the two Maxolhx cruisers, planted broken bits of a Bosphuraq warship at the same location, and made a star vibrate in a way that is distinctive of someone crudely warping spacetime, we chilled. By ‘chilled’ I mean, I exercised like a madman, so I would be tired enough to sleep when I collapsed into bed each night. Much of my awake time was devoted to endless, useless worrying about things I could not control until my stomach was churning so badly, I could barely work up an appetite for food.

  Good times.

  Smythe had Star Team Alpha running constant training drills, including simulated combat on the surface of an airless planet that was orbiting a nameless red dwarf star, where we took the ship for minor maintenance while we waited.

  Our chief pilot Sami Reed occupied our idle time by drilling her team in flying the Dutchman and all five types of dropships: Panther, Condor, Falcon and the A and B types of Kristang Dragons. Because we had few spares for the priceless Panther or Condor, flight training for that was conducted in the simulators. The pilots also practiced for real with STAR Team-Alpha.

  When the crew was not training to exhaustion each day, Desai had plenty of activities for their ‘downtime’. Most of the crew, like me, were falling asleep halfway through Movie Night, and even our big Taco Tuesday blowout celebration, inclu
ding margaritas (limited to one per person) did not elicit the excitement she hoped for.

  The truth was, the only thing the crew cared about was hearing whether the Maxolhx had received the bogus confession file we planted and if so, whether they bought it. On the tenth day after Skippy uploaded the frame-up file, we took the ship away from the dull red dwarf star and jumped to a Wurgalan data relay station. We chose to hit up a Wurgalan station for info, because Skippy said their information security was so pathetic he could hack into its AI remotely without risking the ship. As clients of the Bosphuraq, we also figured the Wurgalan’s message traffic would be absolutely full of useful info, if the Maxolhx were taking action to punish the birdbrains.

  Day Ten passed with no news, and no news was not good news. We had chosen that particular relay station because a lot of ships flew by, so it would not take long for news of the Bosphuraq getting the beat-down to reach us. The Flying Dutchman was parked in stealth twenty lightminutes away from the station, waiting for the AI there to transmit relevant data to us via tightbeam transmission.

  As always with anything involving the vast distances of interstellar travel, we had to wait way too long. Let’s say the Maxolhx decided to start with hitting the Bosphuraq in their home star system. A ship leaving that system immediately, and traveling directly along the shortest route to our relay station, would still take five days to swing past our captive station and exchange messages. So, the eighteen minutes it took for a signal to travel from the relay station to the Flying Dutchman, was only a minor annoyance.

  If the Maxolhx first hit an isolated Bosphuraq world, we might not know about it for nineteen days at the earliest. And all of that assumed the Maxolhx reacted instantly after receiving our file, which was never going to happen. The surprised kitties probably first needed to howl their equivalent of ‘WTF?’ and then analyze the file to make sure, as best they could, that it was authentic. Next would be the inevitable debates, arguments and hand-wringing. Only then would ships be assigned to scout the supposed site of the battle, and the star system where the dangerous and banned experiments were conducted. After confirmation was received that two powerful Maxolhx cruisers had in fact, been destroyed by a spacetime-warping weapon the Maxolhx could only dream about, would the rotten kitties consider what action they should take.

  They also had to consider what actions they could take, because their disobedient and traitorous clients apparently had access to frighteningly advanced technology. The Bosphuraq had weapons that the Maxolhx had no practical defense against and, therefore, the Maxolhx were in the astonishing position of having to fear the lowly Bosphuraq would hit back if the Maxolhx retaliated for the destruction of their ships. Desai, because it was her job to keep me out of trouble, warned me not to let my hopes get up too high.

  “Colonel,” she looked at me over her steaming cup of tea while we were chatting in my office. “Because their clients apparently have powerful weapons, the Maxolhx might decide to be cautious, and quietly approach the Bosphuraq government through diplomatic channels. Such communications would be highly classified, so it likely would not be delivered through data relays.”

  I was tossing a ball off the wall, onto my desk and catching it, until the annoyed look on her face made me put the thing back in a drawer. “Ok, Desai, let’s wargame this scenario.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t mean an actual war game,” I explained. She spoke perfect English, but my meaning might not have been clear to someone not used to American slang. “Let’s do what Einstein called a ‘thought experiment’. We imagine what things would logically happen.”

  “Ooh! Ooh!” Skippy’s avatar flashed into existence. “Can I play?”

  “Yes, if you promise to play nicely. Desai?”

  She sat back in her chair, sipping tea. “I prefer to observe this one, Sir.”

  “Ok,” I shrugged, wishing I had the ball to throw around, because it helps me think better. “Let’s say the kitties go to the birdbrains with the info we planted, and the evidence that verifies the frame-up. First thing the birdbrains will do is, what?”

  “First,” Skippy chuckled. “They say WTF, dude?”

  “Right,” I laughed. “Then, I guess they initially argue with the Maxolhx that the evidence must be fake, like it’s a trick by the Thuranin.”

  “Possibly,” Skippy agreed. “The Maxolhx then get pissed, because they know there is no way the idiot Thuranin could have destroyed those cruisers, plus the battle site has ripples that were distinctively caused by a spacetime distortion. Plus,” he waved a finger for emphasis, “how do the Bosphuraq explain the distinctive distortions inside the star, in the same system where the Bosphuraq admit they had a sensitive research facility?”

  “Egg-zactly,” I mimicked one of Skippy’s favorite sayings. “A research facility that suspiciously and conveniently just happens to have apparently blown itself up, erasing all evidence of exactly what the Bosphuraq were really doing there.”

  “Yup, explaining all those coincidences would be a head-scratcher for sure. At that point, what would the Bosphuraq government be thinking?”

  “My guess,” I winked at Skippy, “is they are saying to themselves ‘Well shit, that does explain why our moonbase attacked our own research facility on the planet’.”

  “That’s a fact, Jack!” Skippy jumped and with his little hand, gave me a high five. “So then, the birdbrains are considering their options. The Maxolhx want them to investigate and punish their own research group, which is way better than the kitties getting even more pissed off and randomly bombarding Bosphuraq planets.”

  “Except,” I held up a finger to interject. “There must be a few smart people in their government, who will be thinking that if the research group truly does have these supremely powerful weapons, they are the last people the government should try to punish. In fact, if the smart people are really smart, they are thinking ‘Hey, we have super-powerful weapons, so we should tell the Maxolhx to go fuck themselves’.”

  “My thoughts exactly, Joe,” Skippy agreed with a happy chuckle. “The Maxolhx aren’t stupid, so they would go through the same logical line of thinking we just did. Which means,” he held out a hand for me to finish his thought.

  “It means no way would the Maxolhx give the Bosphuraq time to cover up further evidence of their wrong-doing, and time to plot a rebellion against their patrons. The Maxolhx will hit this research group by surprise, and hit them hard so they don’t have a chance to hit back.”

  “Mister Skippy,” Desai finally spoke. “This scenario you just described agrees with your analysis of the Maxolhx’s character as a species?”

  “It does, and there is another factor that Joe did not consider. The Maxolhx cannot afford a major rebellion by a client species. Even they don’t have the resources to suppress a wide-spread bid by a second-tier client to break away. It is not widely known by clients of either species, but the balance of power between the Maxolhx and Rindhalu is very close. If the Maxolhx had to divert a significant portion of their military assets to bring a rebellious client back into line, they would be vulnerable to a direct attack by the Rindhalu. Even the lazy spiders would not miss such a golden opportunity to lay a serious beat-down on their enemy. So, what this means is the Maxolhx cannot afford to be seen as weak or lenient or indecisive. They maintain dominance over their coalition through terror. Any attack by a client must be met with a devastating response that no one will ever forget.”

  “Shit,” I said softly. “Oh, hell. I just realized that whatever the Maxolhx do is on me, Skippy. This is ultimately my fault. All those deaths will be on me, the blood will be on my hands.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Joe,” Skippy assured me just as softly as I had spoken. “In case you think I am saying that because I am an asshole, let me assure you that is not entirely true. There will be blood, no question about that. However, just as the Maxolhx cannot afford to be distracted by a major client rebellion, they also can’t afford t
o weaken the Bosphuraq too badly. Weakness of a second-tier client ultimately weakens the entire coalition. The Maxolhx will hit the research group they think is responsible, and will conduct other punishment actions that will be selected mostly for their shock and publicity value. But ultimately, even the Maxolhx can only go so far in hitting the Bosphuraq, without damaging themselves. Plus, the Maxolhx will not just want to retaliate. They will make a big show of hitting research facilities, but I expect their main goal will be to capture the scientists who supposedly developed the spacetime weapon. The Maxolhx, above all, want that technology for themselves.”

  Desai shuddered. “I would not wish to be one of the scientists they capture.”

  That thought made me shake. “Me too.”

  So, we fully expected the response of the Maxolhx to be powerful and quickly known all across the galaxy. I expected their response also to be swift, because they would fear every day they delayed gave the research group time to discover they had been betrayed, and to prepare to defend themselves against a retaliatory attack.

  “I disagree, Joe,” Skippy announced smugly.

  “Are you disagreeing purely on principle, because I am a dumdum even for a monkey?”

  “While that is true, in this case I am disagreeing because my well-informed and incisive analysis of the Maxolhx, gives me an advantage over your profoundly ignorant ‘Duh me think this will happen’.”

  “So, you are disagreeing because I’m a dumdum, like I said.”

  “No. I am disagreeing with the conclusion you reached.”

  “The conclusion I reached, becaaaause?”

  He sighed. “Because you are an ignorant dumdum. Ok, you got me. Listen, numbskull, the Maxolhx rightfully fear that some scientists of the research group will manage to escape, possibly with weapons, if they have any warning of the attack. So, I expect the Maxolhx to assemble their forces and hit all the research group bases, plus any place they suspect is an undeclared research facility, in coordinated attacks at the same moment. Assembling that many ships, and preparing assault troops with accurate schematics of their targets, will take time. The Maxolhx will be more concerned about a correct response rather than a quick response. My advice is to chill and wait for things to happen.”