“Because,” he mumbled. “I just discovered I was wrong about something. It’s rather embarrassing.”
“Wrong about what? Did you decide a phone book is not a good subject for an opera?”
“No, I-” He sucked in a breath. “Why did you say that?”
“Oh, no reason.”
“You don’t like my opera concept? It is very cutting edge and avant-garde, Joe.” From his pouty tone, the little guy was genuinely hurt.
“Hey, I never said that. Besides, I am an ignorant cretin. Who am I to judge the artistic merits of anything?”
“You do like my Elvis on velvet?”
“Not as much as I admire your painting of Dogs Playing Poker but, sure.”
“Ok, then.”
“So, why do you suck? Because that can’t be true,” I added to throw him a bone. It never hurt to boost his ego, because ego boost points could be exchanged for valuable prizes later. “What were you wrong about, if it’s not your phone book opera?”
“I was wrong about my assessment of the psyche of the Maxolhx, Joe.”
“Oh, shit. They didn’t buy the story that the Bosphuraq destroyed those two ships?”
“Whoa! No, that’s not the problem at all. Your frame-up scheme was utterly brilliant, Joe. The Maxolhx practically have Bosphuraq society on lockdown, they believed every word of the bullshit story you sold to them. The birdbrains, of course, have not been able to produce a single scientist, or scrap of research data that can provide useful info about the dangerous technology the Bosphuraq clearly must have developed. This incident is going to set back the Bosphuraq for centuries, and it will point Maxolhx science down the wrong path even longer.”
“Ok, so what’s the deal with this psyche thing?” The word ‘psyche’ was one of those things I had an extremely vague notion of, like ‘existentialism’ or ‘paradigm’. It had something to do with the personality of a person, but also the way they thought. I think. I’m not an expert.
“I thought I knew the psychology, mythology and inner workings of Maxolhx society well enough to predict what they would do in broad strokes. I was not entirely wrong. For example, they are diverting a large portion of their own scientific resources to investigating the Elder wormholes that I made act crazy. Their government is as alarmed about the odd behavior of wormholes, as they are by discovering that the Bosphuraq have advanced weaponry.”
“Ok,” I was relieved to hear everything he said. It was all good news for us. “So, what little thing were you wrong about?”
“I was wrong about how desperate they are to appear strong to the Rindhalu. As you know, they have directed their top-tier clients to adopt a defensive posture, and they have activated their own military reserves. Maxolhx warships have increased patrols along their borders with the Rindhalu. They very much want the Rindhalu to believe the Maxolhx are feeling large and in charge.”
“Ok, so why do we care about any of this?”
“We care, Joe, because the Maxolhx are so emotionally invested in appearing strong, they are making illogical decisions.”
“Oh. Did they blow a lot of money on scratch-off lottery tickets, something like that?”
“I wish,” he chuckled, but there was a bitterness to his laughter. “No. In order to make it seem like they are strong enough to not worry about a Rindhalu attack, they are keeping up the appearance of business as usual.”
I had no idea what he meant. “Maybe you should just tell me what’s bothering you,” I suggested. I was hungry and thinking about lunch.
“The business-as-usual part you care about is, they will be sending a battlegroup to Earth after all.” He paused for me to reply. “Joe? Joe? Come on, talk to me.”
When I was finally able to speak, I suddenly wasn’t hungry at all. In fact, I was nauseous. “Explain this to me, please,” I asked. My voice sounded like it was coming from far away, like someone else was talking.
“The Maxolhx believe that by sending a substantial force to Earth, will be sending a signal they are so confident about their military strength, they can afford to devote ships to a nonessential mission. The ships they are sending are being pulled from their reserve inventory, so they will take at least a month to be prepared for a journey to Earth. The good news is, those ships are considered almost obsolete, so they will be an easier target for us. The bad news is, they are now sending two star carriers, with even more overall combat strength than was originally planned. Earth will be hit by a reinforced battlegroup.”
“Shit.” I didn’t have the energy to put effort into cursing. “Our framing the Bosphuraq, that was all for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say it was for nothing. It has bought us time. Joe, I am sorry, terribly sorry. My reading of the Maxolhx, and my ability to predict their actions, was horribly wrong. I greatly underestimated their pride.”
“This was always a crap shoot, Skippy. We hoped the Maxolhx would cancel their expedition to Earth, because they now have no logical reason to make such a massive effort to go there. The problem with meatsacks is, we don’t always use logic to make decisions. Hey,” a hopeful thought occurred to me. “Is there any chance this is all a bluff? Like, the kitties will make a show of getting these two star carriers up to speed, but then drop the whole idea in a couple of months?”
He shook his head slowly, the giant hat swaying side to side. “No. To them, this is not just a matter of pride, it’s about survival. They have to make the Rindhalu, and their own clients, believe they are not afraid of anything. I am sorry. It looks like we will have to fight this battle anyway.”
“Fight? A reinforced battlegroup of, how many ships?”
“Two star carriers for certain. Mostly likely the battlegroup will be centered around two older battleships, with four to six cruisers, plus escort and support ships.”
“And we have the Flying Dutchman. That’s not a fight, Skippy. That’s a slaughter.”
In the staff meeting I called right away to give them the bad news, people took the shocking news well, certainly better than I had.
Adams was first to ask a question, tapping the table with a finger. “The Maxolhx think that appearing strong will deter the Rindhalu from attacking. Skippy, what would happen if the Rindhalu did attack?”
He hesitated, something he rarely did. “My ability to predict the actions of the Maxolhx has proven to be inaccurate, so-”
“Do it anyway,” I ordered, something I rarely did with him.
“Very well. What you want to know is, would they cancel the mission to Earth? There is little question they would cancel the mission in that circumstance, as those ships would be needed for defense.”
She turned her attention to me. “Sir, when the Kristang Fire Dragon clan wanted to go to Earth, we gave them a war to divert their attention. Can we do something similar here?”
Her bold suggestion surprised even me, and I was supposed to be the person with a reputation for being reckless. I whistled, low and trailing off. “Start a war between the two senior species?”
“Whoa!” Skippy protested, his avatar took a step back. “We can’t-”
“Skippy,” I admonished him. “Let Gunny Adams talk.”
“I’ve said all I need to, Colonel,” she leaned forward, elbows on the table. “It was a question, not a strategy.”
Technically, it was a suggestion, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. “We sparked a Kristang civil war to remove the incentive the Fire Dragons had for going to Earth. Starting a war between the two senior species would remove any incentive the Maxolhx have for going to Earth, at least in the short term.”
“That is the problem, Joe,” Skippy insisted with his little hands on his hips. “Sparking a hot war between the senior species might help humanity in the short term, but in the long term it is a terrible idea. Damn it, every time we do something, you say that in the future, you need a long-term strategy instead of lurching around, reacting to every crisis. But you never do think long-term.”
“Colone
l,” Smythe looked like he didn’t like whatever he was about to say. “I must agree, anything involving the Rindhalu must be considered very carefully. The prospect of stealing a Rindhalu warship, to conduct an attack on the Maxohx, is-”
Desai interrupted our STAR team commander, something that would not have happened before she became executive officer. I liked this new, more confident and assertive Desai. “But we wouldn’t have to steal a warship, would we?” She mused, looking not at Smythe but staring pensively at the table.
“XO?” I prompted her to continue.
She directed her attention to me. “We only need the Maxolhx to think the Rindhalu have attacked, or are about to attack. The Maxolhx will hit back, and the war will be on.”
Her remark drew gasps from around the table. Even on the table, because Skippy gasped also. I have to say, I absolutely freakin’ love moments like that, when a previously impossible, unthinkable problem becomes a possibility in an instant, just because someone’s words completely change the way we look at the dilemma. “That,” I turned my chair to the side to look at her. To admire her. “Is brilliant.” Huh, I wondered to myself. Is this how other people feel when I dream up a new idea to solve an impossible problem?
“Thank you,” she blushed and I spun my chair back around, not wanting her to feel uncomfortable.
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, there. Don’t get all excited, monkeys,” Skippy was glaring at me from under his admiral’s hat. “I applaud the clever thinking going on, but it simply won’t work.”
“Hey Eeyore,” I glared back at him. “You always say everything is impossible and nothing is good, until we make it happen.”
“Fine, jackass,” he wasn’t backing down. “Let me break it down for you, Barney-style. You are thinking we could fake a Rindhalu attack, maybe in some important Maxolhx star system?”
“Uh, sure, yes,” I agreed.
“Won’t work. First, nothing this ship could do, pretty much nothing I could do, would be capable of penetrating Maxolhx defenses. To make an attack believable, it would need to cause severe damage. We can’t do that. Uh!” he shushed me with a finger jabbing at the ceiling. “Let me finish, and maybe you would learn something. The Rindhalu have a significant technology advantage over the Maxolhx. The whole reason there is a rough balance of power between the two senior species is, the spiders don’t see much point to building an overwhelming advantage. So, they maintain just enough combat capability to discourage the Maxolhx from feeling adventurous. The spiders know that if they did build a major advantage over their enemy, they couldn’t use it. If the Maxolhx ever feel they are about to lose the war, they will hit back with their cache of Elder weapons, and both sides will lose when the Sentinels blast them back to the Stone Age. He pretended to take a deep breath. “The only believable way the Rindhalu would conduct an attack is, to strike simultaneously across a broad front, hitting all the targets they wanted to strike all at once. Then, they could offer a ceasefire, before the Maxolhx resort to their Elder weapons. I know this, because I have accessed secret Maxolhx defense strategy documents, which all agree that is the only realistic scenario for a Rindhalu attack. No smaller-scale attack would be believable. To fake an attack, we would therefore need to strike dozens, maybe hundreds of star systems simultaneously. That is not possible, not even for me. Plus, in this scenario, you have ironically just screwed yourselves.”
“How is that?” I asked.
Smythe leaned back in his chair. “Because, Sir, the Maxolhx would assume any small-scale attack was conducted by the Bosphuraq, who they believe possess advanced weapons. At this point, the Bosphuraq would greatly benefit from a direct conflict between the two senior species, because it would take the pressure off them. Skippy is correct, we have unintentionally screwed ourselves. Bollocks,” he muttered.
“That is a very astute observation, Colonel Smythe,” Skippy praised our STAR team commander. “As I have said before, the greatest force in the Universe is the Law of Unintended Consequences. It will bite you in the ass every time.”
“I’ve got something that law can bite, right here,” I fumed, waving a fist in the air. “Crap. Why do we spend most of our time discussing ideas that won’t work?”
“Hmmmm,” Skippy put a hand on his chin and spoke slowly, as if he really needed to think about the question. “Is it because you are a bunch of, er, um-” He saw an unfriendly look from Adams and that stopped him in his tracks. “Gee, I have no idea.”
“It is because,” Adams continued to give him the evil eye. “We analyze different ideas, until we find the one that will produce the results we want. That is how I was taught to make plans.”
Skippy looked away like he suddenly found the other side of the room to be fascinating.
The rest of the meeting didn’t produce any results at all, unless you consider abject depression to be a result. “One thing is for certain,” I announced as I stacked empty coffee cups on the tray in front of my seat. “The sneaking-around phase for the Merry Band of Pirates is over. Whatever we do, we can’t ever explain the loss of an entire battlegroup and two star carriers. Once those ships go through that last wormhole in Ruhar territory and begin jumping toward Earth, we are all on a clock. Even if by some miracle we destroy those ships before they reach our homeworld, the Maxolhx will expect those ships to return. When they don’t, we will be in open warfare with their entire coalition. That will be a stand-up fight,” I sighed. “No more clever ideas, no more playing one group against another. We had fun with the clandestine shit,” I looked at the gloomy faces around the table. “But that is over.”
“Hey, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar announced as he appeared on my desk right after the fateful staff meeting. “I know you have a lot to handle right now-”
I slapped my laptop closed. “But you’re going to dump something else on me?”
“I kinda have to, yeah. This is the sort of thing that, if I did not tell you, later you would be pissed at me for withholding information. I think.”
“I assume this is not good news?”
“Um, no. It is potentially catastrophic news.”
“Ok, fine.” I took in a long breath and mentally prepared myself. “This is actually good timing, so go ahead.”
He scratched his head. “Good timing?”
“Sure. We just learned that our plan to frame the Bosphuraq resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people, but the Maxolhx are sending ships to Earth anyway. My home planet is doomed, and we can no longer rely on sneaking around doing black ops shit. We might be taking our beat-up space truck into a stand-up fight we can’t win. So, whatever other bad news you are going to smack on me, it can’t actually make my day much worse.”
“Huh. I see your point. I will have to remember that.”
“It’s like,” I explained. “If you break your mother’s favorite flower vase, it is best to wait and tell her about it on the day you crash the family car.”
“Ah. Hmm. Being a monkey must be super complicated.”
“Sometimes, yeah. Go ahead. What is this catastrophic news?” In my head, I was preparing for the worst, and when I imagined the worst, it was bad, really bad.
“Remember that vague bad feeling I had about the beta site?”
“Oh, shit.” Even my worst case imagination had assumed the beta site was safe, that at least a small group of humans would survive whatever catastrophe was about to hit us. “The beta site is in danger now also? Crap!”
“No! No, Joe, it’s not- Well, maybe it is in danger. Probably not immediately. How about I tell you what I found?”
“Go ahead.”
“Remember I told you there are more than nine dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way, like the Phoenix Dwarf is about a million and a half lightyears away?”
“Yes. You said that wormhole technology can’t connect that far, so the Elders never went there. That’s why Phoenix was not on our list for beta sites.”
“Correct. Joe, that answer was bullsh
it. It wasn’t bullshit at the time, back then I thought my answer was the truth. Then we went to Sculptor, and I asked myself why the Elders had not created a series of wormholes. They could have used four super-duty wormholes, one after the other, to get to Phoenix. A series of seven super-duty wormholes would have gotten them all the way to Andromeda. Why didn’t the Elders do that?”
“It was too much effort?” I guessed. “They didn’t even care about our own galaxy. They left it behind when they ascended.”
“About the ascension thing, um-”
“Holy shit. What? The Elders did not ascend?”
“They did. Well, I think they did. I’d better finish the story. Anyway, I started looking around, for signs of hidden wormholes, that might connect out beyond four hundred thousand lightyears. And, I discovered why wormholes can’t project more than that distance. It’s not the technology, Joe. There is a sort of barrier surrounding the Milky Way. It is a vast sphere, consisting of millions of effect generators, which-”
At first, I thought he had paused to consider the best way to dumb down an explanation. Then I figured he had done it for dramatic effect. “Skippy, don’t keep this idiot in suspense. What effect do these generators create?”
“Ugh. I told you already. And don’t interrupt me.”
“You didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t interrupt you. You went silent.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you kinda did.”
“Did not. Listen, numbskull, this is not a good time to screw with me. I’m trying to tell you something important, and-”
“Wait.” If he was not messing with me, and he really thought he had explained something important, then we had a problem. Either he was experiencing cognitive malfunctions again, or there was something wrong with me. “Hey, Nagatha?”
“Yes, Dear?”
“If you were listening to us, what did Skippy say after ‘effect generators’?”
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