“My guess is, their jump drive capacitors overloaded. Damn it! I was so careful about exactly where I sliced that ship apart. Far enough forward to not cut through reactors or missile magazines or banks of capacitors, but far enough back that the forward section lost power and sent the control AI into shock. It was very precise work, Joe. Apparently, I misjudged it somehow. Plus, heh heh, um-”
“Heh heh what?” That time, I did care if he knew I was angry.
“Well, I might have over-estimated my level of control over the wormhole. They have multiple safety features to prevent the event horizons from collapsing while a ship is going through, which makes sense. When I ordered the wormhole to close, it resisted me. It took me six tries before I found the right combination of codes, to override the safeties. During that delay, the target ship was moving forward, so the bagel slicer cut into it farther back than I intended.”
“Oh, crap. Now we have the forward part of a ship that doesn’t have any power supply or propulsion.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I crossed my fingers and hoped for good luck. “Are you going to tell me this is a bad news-good news thing?”
“Ah, meh,” he spat with disgust. “It’s a bad news-maybe good news thing, Joe. I now know how to bypass those safety features, so next time I might be more precise. The reason I say ‘maybe’ is, I don’t know whether the wormhole network is reinforcing those safety features, or whether it might lock me out from using that feature.”
“Crap.”
“There is some good news,” he suggested. “After examining the battlecruiser we captured, I am now confident that I can slice the next ship farther forward.”
“Fantastic, except, you said it is rare for battlecruisers to travel without escorts,” I snapped at him. I was pissed that we had lost people, for nothing. A ship without power generation or propulsion was no use to us, and we had a limited number of times we could roll the dice on the bagel slicer, before the network locked Skippy out. “The next ship might have a different sweet spot, and you won’t know that until it approaches the wormhole and you have a couple seconds to scan it. That is not-”
“Joe, before you work up a truly inspiring rant, allow me to educate you about a few facts you do not know. First, a couple of seconds is plenty of time for me to scan a ship, evaluate it and determine exactly where to slice it apart. Second, Maxolhx warships have a common layout of their internal structures, from frigates up to battleships. The basic design is scalable, so once I know the vulnerable spot of one ship, it applies to all of them. Third, and damn it is hard to resist the urge to call you a numbskull, I do have news that is unquestionably good. From the captured ship’s database, I determined that the next Maxolhx ship coming through this wormhole is indeed another Extinction-class battlecruiser. It will arrive, alone, within eighty-one hours.”
“Oh. That is good news, Skippy. I’m, uh, sorry for doubting you.”
“Hmmph. You doubted me becaaaause?”
“Because I did not trust the awesomeness. Ok, don’t keep me guessing. How did we get so lucky to have two battlecruisers fall into our lap?”
“It’s simple, Joe. The Maxolhx dispersed their fleet to punish the Bosphuraq for the outrageous thing that we did,” he chuckled. “Now they are pulling their major combatants back to concentrate their forces, in case the Rindhalu get adventurous. The ships are not traveling with escorts, because the lesser ships are needed to watch the Bosphuraq, and because the Maxolhx want to show they fear nothing. After the second battlecruiser, there will be a pair of heavy cruisers that might be traveling together, then a heavy cruiser traveling on its own. That is all the data I got from that ship.”
“Five ships, hmm? That sounds like a target-rich environment,” I rubbed my hands together, realizing I looked like an over-the-top villain in a James Bond movie.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Joe,” he warned me.
“I won’t.” Checking the display assured me the wormhole was still open behind us, and that the Dutchman was lining up to go through. We needed to recover the assault team, and see exactly what we had.
The answer was that we had three people dead, three more seriously wounded, and nine others whose injuries would keep them out of the next operation, unless Doctor Skippy could work some real magic with his nanomedicine.
Three dead. For what? All we had was the forward hull of an advanced battlecruiser, a hull segment that was nearly useless without its power source. Smythe, Giraud and Kapoor assured me the operation had been a success, we had suffered lighter losses than they had been prepared for. They also reminded me that the fight wasn’t over yet, we had other opportunities to capture the components we needed to make our battlecruiser hull a supremely powerful weapon. It was my job to see that we completed the mission successfully, and the people we lost had not given their lives for nothing.
Smythe was the last person off our newly-captured battlecruiser. I was nervous about leaving the hulk drifting on its own, but Skippy assured me he had severed the control AI’s connections to anything vital, and the submind he had installed had the resident AI locked down. We needed the STAR team to capture another ship, so I really didn’t have a choice. After bringing the assault teams back aboard, I wanted to rush down to the converted cargo holds where they stored their gear, but I forced myself to concentrate on my own task. I had not participated in the boarding action. If I went down to the STAR team section of the ship right then, I would be an outsider. A cheerleader. The team needed time by themselves, time to be with people who had been through the experience together, people who understood how they felt.
So, I sat in my command chair, and did nothing.
Margaret Adams needed the help of Captain Frey to get her armored suit off, both of them working carefully together, to avoid damaging the tough yet vulnerable flesh and bones under the alien suit. Compared to Adams, Frey’s own suit was in good condition, but the Canadian soldier grimaced when she walked. “You Ok, Captain?” Adams looked down as Frey limped gingerly across the deck, carrying a segment of armored suit.
“Think I tore a muscle in my calf,” the other woman answered, lifting her right leg.
Adams looked at Frey’s right leg armor. There were scars, but not any holes or dents, no obvious reason for an injury. The captain’s suit torso, on the other hand, had deep scratches and dents, gouges deep enough that the nano liquid had flowed into a gap to prevent air from venting. With the torso resting on a rack and waiting repairs, Frey’s chest and left shoulder had angry purple bruises, visible where the skin was not covered by her undershirt. “You got hit pretty hard,” Adams pointed to the battered suit torso segment.
“This?” Frey looked at her battered armor. “No, that was just a ricochet. If I got hit, I’d be dead. This,” she lifted her right leg and had to steady herself against a locker. “Happened after we came back aboard the Dutchman. First step I took in gravity, I felt a pop in my calf. It’s embarrassing, I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Your armor was damaged. The motors may not have been working properly,” Adams suggested.
Frey tried to laugh, but grimaced instead. Her left shoulder hung limply, she couldn’t move it. The damage was not just soreness, she knew she had torn something important, and it would take time to heal. Until then, she would be out of action. “I like that story, I’ll go with that one. You can get the rest of your armor stowed, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“Squared away, Ma’am,” Adams said, and Frey limped away to assist someone else.
Adams stowed the last piece of her armor, tracing a finger along the scorched soot and something darker that coated the left side. The dark material might be Gonzalez’s blood. She closed her eyes, praying silently for the badly injured sailor. Remembering that terrifying moment, she looked up. “Skippy, I-” She stopped to look around at the other STAR team operators, all engaged in removing and caring for their suits. “Hey, did anyone else discover their suit computer has developed a personality?”
“Yes,” Giraud grunted as he removed his helmet. “It was a surprise to me.”
“Hey,” Skippy chuckled. “You are welcome.”
“I was not praising you, beer can,” Giraud winced as he tried to reach back with his right arm, to release the seal so he could remove the suit’s torso. Sharp pain in that shoulder prevented him from raising that arm high enough to reach the seal. With his suit’s left arm inoperable, he needed help. Seeing Giraud in pain, Frey hung up her helmet and “It was an unpleasant surprise.”
“Ugh, are you complaining about the suit’s French accent? I assure you-”
“Skippy,” Adams bit her lower lip, to give her time to hold back the angry comment she wanted to say. “That is not the point. We train the way we fight. If we’re going to interact with a suit personality in combat, we need that personality to function in training also.”
“Hmm,” Skippy sniffed. “From what I have observed, the way you monkeys fight is to quickly adapt to unpredictable situations.”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth as several of her STARs teammates pantomimed choking the beer can. “We know we will encounter something unexpected on every mission. Because of that, we don’t want anything unpredictable that we can control.”
“Ok, but the enhancement I loaded into your suits was sort of a last-minute thing for me. It did help you, right?”
Adams looked at Giraud and Frey, too appalled to speak.
“Merde,” the French paratrooper gasped. “You sent us into combat with an untested system?”
“It wasn’t untested, Rene,” Skippy backpedaled, understanding he was in trouble. “I ran over six hundred thousand simulations before-”
“It was not tested by us,” Giraud insisted. “Your simulations have proven to be incomplete before.”
“Ok, but, um,” he sputtered, on the defensive in a situation when he thought he would be praised for his initiative. “It did help, right?”
Adams sighed, reminding herself that they were dealing with a clueless alien AI. “Skippy, we don’t know whether our suits having a personality is good or not. We won’t know, until we test that capability in training. I found it distracting for my suit to be talking with me. That might only be that I didn’t expect it. The point is, you sprung this on us without the team testing it. That can’t happen. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” he replied quietly, in the voice of a small boy who is asked if he understands why he shouldn’t be allowed to drive the car. “I won’t do that again. Um, well, I really can’t promise that. I make updates to ship systems constantly, and your suits learn every time you use them. What I can do is promise to review any major upgrades with you before I load them, Ok?”
Giraud shook his head slowly. “Skippy,” he grunted as Frey helped him pull the dented armor away from his left arm. “We know you mean well, most of the time. But, you are not a biological being as we are. You do not appreciate our limits. Colonel Smythe must approve any significant change to the equipment we rely on.”
“Ok,” Skippy replied in a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
In her cabin, Adams grimaced while trying to get her T-shirt off. The suit moving its arms under the command of the computer had saved her life. That action had also left her with very sore muscles, because her actual arms had not anticipated the sudden movements of the powered limbs, motions that were faster than her muscles could accomplish or compensate for. Luckily, she did not feel anything grinding in her shoulders, wrists or elbows as she carefully flexed each arm. Getting her shirt off by herself required hooking it on a cabinet handle, and wriggling it upward until she could get it over her head. As she slid the sweat-stained garment off, she reconsidered whether she might have torn a muscle; her right bicep felt like it was on fire. A trip to sickbay would be a wise precaution, when people who had been more seriously injured had been treated. Like the rest of the ship, the medical facilities had become worn out and lacked critical supplies. When the Flying Dutchman had been captured, the Thuranin medical facility had miraculous abilities. After Skippy modified the surgical gear and adapted the nanomachines to human biology, the Pirates had been able to heal seemingly fatal wounds and even regrow shattered limbs. Now the supply of nanomeds was depleted by healing past injuries, and also because Skippy had been forced to repurpose those precious nanomachines to keep the ship flying. Sacrificing medical capability for combat readiness had been a tough call by Colonel Bishop, and Adams had agreed. That did not mean she didn’t wish for high-tech magic to relieve her aches and pains.
“Margaret?” Skippy’s voice called out quietly from the speaker in the ceiling. He knew not to use his hologram in her cabin. “Can I talk with you for a minute?”
“I really want to get in the shower and scrub this grime off,” she groaned. Her knees hurt also, and her left hip was so stiff she had to limp.
“This will only take a moment, I promise.”
“Ok,” she leaned against the shower wall, not wanting to sit down because that meant she would have to stand up again. “Go ahead.”
“I just wanted to thank you for not yelling at me about the suit personality thing. I know it took a lot of effort not to chew me out in front of the crew. It was stupid of me to keep the suit upgrade a secret, it won’t happen again. The, um, the worst part is why I did it.”
“Don’t beat yourself up too much about it, Skippy,” she reached out for the shower controls, expecting that was the end of the conversation. There was no point to the AI beating himself up, she was sure Bishop and Smythe would be doing plenty of shouting at him. “I know you were only trying to help.”
“Ugh. Listen, ordinarily, I would let you think that, because it makes me look good. But, big stupidhead Joe made me read about empathy,” he said the word with disgust. “And now I have to consider other people’s feelings. What a pain. In. The. Ass. So, I don’t want to lie to you. Margaret, the truth is, I concealed that upgrade because, um, this is embarrassing. I did it because I wanted to be praised by the crew.”
“Excuse me?” She put her hands on her hips, and instantly realized that was the exact same gesture her grandmother used, when someone said something particularly stupid. “You want praise from us?”
“Why not? This crew are the only people I know! This group of monkeys are the only way I can get the praise I crave. I don’t interact with anyone else! Well, when we go to Earth, I chat or message with billions of people, but they all think I’m an asshole.”
“Skippy, they don’t know you like I do.”
“Oh, why, thank you, Margaret, that is-”
“I think you’re an asshole, too. That’s because I know you really well.”
“Um-”
“Skippy, I know you didn’t think you were risking our lives, so I’ll give you a pass on that, this time. But, you took a risk because of your feelings?”
“I know, I know, that makes me an asshole.”
“No,” she shook her head, though she knew he couldn’t see her. “It makes you human.”
“It does?”
“Computers don’t do stupid things because of their feelings. People do it all the time. Being human, being an adult, being professional, means learning not to let your emotions control you. That is one lesson the military tries very hard to beat into your head, because they know it is the most difficult thing to learn. You have to keep your emotion in check, especially in situations when your emotions are charged up. When we were in Nigeria, I saw a Marine in my unit get blown up by an IED, and everyone in our platoon wanted to light up the whole fucking village. Some of the locals were cursing us, and children were throwing rocks, while we had a man bleeding out in the street. That was supposed to be a friendly village, the local tribe were allies. We were there to get their water system flowing again, and they booby-trapped one of the pumps. There was an asshole teenager, just a kid, bounced a rock off my helmet. I turned around,” as she spoke, her hands unconsciously mimed carrying a rifle. “I wanted
to blow him to hell. He looked at me, shouting whatever the fuck in Yoruba, daring me to shoot. He knew I wasn’t supposed to engage, but, damn, I wanted to make his smug face shut up. We all did. The reason we didn’t, was because we had learned discipline, to control our emotions. Having emotions like that means you are becoming more human, Skippy.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“You have to judge whether it is good or not. It will make it easier for you to interact with us, and understand us.”
“Oh great,” he moaned. “I’m turning into a monkey, and I’m supposed to be happy about it?”
“Are you happier with yourself now, or would you like to go back to the way you were, when you were buried in the dirt on Paradise?”
He sighed. “I’m happier now, I guess.”
“Outstanding. Can I get in the shower now?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, sorry. Margaret, thank you for talking with me. I’m more confused now than I was before, but thanks anyway.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Smythe came into my office, he gave me a curt nod and I acknowledged him by gesturing for him to take a seat. This was our first opportunity to speak since he came back to the ship. “Congratulations, Smythe, you did it. The performance of your team was outstanding. We have a Maxolhx warship. A battlecruiser.”
“Yes, Sir,” he said in a dismissive manner. I was not offended, because he was not being rude. He had business to discuss, and neither of us had time for idle chit-chat. There would be plenty of time for celebration when the mission was complete. “Begging your pardon, but praise may be premature. We have the forward three-quarters of a battlecruiser, without the fiddly bits that make it go.”
“True enough. We know how to do it now, the next time should be easier,” I said with a smile that I hoped projected confidence. What I had just declared was utter bullshit, and he knew it. The next time was going to be more difficult, not less.
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