“I have never been more grateful for your assholeishness.”
“I do not think that is a word, Joe.”
“It should be.”
“We can all agree on that. Um, best not to tell anyone, huh?”
“Skippy, I couldn’t explain this if I tried.”
“True dat.”
We boarded and captured the engineering section of the second ship. Skippy took control of local systems, got the reactors and energy-storage stable, and we then used the Dutchman to slowly tow that section through the wormhole and positioned it near the other part of the ship. Both sections were from the same type of ship, but Skippy had sliced them in different locations, so we couldn’t simply slather glue on both ends and press them together. To me, it looked like there was no way to make a real ship out of the Lego pieces, but I had to trust the awesomeness. Especially because I was not entirely convinced that we were not all just a simulation inside Skippy’s brain. The argument in favor of us being in a sim was that we were apparently alive, when we could not possibly be. The argument against this being a sim was that I still thought Skippy’s singing was terrible. If we were all just characters in a simulation, I’m sure Skippy would have edited us so we actually enjoyed his music.
Whatever. I had to act as if we were truly still alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The next item on the agenda was to capture at least one more Lego piece, to complete the set. The forward hull we had was good enough, what we needed was more of the ‘Go-Fast’ gear like reactors, jump drive capacitors, all that.
We had good news and bad news. On the ‘Good’ side of the ledger, Skippy was confident he could slice the next target ship farther forward, to get access to missile magazines and other goodies, with minimal risk of the assault teams encountering a horde of well-armed, pissed-off kitties. He was also confident that the network had not yet cut off his use of the bagel slicer. The bad news was the network was running a self-diagnostic, to determine what had gone wrong with its sensor feed, and Skippy could not risk hacking into the feed a second time. We would have to position the ship farther from the wormhole, to give it time to stabilize before the Dutchman went through. That risked the forward section of the next sliced-up ship rebooting in time to interfere with us before plunged through the wormhole, so we had to destroy it well before we flew past. My first idea was to use another pair of nukes, but Skippy had a better plan. Against a ship that was not protected by energy shields, a single nuke was good enough to do the job, it was even overkill. I was totally Ok with overkill, but Skippy cautioned the Dutchman could be damaged when we flew through the cloud of high-speed debris. Besides, we did not need crude nuclear devices, now that we had missiles captured from the Maxolhx. The kitties had a special type of warhead they used to disable ships they wanted to capture. It generated a focused cone of short-lived high-energy radiation that scrambled systems like sensors, missile guidance, unshielded computers, and anything that was biological and squishy. The weapons had to be used at short-range, and were ineffective against targets protected by an energy shield, so they were a specialized device that wasn’t useful in most engagements. The ship we had captured only had six of those special warheads, which were powered by a type of atomic-compression technology. Skippy wanted to use three of the devices, but I insisted on deploying four to be sure. Plus I wanted a pair of ship-killers ready in our launch tubes, if the radiation weapons didn’t take care of the problem.
We got the Maxolhx missiles loaded into the Dutchman’s launch tubes which was a bit awkward because the advanced-technology Maxolhx devices were actually smaller and so our tubes had to be modified.
We got everything ready, then we waited. Skippy used the wormhole’s sensor feed passively, not feeding anything back, and watched several ships or groups of ships approach the far end. There were groups of Thuranin ships, plus a Thuranin cruiser traveling alone, which Skippy could not explain. What interested us was a single Maxolhx cruiser, except it was soon joined by a pair of destroyers before they all went through the wormhole. Then a Maxolhx star carrier, ladened with six warships of various types. Finally, a single ship approached, a destroyer of a type the kitties stopped building six hundred years ago. It had been upgraded and modernized, and I considered targeting it. It was a judgment call. A destroyer was good enough, Skippy declared without a lot of enthusiasm. We might not get another opportunity. Soon, the Maxolhx would notice that three of their ships, traveling alone through a particular wormhole, had gone missing. They would then stop using that wormhole, and all ships would travel in groups.
Like I said, it was a judgment call. It felt like we were playing blackjack and were up big already. Did we quit while we were ahead, or let it ride and risk the casino shutting down the table? In the end, I just wasn’t ready to quit yet. Capturing a puny little destroyer felt like a disappointment, and we might have only one more roll of the dice before the network blocked Skippy from using the bagel slicer. I know, blackjack doesn’t use dice, and I’m mixing metaphors. Throw me a bone, Ok? It was a tense time.
I ordered Skippy to let the destroyer go, and we resumed waiting. Immediately after the destroyer jumped away safely, I had a major case of regrets, doubting myself. Other than small-ante poker games with friends, I had never been much of a gambler. Maybe I lack the experience to make informed calls in situations where-
It didn’t matter, because the Universe felt sorry for me. Or was setting me up for an even bigger fall in the future. A Maxolhx heavy cruiser, flying by itself, jumped in to wait at the far end of the wormhole. The assault teams and pilots had been waiting in their dropships for more than five hours, so they weren’t exactly fresh. Smythe made the call that his people could handle the task, and he assured me that his eagerness to go was not just macho bullshit. I trusted him, so I ordered Skippy to get the bagel slicer ready.
“Uh oh, Joe,” he groaned over the bridge speakers. “The network is asking me to confirm that I really want to use the bagel-slicer feature. It is also asking me why I want to do this.”
“Shit,” I gasped. The Dutchman was already under full acceleration toward the wormhole, yet far enough away that we could veer off instead of going through. It was also far enough away that an enemy ship coming through might have time to restore sensors, shields and stealth capability before we flew through the wormhole. “If we launch the nukes, can we have them intercept the enemy before it recovers from the spatial distortion.”
“Yes, but we have to launch them soon, like now.”
“Desai!” I shouted.
“On it,” she replied. “Birds away. Running hot, straight and normal.”
“What is your plan, Joe?” Skippy was puzzled. “Why are you trying to blow up that ship? If it’s such a threat, we can just let it go on its merry way.”
“I don’t want to blow it up, unless the bagel-slicer fails and it comes through the wormhole intact. If we use the Big Red Button to authorize those nukes to detonate, can you override, and make them not explode if the bagel-slicer works?”
“Hmm. Good question. I am still prohibited from using weapons, but in this case, I would be preventing the use of weapons. Um, yes. Huh, that is interesting. I never thought of that, Joe. Yes. To be clear, if the network refuses to slice that ship, I do nothing and let the nukes explode?”
“You got it,” I said, then realized that was poor communications discipline. “Affirmative. If the bagel-slicer does work, you deactivate those nukes. Desai?!”
“Sir?”
“If you don’t see nukes explode, take that as your cue to launch the four radiation weapons, and keep the ship-killers on a hair trigger.”
“No nuclear release, I launch the four specials, and ready the ship-killers.”
“Affirmative,” I agreed as I squeezed my hands together.
“Target ship is approaching the far side event horizon,” Skippy announced excitedly. “Three, two, one.” On the display, the wormhole winked out. “Slicer worked!
Nukes are deauthorized!”
“Special weapons are away,” Desai reported in a voice much more calm than Skippy.
The Dutchman raced onward, toward a heavy cruiser that was now more of a concept than an actual warship, and toward a wormhole that was reopening. “Specials will detonate in ten seconds,” Skippy counted down. “Anticipate- Oh, shit. Well, that answers that question. Joe, I am locked out of using the bagel-slicer. This is our last chance, we better make this one count. Aaaand, specials have detonated.”
The display showed four bright purple flashes just before they all merged into one bath of intense radiation. “Desai, on my signal, launch the ship-killers. Do not launch until I give the signal.” If we had an opportunity to capture the forward hull of another warship, I didn’t want to risk a communications foul-up causing a disaster.
“Understood,” Desai said. “Launch only on your signal.” That was not exactly repeating my order, but it was clear she knew what I meant.
“Skippy? Did the specials do the job?”
“I can’t tell yet, Joe,” he replied peevishly as on the display, I saw us go sliding by the tumbling hulk of the heavy cruiser. “Residual radiation is playing havoc with our sensors.”
Before I could respond, Reed spoke up from the pilot seat. “Colonel?” She reached up to point at the display between the pilot couches. The Dutchman’s present course was projected as a blue line intersecting the wormhole, with a red line cutting across in front of us. If we went past that red line, we would not be able to alter course fast enough to avoid hitting the event horizon.
“I see it. Skippy, is the wormhole stable?”
“Um, no. Not yet. However, it should be stable by the time we reach the event horizon. Oh, more good news: I scanned the target and I don’t detect any lifesigns. Also, the AI appears to be offline. There is substantial damage to all systems, hopefully I can still work with what is left.”
“We don’t need the ship-killers?”
“No, we do not, Joe.”
“Standing down,” Desai anticipated my next order. “Ship-killers are safed and are off the board.” She meant they could not be accidentally launched.
Manipulating the controls on the armrest of the command chair, I zoomed the main display on the wormhole. It had grown to full size which was good, and its edges were still flickering which was bad. “Uh, you are sure the wormhole will be stable before we get there?”
“Ugh. Yes, Mister Worrywart,” he scoffed. “That’s good, because I don’t have any more tricks up my sleeve. Ok, here we go. Three, two, one-”
The Flying Dutchman plunged into the twisted spacetime of the event horizon, and moments later, the wormhole winked out, leaving that area of interstellar space utterly dark again. The only objects of substantial size within three lightyears were a wandering chunk of ice that would become a comet in eighty-six thousand years when it entered a nearby red dwarf system, the forward section of a Maxolhx heavy cruiser, and two missiles with nuclear warheads.
The two warheads named Fred and Ethel commiserated about their fates, as the missiles they were encased in coasted away from the heavy cruiser at eleven thousand kilometers per hour. They were on different courses, moving apart at around two thousand klicks per hour. Unless the Flying Dutchman came back soon, which was unlikely, they would be so far away that it would not be worth the time and effort to recover them. Especially now that the Pirates had access to sophisticated Maxolhx weapons.
Ethel’s missile calculated that she would pass through or near thirteen star systems, before passing close enough to a supergiant blue-white star and being captured by its gravity. She would become a comet in a highly elliptical orbit, until the star collapsed and became a supernova.
That sucked, and she was so angry that she could have just exploded. Except she couldn’t, which sucked even worse.
Fred originally thought he would suffer the worst fate of all: coasting completely through the Milky Way and out into lonely intergalactic space, until his missile realized that the galaxy itself was moving through space. After that factor was included, it became clear that Fred would plunge into the massive Sagittarius-A black hole at the center of the galaxy.
Well, you know, Fred thought, that was just typical of his life. Nothing he could do about it.
It was good that Fred had not been called on to explode, because he was, in fact, a dud.
We came through the wormhole just fine, without the Universe having to select an improbable probability of reality just for us, or whatever the hell happened the last time. “Skippy, did the-”
“Jackpot, Joe!” He shouted. “Score! We have another engineering section intact. And, I sliced that ship super precisely, just aft of the armory. Which is good, because I am detecting, eleven, no, twelve kitties alive over there.”
“Crap. Ok, Desai, signal the assault ships to launch. Skippy, suggest landing target zones and feed the data to the pilots. I don’t like- Belay that!” I snapped my fingers to stop Desai. She lifted her hands to show she wasn’t touching the controls. “We have two enhanced-radiation warheads left. Skippy, can we just bombard the ship with radiation, instead of the STAR team hunting the kitties down in there?”
“No way, dude. That is a terrible idea, it would scramble a bunch of the gear we need.”
“Shit. All right, we’ll have to do this the hard way. Desai, give the launch order.” She hesitated a half-second to see if I would change my mind again, then the display showed dropships surging away from us.
“Joe,” Skippy changed the main display to a schematic of the target ship. “This is not necessarily going to be all that hard. The areas where the assault teams need to interrupt power are a third of the way around the hull from where most of the Maxolhx are concentrated. There are the only two kitties that are in a position to interfere with the boarding operation, and one of them is badly injured.”
“How about the others?” That still left eleven alien super-warriors who could cause a lot of trouble for Smythe.
“I am running deep scans with active sensors now, but most of the hull in that section is heavily shielded for obvious reasons. There is also equipment that interferes with our scans. The reactors have safely shut down, so the enemy will not be able to overload them and blow up the ship. Yup, lots of good news all around.”
“Good news, huh?” I got out of the chair and took three steps to the main display, tapping a finger on the schematic. “This is a missile magazine, right?” It was labeled that way, but I didn’t know if he was guessing.
“Correct. Like I said, good news. You can thank me later.”
“Hey, shithead, what will happen if the Maxolhx get to that magazine, and set a warhead to self-destruct?”
“Oh. Shit. I didn’t think of that. Thanks a lot, Mister Buzzkill.”
“Killing is what I’m worried about. If that magazine goes up, it could take the whole ship with it, right?”
“Ugh, yes. Um, this could be a problem. Ok, I have completed the scan. There are now only six kitties alive and mobile over there, the others are badly injured. That’s the good news. The bad news is, five of them are proceeding along an access corridor toward the missile magazine.”
“Shit. Desai, wave off the dropships, I don’t want them anywhere near that ship.”
Smythe was not ready to give up. “Skippy, is there anywhere we could latch on a dropship that is close to that corridor?”
“No,” Skippy grunted. “That section of the hull is the badlands, there are too many antennas, radiators and defensive cannons projecting from the hull. A dropship would get tangled up. It’s too dangerous.”
“Right,” Smythe conceded. “Then, we could do this the hard way. Park a dropship beyond the antennas, then the assault teams go in using jetpacks.”
“Whoa!” Skippy gasped. “That is crazy.”
“Smythe, I agree,” I agreed. “That ship is tumbling too much to fly a jetpack in there. It’s not safe.”
“As you pointed
out, Sir,” he said with dry humor. “This is not about safety.”
I hated having my own words thrown back in my face. “Smythe, hold on, I’ll look at the area.” He knew I could fly a jetpack, and his people had more skill and experience with free-flying in space. “Skippy, zoom in the view on the corridor, and highlight the magazine.”
“Done. Joe, I know space monkeys are eager for action, but I just ran simulations. Attempting to maneuver in there with a jetpack is extremely hazardous. The only access to the interior, in that whole area, is here where the corridor runs along the outside- HUH!” he gasped. “Joe, I just got another monkey-brained idea! Get the dropships clear, we need to move the ship. Course is programmed in the nav system.”
“Colonel?” Reed inquired from the pilot couch.
“Do it, and step on it,” I ordered. “Skippy, what is your idea?”
Before he answered, he showed a video on the display. The enemy ship was slowly tumbling out of control, while the Flying Dutchman drew alongside and matched speed. As the part of the enemy hull with the corridor rotated into view, the Dutchman fired a maser cannon. The video zoomed in, showing the maser beam chewing into the exterior of the corridor, which in that area was a tube running along the outside of the hull. “Joe, that ship is exposed, it is not protected by an energy shield. The corridor does not have armor plating. We can cut into it with a maser beam. That will either kill the enemy, or make them find another way to the missile magazine.”
“Wow. I’m impressed, Skippy. You can do that without hitting anything we need?”
“It’s going to be tricky, but I can preprogram the cannon.” he said with that overconfidence that annoyed me. “The difficult part will be cutting into that corridor while the Maxolhx are in there. I am estimating when they will be there, based on their progress to date. The timing will be close. Oh, also, there is a power feed running along the corridor. If that gets hit, it might cause a feedback power surge that could overload the powercells of a particle cannon, and that might damage the missile magazine. It will be tricky,” he repeated. “I always tell you to trust the awesomeness, but I have to admit in this case, I am not sure we can do this. It could be a disaster.”
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