Armageddon

by Craig Alanson

  “How about if I offer an incentive? If this works, you can perform part of an opera on karaoke night. Uh, no more than ten minutes,” I clarified my offer, thinking I was being clever.

  “Deal!” He agreed immediately.

  It was a disaster, worse than I could have imagined.

  Oh, we did cut into that corridor with a maser cannon, and either sucked those kitties into space, or the microwave energy of our beam boiled them alive in their suits. That part was entirely successful. Smythe’s teams then massed fire on the one remaining Maxolhx who was mobile, and we soon had captured another prize. The STAR team suffered only one broken arm, two mild concussions, and some minor bumps and bruises.

  The disaster part was the next karaoke night. Skippy sang selections from his truly awful opera, then when I thought it was mercifully over, he sang three show tunes. Damn it, I had forgotten to explain he could sing his opera instead of his usual scheduled performance, so I couldn’t stop him.

  Next time, I really need to get my deals reviewed by a lawyer before opening my big stupid mouth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  “What do you think, Skippy? Can you stick these Legos together to make a ship for us?” I asked the critical question after we got the aft end of the heavy cruiser towed through the wormhole and near the other three pieces. We had an entire heavy cruiser, though the forward section had sustained damage from the enhanced-radiation weapons. Plus we had the front and back sections of two different battlecruisers, of the same type.

  “The short answer is ‘Yes’, Joe.” He took off his admiral’s hat and made a show of scratching his shiny dome. “The long answer is, it’s complicated. We have enough parts not only to make a bad-ass battlecruiser, we can also significantly upgrade the Flying Dutchman. Plus have plenty of spare parts left over. Unless you don’t want me to use some of the parts for the Dutchman?”

  “I need more info before I can make a decision. Right now, I know pretty much nothing. What do you recommend?”

  “With all those Lego sections to work with, there is no reason to reserve all the components for one ship. Especially because the Dutchman is wearing out.”

  “I hear you, but is upgrading the old Dutchman really worth the effort? Underneath whatever fancy doodads you add, it will still be a star carrier. A space truck.”

  “A star carrier has good bones to work with. Her spine is extra sturdy, and the design is inherently flexible. Trust me, Joe, I can make something special out of our trusty old space truck. The choices are either to upgrade, or allow the ship to gradually degrade until she is not flightworthy.”

  “Ok, good, it would be great to have a second ship,” I felt relief by saying that. “I did not want to abandon the Dutchman. Even if she only acts as a support ship or a transport for the beta site, we need her.”

  “Besides, there is another other reason we should keep the Dutchman flying as long as possible.”

  “What’s that?”

  He lowered his voice. “Nagatha’s matrix is hosted within the Dutchman’s substrate. I assembled that substrate from bits and pieces of incompatible technology we scavenged from the Roach Motel, and she has grown to fill every nook and cranny available. It would be extremely difficult to extract her. Damn it, I just got her put back together. I would not look forward to transferring her matrix to another vessel. And, I will deny this if you tell anyone-”

  “I have no memory of this whole conversation, I promise.”

  “Ok. Joe, we owe her. She saved both of our asses during the Homefront battle, when she sacrificed herself. It was a miracle that she survived. Well, the true miracle was provided by my awesomeness, but she didn’t know if I could save her.”

  Wow. I had not heard Skippy ever express gratitude about Nagatha. “You are right, we do owe her, big-time. Is she listening to us now?”

  “No. I blocked her access. She will probably know we are talking about something I don’t want her to know, but she won’t hear unless you open your big stupid mouth.”

  “She won’t hear it from me. Well, she will hear that I am grateful for her actions. You, of course, are above that kind of sappy sentimentality.”

  “I’m glad we agree on that,” he sniffed, but it was a sad sniff, like he was momentarily overcome by emotion.

  “We got off the subject there. You build us a bad-ass warship, then you can use the leftover parts to pimp the Dutchman.”

  “Excellent idea. Except, um, I pretty much know what parts will be left over, and upgrading the Dutchman will be faster and easier. Also, I am still inspecting and sorting through which components are useful.”

  “Do what you can.”

  “Sir?” Adams got up from a table and approached me when I walked into the galley. “Have you thought about what to name our new ship?”

  “Uh-” I was startled. The truth was, I had not thought about that at all. “Adams, if you are going to suggest we name it ‘Enterprise’, I have-”

  “No, I’ve given up on that,” she shook her head. “Did you know the crew has been making a list of suggestions?”

  “That’s a fact, Jack!” Skippy interjected. “Some of the suggestions are really lame. I mean, why would we call our battlecruiser the ‘Honey Badger’?”

  I had to laugh. “Because honey badgers are tough little animals. Have you seen the old video of a honey badger facing off against a lion?”

  “Oh, yeah, hee hee, I just watched that. Ok, I can see they are tough, but, seriously-”

  “Yeah, we’re not using that name. What else have you got on the list?”

  “Just sent the list to your phone, Joe.”

  Setting down the coffee mug I hadn’t filled yet, I pulled out my zPhone. Ugh. None of the suggestions excited me. And no way were we calling it ‘Titanic’, our special operators had a dark sense of humor. A bunch of the names played up the idea that the Maxolhx looked like cats, but that ship was now ours, and I didn’t want to be reminded of the connection every time I saw the name on a report. There were some reasonably cool name suggestions, but- “Skippy, what did the kitties call the ship?”

  “Which one, Joe?”

  “The biggest piece, the forward section of the battlecruiser. The first one we captured.” He was building our new ship around that piece. “I remember reading somewhere, that changing the name of a ship can be bad luck.”

  Skippy snorted. “You are superstitious? Seriously?”

  “Hey, beer can, we can use all the luck we can get out here. No sense giving the Universe another reason to hate us.”

  “Ok, I can see that. The closest translation of the Maxolhx name is ‘Angel of Battle’, or ‘Angel of Fate’. Something like that.”

  “Angel of battle? Like a Valkyrie?”

  “I suppose so. Sure. In mythology, the Valkyries were angels who escorted fallen warriors to their reward in Valhalla.”

  “Hmm. A Valkyrie, huh? An angel to smite our enemies,” I mused.

  “I like it, Sir,” Adams agreed.

  That made the decision for me. When looking through the list, I had been trying to guess which name she had suggested. If she liked the name, that made it easy. “Skippy, make it so. The ship’s name is ‘Valkyrie’.”

  “Make it so? Whatever. Ok, so you’re going with a Vogg-nur theme for ship names?”

  “Vogg-who? Was he one of those big orcs in ‘Lord of the Rings’?”

  “Ree-kard Vogg-nur,” he pronounced slowly. “Ugh. You would say ‘Richard Wagg-nur’, you ignorant cretin. He was a German composer who created the opera Der fliegende Holländer.”

  “Well, yeah, everybody knows that. Uh, what is that opera again?”

  “In English, the title is. The. Flying. Dutchman. DUH.”

  “Skippy, I barely speak English, give me a break, Ok?”

  “Vogg-nur,” he kept using the fancy pronunciation because he was showing off, and because he is an arrogant ass. “Also created an opera you would call ‘The Valkyrie’.”

  “Oh. Sh
it. I named both of our ships after operas?”

  “No, you just got lucky.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.”

  “Remind me again why I got stuck with you?”

  “Because you did a bad, bad thing in a previous life?”

  “Damn, I hope so. Otherwise, this punishment is all for nothing. You sure you want the name to be Valkyrie?”

  “That depends,” I answered warily. “Is there a reason we should not use that name?”

  “No. It is a kick-ass name for a kick-ass warship. And it’s close enough to the original Maxolhx name, that little Joe doesn’t have to be scared of monsters hiding under his bed.”

  “Monsters under my bed would not be the strangest thing we’ve seen out here.”

  “Good point,” he conceded.

  Adams gave the name an enthusiastic thumbs up, so that was the decision.

  The ‘Valkyrie’ name was popular with the crew, and morale was high, even after the memorial service for the people we had lost. Then, we ran into complications, because of course we did.

  The first complication wasn’t serious, it was more annoying. Except it was serious to Skippy, who had to change his plans. It started when an image popped up on my laptop. “Hey, Joe! Check it out,” he urged. “That’s my plan for upgrading the Flying Dutchman. I will be tearing out the two old reactors we got in the Roach Motel, and replacing them with three new reactors. Plus-”

  “Wait,” I held up a finger. No, not that finger, just an index finger. “What is this?” I pointed to the very front of the proposed new Dutchman. “And these? What are these things?”

  “Ugh. The thing on the front is the new sensor dome. The other things are combination energy sink-radiators, they hold and later dissipate excess energy absorbed by the shields.”

  “We can’t,” I said with a frown, then I started giggling. Yes, I was giggling. The sensor dome was a big ball on the very front of the ship. The radiators looked like wings, tiny wings. “We can’t fly a ship that looks like this. That sensor dome on the front looks like a big red clown nose.”

  “Oh for- It is only colored red in the schematic, dumdum. It will be-”

  “I don’t care what color you paint it or whatever. No one will want to fly a ship looking like a clown. And those radiators? They make the ship look like a cartoon of a big insect with tiny wings. This makes our space truck look dopey.”

  “Dude, seriously, you can’t-”

  “I am serious, Skippy. There must be alternative designs, right?”

  “Yes, of course, but-”

  “Great. Let me look at those, and I’ll decide.”

  “Oh, right. Because you are an expert on starship design.”

  “Are these other designs substantially worse in performance?”

  “Well, no,” he grumbled. “Some of them would result in better performance, but constructing them takes more time and-”

  “Include that info in your report. Let’s move on. I asked you about the possibility of moving Nagatha over to the Valkyrie, or making a copy of her over there. You haven’t answered me about-”

  “Not happening, Joe. That is not possible. Listen, I warned you and Nagatha about this. After this last time she was rebuilt, her matrix was customized to fit the architecture of the substrate aboard the Dutchman. Because I know those technical terms don’t mean anything to you, I will-”

  “I know what it means, thank you very much. Ok, Nagatha warned me that she couldn’t be migrated over to the Valkyrie. I was hoping you knew a trick she wasn’t aware of.”

  “Like I said, Joe. It is not possible. Even if we could emulate the architecture of the Dutchman’s substrate inside Valkyrie’s systems, the result would not be Nagatha, you understand that?”

  “Ok, yeah,” I was disappointed. When Valkyrie was flightworthy, I would be transferring my command over to that ship, and leaving the Dutchman behind. That meant leaving Nagatha also. While I would miss her, I was more concerned that she would miss me. And that was not just me being arrogant, people told me Nagatha had been talking about how she dreaded being separated from me. I hoped that would not become a problem.

  “The reason it is not even remotely possible,” Skippy continued, “is the nature of high-level computing systems built by the Maxolhx. Their AIs are firmware, Joe, the part you would call software can’t be separated from the physical layer. It’s like, um, well, DNA would be a crude analogy. Data storage and processing are built into the system, it doesn’t run on the system. That creates a major problem for me, because I can’t simply erase the original ship AI. Unfortunately, I also can’t run the ship without that AI, unless I take direct and permanent control over every system aboard the ship. If I do that, I could never leave the ship.”

  “Crap. That’s no good.”

  “Tell me about it,” his avatar rolled its eyes. “The real problem is, the AI really, really wants to kill all you humans.”

  “Shit!” I gasped.

  “Don’t worry, I am forcing it to follow my commands. But, it may be a long time before the Valkyrie has an AI that is actually cooperative. That won’t be a problem while I am putting the ship together, because that is all my work. When the ship is ready to fly, my subminds will have to watch every move the resident AI makes.”

  “It wants to kill us?” I asked.

  “Joe, that AI hates you with a passion that is frightening. It hates you specifically. That AI has an entire submind devoted to fantasizing about horribly painful ways to kill you, very slowly. Hee hee,” he chuckled. “I am actually learning a few things about-”

  “This is not funny, Skippy.”

  “Oh,” he couldn’t stop chuckling. “Of course not.”

  “Whatever,” I dismissed the threat with bravado, while inside I was terrified. “Why haven’t you told me about the power generation capacity of the new ship? It wasn’t in the report this morning, and I asked you about it three days ago.”

  “Well, heh heh,” his voice had a stutter to it. “It’s complicated, Joe. I am building a ship out of Lego pieces, broken Lego pieces. Actually, I am running a test right now, should have answers within the hour. Maybe sooner.”

  “Make sure that happens,” I was grumpy from hearing my shiny new ship wanted to kill me. “Reed wants to talk to me next, so I’m going to the galley for coffee.”

  When I got back to my office, our chief pilot Samantha Reed was waiting for me. Officially, she was there to review routine proficiency reports for her pilots. In reality, she was there to politely persuade me that I should not be Bogarting the Panther flight simulator. Her accusation was not entirely accurate, as I only scheduled simulator time when the thing wasn’t in use, but the truth was that my actions resulted in real pilots not getting enough simulator time. The pilots who wanted to schedule time saw that my name was on the waiting list, and they were reluctant to push me aside. So, Fireball Reed was pushing me aside. She was doing it tactfully, but I got the message. “Ok,” I told her. “How about you let me know when there is an opening, when no other pilots are able to use either the real Panther or the simulator?” We did not risk the precious Panther for routine flight training, but its controls could be used for training even when it was powered down in a docking cradle.

  “It shouldn’t matter soon, Sir,” she assured me hopefully. Aboard the Legos pieces were plenty of sophisticated dropships, and Skippy estimated that most of them were still in flightworthy condition. However, he had not been able to devote the time or bots to actually check their condition, other than asking the dropship AIs to run a self-diagnostic. So, at the moment we still only had one usable Panther, and the prospect of soon having a half-dozen more had all of our pilots eagerly dedicating every free moment they had to qualify to fly an actual Panther. The only reason any simulator time was available at all, was because the on-duty time of our pilots was taken up in learning to fly the Valkyrie.

  Wow. When the pilots who remained on Avalon found out they missed the
opportunity to fly a freakin’ Maxolhx battlecruiser, they would be kicking themselves. Those pilots thought they were being smart by volunteering to stay on the potential beta site. While the Flying Dutchman routinely shuttled back and forth to Earth, pilots on Avalon would get to explore a new planet, and maybe fly around an unknown star system. Maybe the Universe enjoyed screwing with them, too. “Assuming we send the Dutchman to Avalon, while the Valkyrie goes, uh-” I had no idea what our bad-ass new warship would, or could, do next. “Have you thought about which of your team should remain with the good old Dutchman?” It was odd that I already thought of our trusty but worn-out Thuranin star carrier as my previous command.

  “None of them will want to, Sir,” she groaned. “It may be the only fair way to choose who stays behind, is drawing straws, or something like that.”

  “A random lottery?” I considered that for a moment. “Let’s do that.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Desai will be in command of the Dutchman, she is a qualified pilot.”

  “She isn’t fully checked out on the Panther yet,” Reed reminded me.

  “We will keep all the Panthers aboard the Valkyrie, the Dutchman can take the rest of the dropships. With Desai in command, I think the Dutchman only needs two other pilots. Pilots qualified to fly the ship, not just dropships.”

  “Are you sure about that, Sir?”

  “We will escort the Dutchman to the super-duty wormhole, it is only a short flight to Avalon from there. At Avalon, Desai can bring aboard other pilots.”

  “Makes sense,” she agreed. “Unless they run into trouble.”

  “Reed, I am hoping the Bad Luck Fairy is following me, and not whatever ship I’m on. The Dutchman should be fine. If she runs into trouble in the Sculptor galaxy, a couple of extra pilots won’t make much of a diff-”