Man, that was a conversation I very much did not want to have at, I checked my zPhone, oh two forty five in the morning. “Skippy, if I stipulate that the guy in that story had a good case for a restraining order against Sam, can you drop the subject?”
“Certainly.”
“Great. Ok, good night, I will-”
“I’m glad we agree on that issue. Children should not be taught to badger people until they get what they want.”
“Yeah, I, uh-”
“And do not get me started on the questionable physics of ‘Horton Hears A Who’.” He snorted. “If the Whos are as small as the book claims, they must be nanoscale, and the wavelength of their voices would be waaay to short for Horton to-”
My night kind of went downhill from there.
After my alarm sounded, in the middle of a deep philosophical discussion about Yertle the freakin’ Turtle, I staggered into the shower and let hot water cascade over my head until Skippy gave up trying to talk to me. In the galley, Adams was there, a towel over her shoulders. She had gotten up before me and already been to the gym.
“Good morning, Sir,” she held up a cup of coffee for me.
I took the coffee and could not reply right away, because I was yawning so hard I couldn’t speak. “Morning, Gunny,” I finally managed to say while slurping the hot coffee.
“You look like shit, Sir. Did you get any sleep?”
“Not much.” My brain was in such a dense fog, I didn’t think about what I was saying. “Do you want to have children?”
“What?” Her eyebrows flew upward and she glanced around the galley. Other than us, there were two people back in the kitchen, so no one could hear us. That could change any second, as people came in to get coffee. Lowering her voice, her eyes cast down in a coy gesture I should have recognized, if my brain was not so sleep-deprived. “You really want to have that discussion here? Now?”
“What? Oh!” Amazingly, my brain went from zero to Maximum Alert in a split-second. “No, Gunny, I, shit.” I waved my hands frantically, sloshing coffee onto the deck. “Sorry. Look, Skippy drunk-dialed me and kept me up all night, explaining why Doctor Seuss books are terrible for children, and that everything my parents taught me is wrong.”
“Oh,” her expression was a mixture of relief and disappointment. Or maybe I just sucked at reading people. “You didn’t, um, mean-”
“I was just making a joke, Adams. If we ever- You! If you ever have children, do not ask Skippy for parenting advice.”
“Sir,” she grinned at me over her coffee, the mug hiding her smile but not the twinkle in her eyes. “I didn’t need you to tell me that.”
“I suppose not. It was a long night, Gunny.” Setting my coffee on a counter, I knelt down with a towel to mop up the coffee I had spilled on the deck. Something in her bemused expression was odd, until I realized I was down on one knee in front of her. “Uhhh-” I couldn’t think of anything to say. “This is not what it looks like,” I explained to a group of people who, just then, walked into the galley.
“It had better not be,” Adams said with a wink. “If this is the way you propose, I feel sorry for the girl.”
Quickly, I dried the deck, stuffed the towel in a bin to be washed, and hurried out the door.
“Colonel?” Adams called after me. “You forgot the rest of your coffee.”
“Believe me, Gunny,” I paused in the doorway. “I am wide awake now.”
To make the Valkyrie into the bad-ass warship we needed, we had to acquire a set of power boosters. By ‘acquire’ I mean ‘steal’ and by ‘steal’ I mean ‘kill the people who have boosters and take them’. There is no nice way to say that. No, wait. Maybe there is a nice way to say that, but saying it nicely would be bullshit. The harsh fact was, we needed power boosters to save our home planet, maybe our entire species. I was willing to do a whole lot of morally sketchy things to make that happen.
Skippy had identified a relatively soft target, where we could get power boosters to fix up Valkyrie and the old Dutchman. Though we would be hitting a Maxolhx facility, we had a good plan, and I was feeling confident, which was a bad sign. Until recently, the idea of getting anywhere close to anything controlled by the Maxolhx would have had me quaking in my boots. Now, I thought we had a pretty good chance of the operation succeeding. That made me worry the Universe would see this operation as a perfect time to smack Joe Bishop down for all the crazy shit I had done. So, while I wasn’t worried about the plan, I was worried about worrying which maybe meant the Universe would leave me alone for a while.
I know, the twisted logic that goes on in my head scares me sometimes.
“Joe,” Skippy popped up on my desk without warning, startling me. It would be nice if a bell chimed right before his hologram shimmered to life. “Got a question for you.”
“Maybe I have an answer. What’s up?”
“You complain about us taking too many risks, but now you’re planning to hit the Maxolhx, to get the VPMs we need. My question is, why are we doing this? The way we plan to trap the enemy battlegroup outside the galaxy has me doing all the work to set up the wormhole chain. We do not actually need the Valkyrie to do that. I know we went through a lot of trouble to build a warship, but are you now too invested in having another ship?”
“I don’t think that-”
“Because if we lose the Dutchman in the op to get power boosters, then we may not be able to get me to where I can set up the wormhole chain.”
“Lose the Dutchman?” That made me pause. Skippy was really worried about something. “This is supposed to be a soft target.”
“Relatively soft, Joe. It is still a Maxolhx base, defended by Maxolhx technology. Unlike the op to hack the library files of the target battlegroup, stealing power boosters will require squishy biological trashbags to risk their meatsack bodies. It is risky, Joe.”
“I know it’s risky. Everything we do out here is a risk.”
“Then why are we doing this? Are you so eager to play with your new toy that-”
“It isn’t a toy, and this isn’t a game. We do need Valkyrie. Not to create the wormhole chain, but for the backup plan.”
“Um, what backup plan?”
“Ok, I should have discussed this with you. Sorry. Listen, how sure are you that you can create a chain of wormholes, all the way outside the galaxy?”
“Hoo boy, that is a good question, Joe. I simply do not know. It should work. I am confident in my ability to control the wormholes. But, I will be placing event horizons in dangerously close proximity, so the network might refuse my commands. It is pretty certain the network will revise its protocols so we can’t try this stunt a second time. Thus, I can’t test it.”
“That’s why we need a backup plan, and for that, we need Valkyrie.”
“I do not like the sound of that, Joe. What reckless thing are you intending as a backup plan, that requires an advanced warship? I warned you, even with a full set of power boosters, Valkyrie can’t take on a reinforced battlegroup.”
“We don’t need to destroy the entire battlegroup, Skippy. We just need to buy time. Even if the wormhole chain thing does work, we are only buying time for Earth. Eventually, the Maxolhx will notice their battlegroup failed to return from Earth, and they will get serious about sending a war fleet to destroy my homeworld.”
“That is true, unfortunately. Like you said, the days of us sneaking around conducting secret operations is over. Ok, what is the backup plan?”
“If the wormhole chain thing doesn’t work for whatever reason, we take Valkyrie through the Goalpost wormhole, and wait there. The battlegroup will send a scout ship through, we leave it alone while we hide in our stealth field- Uh, we can do that, right? Hide close to the wormhole?”
“That’s kind of iffy, Joe. I have upgraded the original Maxolhx stealth capability, which was already very advanced. However, it depends on how close we are to the scout ship, and whether it uses active sensors. The kitties have sophisticated sensors that map the fabric
of spacetime, so an active scan might detect our presence, by the way the Valkyrie’s mass creates a gravity well.”
“Shit.” I could see my backup plan falling apart, because of my ignorance. Because of my incompetence. “I did not know that. Well, there goes that idea.”
“Not necessarily, Joe. If we park the Valkyrie a good distance away, say a couple lightminutes, then we should be safe. The active scan degrades with distance. Unless the scout ship is determined to conduct a detailed scan of the entire area, it should not detect us. I think we’d be safe. The Maxolhx are arrogant, plus they believe that beyond the Goalpost wormhole is nothing. They will assume there is not any potential threat in the area.”
“Ok, that’s good, that’s good. In that case, we need to be far enough away to hide from a scan, and close enough that we can jump in to hit the first star carrier, before its systems fully recover.”
“Um, that will be very tricky timing. Don’t count on doing that, Joe. We would need to guess when the star carrier is coming through, and time our inbound jump precisely. If we jump in too early, the scout ship would warn the star carrier, and it would abort its approach.”
“Ok, well, then we jump in as soon as we see that first star carrier come through. I know, there will be a lag as the sensor data crawls out to us at the speed of light. What matters is, we jump in, hammer the star carrier with everything we’ve got, then jump away before they can hit us. Hopefully we cause a lot of damage, we’re going more for shock value than physical results. The intent is to get the kitties to retreat through Goalpost, and think long and hard about what to do next. We want them to wonder what the hell is going on. Their ships got attacked, by a ship that appears to be based on their own technology. The survivors will have to go back to base to report what happened. With just a little bit of luck, the Maxolhx will wonder if the ship that attacked them was controlled by a breakaway faction of Bopshuraq. They will not send another mission to Earth, until they have some answers.”
“Sure, Joe. But when they do send another mission to Earth, it will be a massive force.”
“A whole fleet, or a reinforced battlegroup, makes no difference, Skippy. Either way, Earth is toast. We’re just buying time.”
“To do what?”
“I haven’t got that figured out yet.”
“Whoo. Shit. These are truly desperate times, my friend.”
“Hey, come on, Skippy. We are the Merry Band of Pirates. We will have an upgraded Flying Dutchman, a bad-ass warship, and the incomparable magnificence of you.”
“Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence. But, if you have a Taco Bell coupon, I wouldn’t wait too long to use it, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, hell. Yeah, I do.”
Sitting with Adams, we were planning menus for our next duty day in the galley. “How about we make cheeseburgers?” I suggested. “For lunch, not dinner.” I knew she wanted to make one of her grandmother’s recipes for the evening meal.
“Cheeseburgers?”
“I know, I always want cheeseburgers. But, we haven’t had them since the cookout on Avalon, and I am craving-”
“You are always craving cheeseburgers, Sir,” she winked at me playfully, and that was the best thing that happened to me since, well, maybe ever. “The problem is, have you checked our supplies? We don’t have a whole lot of ground beef left. We don’t have a lot of anything left. This mission wasn’t supposed to last so long.”
“Uh,” I mentally smacked myself. When Simms was aboard, I checked the logistics report every morning, because I knew she would mention something that day and I didn’t want to look stupid. Since we departed Avalon, Nagatha had a nice report available, and I had glanced at it occasionally, but my limited attention span wasn’t able to focus on mundane details. “Oh, right,” I blushed. It was no use pretending our supply situation wasn’t news to me, Adams knew me too well. “Uh, that’s no problem. We can make Oklahoma fried onion burgers.”
“What? You’re from Maine. How do you know about Oklahoma-”
“It’s something my grandmother used to make. Her mother made them way back in, like the Great Depression. You use a layer of onions on the patties, to stretch out the beef, because onions were cheap and beef wasn’t. You know,” I tapped my lips with a finger. “I had forgotten all about those burgers. They are really good, like, extra juicy.”
“If you say so, Sir.”
“Are you questioning your commanding officer’s judgment, Gunnery Sergeant?” I asked with mock severity.
She laughed. “All the time, Sir, all the time.”
The next day, it was our turn in the galley, so I was forming the onions and beef into patties, with onions forming the bottom layer to stretch out our dwindling supply of ground beef. A few feet away from me, Adams was busy making potato salad. Naturally, no matter how much space there was in the galley’s kitchen, we got in each other’s way. Both of us reached for the pepper at the same time, and my hand closed over hers. Because it startled me, and because I am an idiot, my hand lingered on hers for a beat too long, long enough for her to pull away first. “S-sorry,” I choked out.
“It’s Ok,” she looked away, then glanced back with her eyes slightly downcast, giving me a coy smile.
Apparently, something happened during the next couple minutes, although I have no memory of it. The next thing I do remember is reaching into the bowl of onions and coming up empty. Somehow, I had made burger patties totally on autopilot. There were pepper flakes in the bowl, so at some point, I must have used the pepper shaker. Although, it was in front of Adams when I looked at her. Did I give it to her, or just set it down on the table and she picked it up? Either way, we must have worked silently for at least several minutes.
“I’m uh, done,” I announced.
“Good. That’s, good,” she replied without looking at me. There was a catch in her voice. Damn it, sometimes I wish guys weren’t so bad at reading emotions. Or maybe it was just me, more than one girlfriend had told me I was particularly clueless. Was she not looking at me because she was upset? Was she feeling the same way I was? Or was the situation just so awkward she wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else?
One thing was certain, it was an awkward moment. “I will, uh, put the patties in the fridge. Oh, the dough has risen for the buns,” I looked at the trays sitting on a warming plate. “Time to turn the oven on for baking.”
“You’re the baker,” her eyes flashed to mine and I was suddenly sure of another thing; whatever she was feeling, she was not angry at me.
“Just one of my many talents,” I joked, hearing how lame it sounded.
“Like your singing?” She looked right at me with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Not like my singing,” I said with a mock stern expression, and we both laughed.
We got the first batch of burger buns into the oven and set a timer, then started working on the dinner she was making. My first job was to boil water for rice pilaf. Looking at the boxes stacked on the counter, I remembered something I had seen in one of the cargo bays. “Hey, Skippy,” I called out. “We have a lot of this stuff, right? Why is that?”
“A mistake, Joe,” he explained. “We didn’t unload all the Rice-a-Roni that Simms asked for, to be sent down to Avalon. By the time she noticed, we were buttoning the ship up to leave orbit. So, we are stuck with five crates of, The San Francisco Treat,” he sang like a very old TV commercial, if you are old enough to remember ads on television.
“Rice-a-Roni, huh?” I examined the box. My family had eaten it occasionally, of course, but I never paid much attention to the stuff. “Sounds Italian.”
“It is rice and pasta, Joe,” he sniffed, in a tone that implied an unspoken ‘duh’.
“I wonder if there’s a Polish version with rice and cabbage, called Rice-a-Rooski?”
“Ugh, Joe, you are such an-”
Adams interrupted him, by playfully slapping my shoulder with a towel. “You are funny,” she giggled. Yes, Gunnery Sergeant Adam
s giggled. “Rice-a-rooski,” she said with a laugh.
We worked quietly side by side, because I didn’t want to spoil the mood, plus I didn’t know what to say. After a couple minutes of us slicing vegetables, she softly said “This is nice.”
I swallowed before speaking, so my throat wouldn’t be dry. “Yeah, this will be tasty.”
“No,” she lifted her knife away from the cutting board. “I mean,” she waved the knife to encompass the galley. “I mean, this. Us working together like this.”
“It is nice.” Like a coward, I said the safest thing I could think of.
She bobbed her head in agreement, the curls of her hair falling around her forehead. Like most of the crew, she had allowed her hair to grow longer than regulation since we left Earth, and her bangs fell in curls to frame her face. She had beautiful hair, and I often felt like commenting about it. But I knew that to a black woman, her hair is a whole thing, like a sensitive subject, and it was none of my business. So I nodded like an idiot and grinned back at her, again playing it safe.
“Feels kind of like we’re playing House,” she added wistfully.
“House? Like, our house? Us?” Unfortunately, my brain did not have a reply ready, so I blurted out the thing at the top of my ‘Stupid Things To Say’ stack. My brain has joined the Universe in hating me.
She froze, her knife in the air above a tomato. “I meant, this is like something normal people do, you know? People in their nice happy homes, not stuck aboard a starship a thousand lightyears from their families.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said as my brain spat out something from the ‘Lame Things To Say’ stack.
She bailed me out of my self-induced awkwardness, whether she intended to or not. She reached across me to pick up a jar of seasonings. She brushed against my shoulder, and I got a whiff of whatever she used for shampoo. It smelled like tropical flowers and coconuts and sunshine. Inhaling her scent was like an instant beach vacation. “Sorry,” she muttered as she held up the jar and shook it as she pulled away.
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