"Sure, sure, that's what happened. I'm a freakin' genius."
My Spidey sense tingled. He wasn't fooling me for a second. "You lying little jerk. Truth, Skippy. The truth shall set you free."
"I never understood that expression. Lying is so much easier, Joe."
"Now, Skippy."
"Well, heh, heh, here's the thing," he said, in his nervous tone that was the reason he could never successfully lie to me. "My original stupid plan was truly pure genius. The Thuranin would never have suspected us to try anything that stupid. After I created that solar flare, much bigger even than I had hoped, by the way, I didn't have much data on that star and I had to estimate the composition of its photosphere-"
"Get to the point, please, Skippy." My headache was killing me.
"After I triggered the solar flare, my plan was to distort spacetime in reverse, to flatten it enough right around the ship that we could jump away. I knew the Thuranin ships had no chance to escape, the gravity waves propagated at the speed of light, and those ships were too deep in the gravity well to jump away. The problem was, I'd never before flattened spacetime to that extent so deep in a gravity well, it was theoretically possible, however I didn't have the math for it. I had to guess, go in on blind faith, that was the stupid part."
"Ok, stupid, but, hey, it worked. We're alive. Mostly."
"You want the truth, Joe? It didn't work, not entirely, not the way I planned it." Skippy admitted sadly. "The flattening spacetime part, I mean. I couldn't make it hold long enough to get the ship all the way through the jump, the gravity waves made spacetime resonate in a way I couldn't predict, and I didn't have time to create a model and test it. I failed, I totally failed."
"Then how are we still alive?"
"You monkeys would describe it as luck. The gravity waves on this end of the wormhole caused a resonance in spacetime that made the wormhole fail as we entered it, the presence of the ship inside the wormhole made the resonance increase exponentially. The laws of physics here are an annoying pain most of the time, but in this case they saved our asses. Because the ship had already emerged from the far end of the wormhole before we entered it on the near end, it would have violated causality for the ship to be destroyed while in transit. The universe doesn't allow causality to be messed with in that way, so it collapsed all the probabilities, except for the extremely unlikely one where we somehow survived the transit and emerged safely on the far end. It's kind of like sending a message via internet protocol, the message gets chopped up into bits that take different routes to the destination, then it is reassembled. That's why you were nauseous and now have a headache, your body was ripped apart at the subatomic level and reassembled many times. What you experienced, the ship seeming to blink in and out of existence, actually happened; every time the ship was destroyed in transit, the universe hit the reset button and restored us to existence. Because it had to."
I shook my head in stunned disbelief. "Wait, we died? Except we didn't?"
"Correct. Because we hadn't died on the far end of the wormhole, we couldn't die on the near end, or in transit."
"Whoa."
"Whoa indeed. Joe, this is a tiny, tiny glimpse into how the universe truly works."
"Awesome! We can figure out the rest from here, huh?"
"Mmm, that would be a resounding no. Let me give you an example; a dog sees you bring a new bag of kibble into the house. The dog may see you getting the bag of kibble out of the car. You can even take the dog to the pet store with you, and the dog can see you take the bag of kibble off the shelf there. That does not mean the dog grasps the concept of where kibble really comes from. Or the concept of, well, concepts."
"Thank you for the big vote of confidence in us monkeys."
"I'm being realistic here, Joe. Your smartest theoretical physicists are still only staring at the garage door, thinking that is the magical source of endless kibble."
I wasn't going to argue with an AI about the merits of monkey brain power. "Let's keep this luck part between us, agreed? The crew needs to have confidence in you, misplaced as it is." I looked at myself in the mirror, a mirror we humans had installed, since Thuranin cyborgs had thought such things were foolish. Most of the vomit was off my uniform, or mashed enough into the digital camo pattern that it looked as if it belonged there. My face looked like hell. I needed sleep. As if that was going to happen any time soon. Unbelievable, I was alive only because the future me on the other end of the wormhole hadn’t died. A thought occurred to me. "Wait. What did you say about the version of the Dutchman that came out of the wormhole? What do you mean 'version'?"
"Hmm. That's not something I can tell to monkeys. Shouldn't have mentioned it."
"Fine. I got a whopping headache anyway. What's next?"
We made one last jump using remaining power in the jump drive capacitors. Then we jumped again, and again, and again. Power for the jumps, and almost everything else aboard the Dutchman, came directly from Skippy; he pulled power from some other spacetime or from quantum bubbles or from magical fairy dust or some crazy shit like that. I didn't understand it and our science team, despite nodding their heads in deep thought, had no freakin' clue what Skippy was doing either. The problem with Skippy powering the ship is, whatever source he pulled power from was enormous, like a small star, and he wasn't able to regulate the power flow very well, he wasn't designed to do that. The result of him pulling in way too much power, was we kept blowing systems all over the ship. Relays burned out, capacitors melted, anything related to electricity had a short life span, and it was a race against time; could Skippy get us to our destination before we blew every circuit in the ship?
To reduce power needs, we had no stealth field, shields were at minimum power to protect us only against microscopic impacts from space debris, and life support like heat, lights and oxygen recycling were cut back. Some parts of the ship were evacuated, so we could entirely cut power to those areas. Artificial gravity was lowered to 18%, that system's most efficient power setting, other than being switched off. I wasn't ready for zero gee yet.
Eighteen people were living aboard the Flower, because that ship had plenty of power, although that little ship was pushing its limits to supply fresh oxygen and expel waste heat from eighteen living, breathing humans. The Flower had detached from its docking platform and was now grappled directly onto the Dutchman's spine frame, we'd moved the little ship closer so it could supply partial power to its mother ship. That hadn't worked well, Skippy had to jury-rig power transfer cables, and the two ships' systems weren't compatible. Conditions aboard the Flower were not only cramped, people there were living in the zero gee, because the Kristang didn't have artificial gravity technology. Our special forces saw this as an opportunity for zero gee combat training. That was a good idea, and it kept people busy and focused.
We all needed to keep busy, to keep our minds off our dilemma. Our destination was a marginally habitable planet, or more accurately a planet Skippy thought might be habitable, in that it supposedly had an oxygen atmosphere and temperatures within a range humans could survive. His information was sketchy, he got it third hand from the Thuranin, who got it from the Kristang, who got it from the Ruhar. The planet had been in Ruhar territory before the recent wormhole shift, no Ruhar lived there, which wasn't encouraging for us. The planet was now in Kristang territory, and apparently no lizards wanted to live there either. Also not encouraging.
The reason we had to abandon ship was that Skippy needed to repair it, rebuild it from the junk pile it had become. We were going to leave the Flying Dutchman in orbit around a gas giant planet, with Skippy remaining aboard by himself. He was going to mine the planet's numerous moons for raw materials, and mine the gas giant's atmosphere for reactor fuel. While Skippy was rebuilding the ship, it would be torn apart and unable to support life. Could Skippy essentially build us a new ship, from nothing much more than moondust and toxic gases? To the crew, he was supremely, arrogantly confident. To me, in private, not so muc
h. "I won't know until I get under the hood," he told me, "could be expensive. You got insurance on this thing, right? Might want to think about a rental car."
When a car mechanic talked to me like that, he probably needed to make a payment on his boat. "Be serious for a moment, Skippy. Can you fix the ship?"
"That's not a yes or no question, Joe. Let's see if I can dumb this down enough for you: I don't have enough data now. The question is whether my repair effort will consume resources faster than I can create new ones, and I won't know that until I scan what raw materials are available. If I don't find critical elements quickly, or it takes too much energy to process the raw materials, then I'm on a downward spiral. Joe, I simply do not know. The only data I have on this system is a vague report the Kristang got from a Ruhar computer, when they captured Paradise. The Ruhar only cared whether the system held a habitable planet, data on the other planets is very thin. I'm guessing. We don't have another survivable option in range."
"Oh," I said, "uh, about that rental car?"
The Flying Dutchman limped into orbit around the gas giant, an orbit that was barely adequate for Skippy's needs, the bottom of the orbit dipped too close to the cloud tops, while the other end of the orbit swung inconveniently far away. With the ship completely drained of all but emergency power, there was no energy to spare for altering the Dutchman's orbit. Skippy said he could live with it.
The first thing Skippy did was listen for any sign of other ships in the star system, and he didn't find anything. If there was a ship, it was silent and stealthed, and we couldn't do anything about it. Any ship that had been in the system long-term, even stealthed, would have left a trail of exhaust and other gases, Skippy didn't see anything like that, and there didn't seem to be any point for a ship to be stealthed, so far inside Thuranin-Kristang territory.
Next, he checked out the second planet from the star, the place we humans would be living while Skippy pimped our ride, by himself. At that moment, the second planet was on the other side of the star system, only a couple weeks from swinging completely behind the star.
"Sir?" Adams asked while we were all still reading through Skippy's data, "what do we call the planet?"
"Which one," I asked. "The one we'll be living on, or this gas giant? Oh, duh, the one we'll be living on, of course." Nobody cared about Skippy's gas station, which was all the giant planet meant to us, a source of helium 3. According to Skippy's preliminary data, the second planet in the system, the only one that could support human life, was only marginally habitable. And that was the 'good' news. Its orbit was elliptical rather than round, so each year it swung far away from the star, then much closer. That planet's funky orbit took it close to the outer edge, then inside the middle of the 'Goldilocks Zone', where it was not too hot and not too cold for life. The planet was frozen most of its year, with only part of the surface along the equator thawing as it swung closer to the star. Another piece of good news is the planet was approaching the summer part of its orbit, it should become marginally warmer while we lived there. Oxygen levels in the habitable area were low, equivalent to ten thousand feet elevation on Earth, while gravity was fourteen percent stronger than Earth normal. And, because we were on a stolen Thuranin ship, the artificial gravity aboard the Dutchman was normally set at 83% of Earth normal. At my request, Skippy had been able to goose up the gravity to 87% of Earth normal, still, setting down on the planet would be a 31% increase over the gravity we’d gotten used to. And since the battle, gravity aboard the ship had been much lower. The sudden increase in weight was going to be tough. Life there, when not covered under snow and ice, consisted of simple grasses, moss and lichen, the type of plants you would find in the tundra of Canada or Siberia. Skippy detected substantially more life in the oceans than on the land, still, most of the oceans were covered by ice just like the land. The place was chilly, heavy and hard to breathe. Definitely not Paradise. "It's cold."
"We should call it Hoth." Williams suggested.
"Hoth?" I asked. "Why's that?"
"Hoth. You know, the ice planet where the rebels had their base in 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Star Wars."
"Oh, yeah." I remembered now. "No, we're not calling it Hoth, sounds too much like 'hot'. This planet is a crappy place. Nobody wants to be there, we're only going there because we have to, and we're leaving as soon as we can."
Seager snorted from the pilot seat. "Sounds like Newark."
"Newark?" I asked.
"You ever fly through Newark?" Seager shrugged. "Lots of people go through Newark, but no one wants to be there."
Adams and I shared an amused look. "I like it." Adams said.
Wracking my brain, I tried to remember whether any of our merry band of pirates was from Newark. Or New Jersey in general. "What the hell, why not? Newark it is."
"Uh, oh. Damn." Skippy said. "Joe, we have a major complication. There is a group of Kristang on the planet."
"What?" My heart sank. The Dutchman was dead; we couldn't live on the ship while it was being repaired. We couldn't live on a planet occupied by Kristang either. There was no other option. We came all this way, for nothing? "What the hell are they doing there?"
"Wait, wait, I'm still processing the data, this may not be a total disaster. It is a small group; they do not have a ship with them. The data I have comes from the two small satellites they have in orbit. I think, hmm, it appears they are a small group, around thirty, that were landed there to search for remains of an Elder ship crash. Hmm, that certainly sounds familiar, huh? They have one base and only two, maybe three aircraft, they stay close to the main crash site. They're not warrior, they're scavengers. Joe, I think you can land on another part of the planet, and remain concealed. Their satellites, I can hack into and filter data the satellites transmit, so the Kristang will not know you are there."
"Concealing the presence of seventy humans is going to be one hell of a magic trick, Skippy."
"Hey, they don't call me Skippy the Magnificent for nothing."
"Nobody calls you Skippy the Magnificent."
He sniffed. "Well, they should. We will need a closer look at these Kristang, that can be part of the Flower's recon mission. I am now scanning this planet's moons to determine whether the proper raw materials to repair the ship are available in sufficient quantity."
"Great, send what you have to our science team, I'm going to talk to them." They'd want to show their findings to me anyway. "Sergeant Adams, you have the, uh," since there was nothing to conn aboard a dead ship, "the chair."
On my way to the ship's science lab, which was only an empty cargo bay that held tables covered with computers and all sorts of scientific instruments, I stopped to talk with Major Simms, she was organizing the effort to identify and pack up everything we needed to survive for months on the ice planet, I needed to remember to call it 'Newark'. She was beyond busy, helping her sort through a mountain of gear were the British SAS team and the Chinese 'Night Tiger' special forces. The Brits and Chinese worked well together, their commanders got along well, so at Lt Colonel Chang's suggestion, I assigned them to officially be a team. "Major Simms, how is it going?"
"Busy, sir," she said in a tone that me dropping by to ask stupid questions was anything but helpful. She tapped her iPad, everyone was studying their iPads intently. "We just received the preliminary data on the planet, we're really going to call it 'Newark'?" She didn't wait for an answer. "The gravity and low oxygen levels we can simply deal with," the Chinese and British team leaders nodded stoically, "the cold we'll have to plan for. Daytime high temperatures can be briefly pleasant in the peak of summer, almost 18 degrees." For a moment I was startled, until I realized she was talking about temperatures in Celsius, and I had to mentally convert to Fahrenheit, that was, uh, around 65 degrees. Pleasant. "That isn't the norm," she warned, "during winter, this place has snow even at the equator."
"You heard about the Kristang there?" I asked.
“Just did,” she nodded, and the special forces look
ed grim. "Until you tell me otherwise, sir, I'm preparing to evacuate us to Newark."
"Carry on." I didn't know what else to say at the moment, because I didn't know what to do about the Kristang either. A small group on the surface, without a space-capable ship, would be an easy target for even the Flower's meager weapons load. I needed to balance the convenience of eliminating a minor threat, with the greater threat of a Kristang ship arriving to pick up the scavengers, and finding them all dead from orbital strikes. Such a ship would scan the surface intently, inevitably find us, and might even find the Dutchman. I needed to think long and hard about our options. My options. It would be my decision; I was the commander.
Crap. I realized with a shock that, somehow, I had become that upper-echelon asshole who made dumbass decisions and made people's life miserable. When I was a private, then a specialist and then a sergeant, I had hated those dumbasses. And now, I was one.
The entire science team, including the three walking wounded, were gathered in their lab, talking excitedly. "Colonel J- Bishop!" Dr. Venkman called me over, almost referring to me by the nickname Skippy used. "Mr. Skippy just reported that this planet, and its moons, are adequate for repairing the ship. He asked me to tell you that he has found sufficient quantities of raw materials, including the critical elements vanadium, rhenium and bismuth."
"Great, uh," I was super self-conscious of my ignorance in a roomful of certified geniuses, "what are those?"
"Vanadium and rhenium are transition metals," she could tell by the blank look on my face that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. "They are valuable metals; we do not yet understand why they are needed in large quantities to repair the ship. As to bismuth," she made an exaggerated shrug.
"Isn't that," I guessed, "used in pepto bismol? Like when you have an upset stomach?"
"Bismuth subsalicylate, yes." She shook her head. "We do not know why it would be useful here, on Earth it is often used as a less toxic substitute for lead. Bismuth is a post-transition metal that is the most diamagnetic element," she paused, sparing me further embarrassment. "It is apparently good news, anyway."
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Page 19