"That is good news, yeah," I agreed. Skippy could fix the ship with the materials at hand, that was one less thing to worry about. We still had that other major problem. "You may not have heard yet, there is a group of Kristang on the planet, we're uh, we're calling the planet Newark."
"We just heard about the Kristang," she said, glancing at her iPad. "What are we going to do about them, Colonel?" She couldn't keep the anxiety out of her voice.
I could sympathize with her, the science team knew they were completely reliant on the military to deal with the Kristang, all they could do was analyze the scientific crumbs Skippy threw their way, and hope the Dutchman's crew kept them safe. "We are considering options, Dr. Venkman, Skippy is still analyzing the data. We'll be sending the Flower out to recon the planet, and assess the threat the Kristang pose to us." Unspoken was that one of our options was self-destructing the ship. I didn’t like that one.
Back on the bridge, I was looking at the sensor data on my iPad. Those Kristang could be a major, show-stopping problem. And, it occurred to me right then, we might have another huge problem. "Skippy, during the battle, our stealth field was down?" Over in the CIC, I could see people nodding ‘yes’ slowly in answer to my question.
"After the first hit, yes,” Skippy answered, “it was partially down, because I had to divert power to the shields."
This is what I'd been afraid of. "The Thuranin now know one of their own star carriers is hostile."
"Yes, however, I must point out, I altered our jump drive signature to make us appear to be that star carrier that disappeared seventeen years ago, as we discussed."
"Great, excellent." One less thing for me to worry about.
Chang looked puzzled. "What star carrier?"
Damn it, I should have told people about that, it had slipped my mind. That's what happens when I have late night conversations with Skippy. "I'll explain later. It is some good news."
Simms looked at me pointedly, unhappy that there was something I hadn't told my command crew. "We can use some good news now. Sir." There was a distinct pause before she'd added the 'sir'.
She'd made her point, people needed me to explain right then. I turned the chair to face the CIC. "There was a Thuranin star carrier, very similar to the Dutchman, that disappeared seventeen years ago, the Thuranin think the Kristang stole it. Skippy altered our jump drive signature so the Dutchman appears to be that missing ship, instead of this ship that mysteriously disappeared near Paradise, where humans are living. Hopefully this will throw the Thuranin's suspicions away from humans and onto the Kristang. It should keep them chasing ghosts for a while. Skippy, no way the Thuranin know there are humans aboard this ship?"
"No way, Joe. In order for the Thuranin to know that, they would have had to get close enough to actively scan this ship with our stealth field deactivated, and that never happened. Your secret is still safe, Joe. The slow, clumsy way this ship flew and reacted, during the battle, would lead the Thuranin to suspect this ship is being flown by a lower-tech species. However, as we discussed, the Thuranin will suspect the Kristang, there is no reason they would consider humans as being involved in any way." Skippy paused. "Oh. Hmm. Captain Desai, I did not mean to disparage your piloting abilities."
"I understood what you meant, Mr. Skippy," Desai responded. She had done her best to keep the Dutchman out of the line of fire during the battle, still the ship had been struck by particle beams many more time that it would have, had Thuranin cyborgs been in command.
From the expression on the faces of people in the CIC, including Chang and Simms, the crew was not happy about me neglecting to mention that I had inquire about whether our star carrier was unique enough to be immediately identifiable. They were right to be upset; I should have told them. I thought of another problem, and zoomed out on the main bridge display. "Newark is on the other side of the star now, right? Not completely, close enough."
"Yes."
"How are we going to talk, when we’re down there, and you’re way up here? There will be a time lag of, what? An hour?"
"Light will take around hour to travel one way, yes, and the problem will grow worse as Newark's orbit takes it further away."
I shook my head. "That is unsat. Isn't there some sort of Skippy magic you can do, to speed up our communications? What if you get stuck on a crossword puzzle, and you need my help?"
"Like if the clue is 'feline', three letters, and it starts with 'C' and 'A'?"
"Yeah, see? I can tell you the answer is not 'pussy' like you were thinking." I caught a glance from Simms in the CIC when I made that remark. Damn it, this is why I liked to have conversations with Skippy in private, so I didn’t have to watch what I was saying. Also so people couldn’t hear him insult me frequently.
"If either of us is thinking about pussy, it's not me, Joey. To be serious, yes, there is Skippy magic I will be using. I'm going to create a microwormhole we can use to communicate through. One end of the wormhole will be with me, the other end of the wormhole will be in geosynchronous orbit around Newark. For your benefit, Joe, that means-"
"I know what a geosynchronous orbit is, Skippy. On Earth, it means the satellite is parked 22,500 miles above the equator, so it is always at the same place in the sky as the Earth rotates. That's because at that altitude, the satellite is moving at the same speed as the Earth's equator rotates."
Silence.
He got me worried. "Skippy? Hello?"
"Sorry, you just completely blew my mind for a minute. How do you know that?"
Feeling mildly insulted, I explained. "A guy tried to sell my parents a satellite TV system, and I had to explain to them why the pizza box dish antenna needs to point low in the southern sky, like over Brazil. I looked it up on Wikipedia."
"Is all your scientific knowledge based on internet articles?"
"No, Skippy, of course not. I also used to watch the Discovery channel."
"There is no hope for your species,” he said sadly.” You monkeys should surrender to the cockroaches immediately, and get it over with. You, for one, should welcome your new cockroach overlords."
"Hey, cockroaches may eat stuffed-crust pizza, but did they invent stuffed-crust pizza? I don't think so."
"Stuffed-crust pizza?" Skippy said slowly. "Your species' single contribution to galactic culture."
"You forgot fantasy sports, Skippy."
"I rest my case."
"Great. This microwormhole dingus means we'll be in constant communication, then?"
"Not quite. Even Skippy magic can screw with the laws of physics in this spacetime only so much. On my own, I can't project a wormhole that far, and a jump breaks the connection between wormholes, so the Flower can’t carry the wormhole for me. I have modified a missile to carry the other end of the wormhole, as soon as it is ready, I will launch it toward Newark, the missile will take five days to get there, because I have to save more than half its fuel to slow down once it get there, to maneuver the wormhole into orbit. The missile will launch before the Flower returns, however, for your first several days on the surface, there will be a major time lag in our communications. It is vital that during those days, you make an exceptional effort to avoid doing anything stupid."
"Hey, no worries, Skippy, it's me."
"Exactly what I'm afraid of."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The communications time lag wasn't a problem only when the crew was on Newark, it also meant I would have no idea what was going on with the Flower, until that ship returned from its scouting mission. In making plans, we had discussed the possibility of the Flower using its armaments to pound the Kristang settlement from orbit, and eliminate the threat entirely. As a frigate, the Flower wasn't designed for orbital bombardment, but it did have a railgun and we could make do. We'd discarded that idea for two reasons. If the first shot didn't take out every single one of the Kristang, we'd have a hell of a time hunting them all down. We had no certain knowledge whether the Kristang were all in one place, or scattered
across the planet. We couldn't afford to have the Flower lingering in orbit for a long time, exposed, searching for Kristang one by one. Second, and most important, our entire plan hinged on our presence on Newark not being detected, because if we were discovered, the Kristang there could call for help, and then we'd be screwed whether we had beat-up stolen frigate or not. If, maybe when, a Kristang ship arrived to pick up the lizards on the surface, it would not be good for that ship to find all the lizards on the surface dead, with evidence of them having been attacked from orbit. That would cause the Kristang to intensely scan the surface. And inevitably find us. No, what we wanted, if a Kristang ship arrived, was to find only a bored, desperate gang of lizards who wanted to get off the surface and depart Newark as soon as possible. We wanted them to find that, and nothing else.
To prevent the Kristang on the surface from detecting a human presence on Newark, Skippy had another trick up his sleeve. Because he couldn't get close enough to handle it himself, he had loaded a submind into the computer system of the Flower, complaining all the time that the frigate barely had memory storage enough to hold a dumdum monkey brain, and was completely inadequate to contain a useful AI submind. Even stripping out the Kristang software completely, the dumbed-down submind was dangerously unstable, and we had to hope it would survive long enough to do its job before it broke down.
The submind's job was to infiltrate the two small satellites the Kristang had in orbit. Infiltrate, and over write the existing processing system, so the satellites would from then on ignore any images or sensor data about humans on or around Newark. When the Kristang scavengers looked at the surface from a satellite camera, if those satellite cameras or sensors were pointed at a human settlement, the Kristang would not see anything unnatural. The images would be edited in real time to show nothing but blank, boring snow, mud and tundra. If that worked, we only had to worry about a Kristang aircraft flying over us, and someone looking out the window. Hopefully, that was unlikely, and from our own satellites, we would have plenty of warning if a Kristang aircraft approached where we were hiding.
The Flower was going to drop off two tiny, stealthed Thuranin satellites for our use. One satellite would be in polar orbit to cover the planet's entire surface once each day, the other would be moved in geosynchronous orbit above our hiding place, after we decided where that was. Skippy could access satellite data through the microwormhole, and we could access the satellites in real-time, through an encrypted tightbeam maserlink. The only way the Kristang could detect the satellite feed is if one of their aircraft happened to fly through the communications maser beam, a beam less than a human hair in diameter. Since we would be able to see their aircraft approaching, and be able to see everything the Kristang were doing and intercept all their communications, it would be impossible for them to sneak up on us.
All this was according to Skippy, who would be by himself at Skippy's Garage and Gas Station on the other side of the star system.
I had faith in Skippy, he had certainly earned it. What bothered me was not our plans, or our ability to implement such plans, or the top-notch people I was privileged to have under my command. What bothered me was our rotten luck.
Lt. Colonel Chang had told me, back when I was trying to convince our original merry band of pirates on Paradise to follow me on an ill-defined, ultra-high-risk mission, that he agreed to sign on not because I was brave, or smart, but because I, somehow, was lucky. That I had a knack for being in the right, or wrong depending how you looked at it, place at the right time. I do not believe in astrology, or numerology, or any of an infinite number of increasingly whacky conspiracy theories, but there was no one who could deny that luck was a real thing. Skippy had hinted more than once that there was no such thing as luck, that humans conceived of 'luck' because we had no idea how the universe truly worked.
Whatever.
What I knew for sure was that our 'luck' so far on this mission was crap. Places where we should have found Skippy's magic radio for talking to the Collective were empty, or mysteriously blown apart. The mission had lasted longer than it should have, because things that should have been in a place, were not in that place. For no logical reason Skippy could explain. In fact, against all logic Skippy knew of. Rotten luck.
Then, we'd jumped into a trap, a trap that could not have been set for the Dutchman, no way could the Thuranin have anticipated the Dutchman would arrive, there, then. A trap we'd barely escaped from.
Now, against all odds, we had managed to travel between stars, in a ship with no functioning reactors, travelled to an unwanted, useless star system that no one cared about, and what do we find in the middle of nowhere? A group of Kristang! Crap! What the hell were Kristang doing on Newark? What are the odds, right? That is totally rotten luck. Rotten luck that made me afraid that my good luck had run out, and it would all be downhill from here. Downhill for all of us, not only me. Was this karma coming back to bite me in the ass? Had I been so lucky in the past that I'd cashed in all those chips, and now I was in debt to the house?
I felt useless, sitting aboard the Dutchman doing nothing, while Chang was on a scouting mission with the Flower. "Skippy,” I asked, “you're sure none of us could stay behind to help fix the ship?"
"Help from monkeys? By doing what? Burping and scratching yourselves?"
"No, Skippy," I was heartened to hear he'd gotten a bit of his snarkiness back. "I'm talking about us burping and scratching ourselves at the same time."
"Oh, well, then. That changes things. In that case, no. Joe, I'd love someone to stay aboard to give me someone to talk to. No offense, you all need to get off the ship. There isn't going to be any oxygen here, most of the ship won't have any atmosphere at all part of the time. Until I can get a reactor back online, the shield generators are going to be dead soon, and the radiation will kill you biologicals."
Biologicals? That was an improvement over 'meatsacks', Skippy may be warming up to us. "Still, five months? Five months is a long time." Skippy would be alone aboard the Dutchman. The entire crew would be stranded on an unknown, unexplored planet.
"Long? Five short months is a genuine grade-A freakin' Skippy miracle. Joe, to rebuild this ship, I have to use raw materials, scavenged from the ship and gathered from the planet's moons, in order to build the tools I need, to build other tools, to build other tools, to finally build the tools to fix the ship. Then I have to begin fixing the ship. You know those so-called reality shows, where some scruffy-looking guy is out in the wilderness, all he has is a knife, and he's supposed to survive for a month?"
"A knife, plus a camera crew with satellite phones and a helicopter?" I pointed out. "But yeah, I know what you mean."
"That guy on TV has at least has a knife. I'm starting with only a paper clip, and I'm rebuilding a gosh-darn starship." Skippy complained. "You're right, that guy on TV has a camera crew if he gets in trouble. All I have is a barrel of monkeys, and you'll be way over on the other side of the star system. If something bad happens before the Flying Dutchman is ready, like if a Thuranin ship arrives looking for us, we are all totally, totally screwed."
"Yeah, I know. I'd be more comfortable if we had some margin for error. You really need the Flower?"
"Absolutely. First, I need that ship to dip into the gas giant's atmosphere for collecting helium 3 to refuel the reactors. After that, the Flower contains materials not readily available in this planet's moons or ring system, so that frigate, and our old busted up Ruhar Dodo, have to be sacrificed to rebuild the Dutchman."
"I understand that. My problem is you have all your chips on the table. All three Thuranin dropships have to stay here? One of them can't stay with us on the planet? With those Kristang hanging around, we'll be sitting ducks if the only way we can get around is by walking."
"Sorry Joe, no can do. I'll be mining this planet's moons and rings with those dropships and with robots that weren't designed to operate independently of the ship. Leaving a single dropship with you would increase my estimate
d repair time from five months to seven. That is two additional months, during which the Kristang on the planet might discover your presence, or a Kristang ship may arrive to pick them up, and detect you from orbit, or a Thuranin scouting force may come to this star system and find our stolen star carrier. We have to balance the risks."
"You're right, you're right." I would have made the same call. In fact, I did, the first time Skippy explained his plan to me.
I still didn't like it.
The Flower jumped back in from its scouting mission, right on time. It would take the frigate over two hours to match course with the dead and drifting Dutchman, so Chang transmitted his data immediately. There was no reason to wait. We couldn't wait. Conditions aboard the star carrier were becoming unlivable, we needed to get off the ship soon. Or not. It was my decision. I needed intel.
Skippy poured through the data recovered from our stealth satellites, the Kristang satellites that Skippy's submind had successfully infiltrated, and Kristang databanks on the ground. It was, as Skippy was fond of saying, good news and bad news. His initial guess about the Kristang group there was correct, they were a scavenger crew that had been dropped off almost a year ago, to comb the surface of Newark for the debris of a crashed Elder starship. Their leader was a third son of a second-tier leader of a minor clan, as such, he was desperate to recover something useful to raise his family's fortunes within the clan. With him, he had five other semi-trusted clan brothers, and twenty eight forced laborers. The forced labor came from Kristang who were criminals, or slaves captured from other clans, or clan brothers whose families were deeply in debt and had sent their sons to work off part of the debt.
SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) Page 20