Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  The backup plan, if Skippy failed to take control of the star carrier, was that Desai would kill the autopilot and engage an emergency jump away, which Skippy had begrudgingly programmed into the navigation system.

  After we jumped away, the Thuranin, and Kristang, would be alerted there was something very wrong with our captured frigate, and both species would be extra careful not to let our ship, or any lone Kristang ship, close to a Thuranin starship without a thorough inspection far away from Thuranin fleet assets. So, Plan B meant giving up any chance of capturing a Thuranin starship, without which we had no chance of getting to the wormhole. Which left us having to hitch a ride from the patrons of the Ruhar, the insectlike Jeraptha. We would have to make our way back to Paradise, ditch the Kristang frigate, and use Skippy's sensor hacking ability to get close to a Ruhar ship using our Dodo. Problem was, the Ruhar task force was sticking close to Paradise, so finding a Ruhar ship on its own was going to be a problem. Especially since, by now, the Ruhar would have discovered one of their Dodos had been stolen by humans, and no Ruhar ship would let a suspicious Dodo get close.

  So, it wasn't a great or even good, ok, barely mediocre plan, but it was better than our original Plan B, which was to sneak back to Paradise, ditch the Dodo and try to hide. Skippy was not a big fan of that plan, because it meant abandoning his dream of ever contacting the Collective. I wasn't a big fan of that plan either, because it meant abandoning my dream of ever eating a cheeseburger.

  Seriously.

  When the engines came back on, they slammed us back into our couches with what Skippy blithely announced was 4.7 gees, and that pressure kept up for over two minutes as we decelerated. How human astronauts had launched into space on spine-crushing chemical rockets, I had no idea. My neck had been at a bad angle when the deceleration started, I had to lift a hand to lever my head into the right position. Still, it hurt. And it was hard to breathe.

  Skippy must have sensed our confusion, because the main display changed so that it showed something considerably more useful; the Thuranin star carrier was now in the center of the screen. The dot representing our ship was on the edge, with a dotted line projecting the courses of the star carrier and our ship. At the edges of the screen were numbers showing the time to intersect, and the speeds of both ships. None of it truly mattered, since we humans were incapable of flying the Dodo more than short distances, at low speed. It did give us a sense that we had some, if not control, then at least knowledge of our destiny.

  The acceleration ended abruptly, then resumed with a gentle pressure. "The Thuranin have taken control of navigation, they will guide us onto a docking pad."

  "We're a half lightsecond away now?" I couldn't tell how far we were from the display, the scale was confusing.

  "No, a quarter of a lightsecond. They tried to take control earlier, I faked that we had trouble accepting the handoff, due to damage from the explosion. If I hadn't let them think they had control, they would have aborted the rendezvous, the Thuranin don't trust the Kristang to control their own ships for close maneuvers. They are running a diagnostic of our ship's systems, I'm telling them what they want to hear."

  The display now showed our ETA was four minutes, and the star carrier's image was an outline of the ship, no longer a dot. We were close, very close.

  "Pilot, standby to abort on my signal. Skippy, when can you do your thing?" I asked.

  "My thing?"

  "Your thing, your magic. Taking over the Thuranin computer systems." I asked urgently. What the hell else did he think I meant?!

  “Oh, that. We're within range. Hmmm, this is going to be more difficult than expected, it may take longer than I thought. Damn.”

  "More difficult how?" I asked, alarmed. Simms was on the couch behind me, unseen, and still I could sense the tension coming from her.

  "Well, to be fair," Skippy explained, "I've never actually had contact with a Thuranin system before, seeing as how I've been stuck on Paradise for, like, a million years. I'm have to make this up as I go."

  "What? Jesus fucking Christ, Skippy, you little shithead! A million years? How the hell can you understand Thuranin technology if you've never seen it? You told us you could absolutely do this! Damn it! A soldier in battle needs to know he can count on his comrades, you should have told us you weren't sure you could hack into their systems. Goddamn it! Pilot, abort the-"

  "Belay that!" Skippy shouted. "We're good, I'm in."

  "What?" I was out of breath from adrenaline.

  "When I said 'longer than I thought', I meant longer in magical Skippy time, not longer in meatsack caveman time, you dumdum monkeyboy. I had full control over the star carrier 120 milliseconds after I said 'thought'."

  "Goddamn it, Skippy, why didn't you stop me?"

  "Hey, you were on a roll, I couldn't interrupt that. Your rant was very inspiring, Colonel Joe, I can see why you went from grunt to senior officer so quickly. Also, to be honest, I tuned out about halfway through. Could you repeat it for me, and skip the boring parts?"

  "Fuck."

  "That will have to wait, we're docking with the star carrier now. I directed the ship to assign us to a docking pad right at the front of the ship. No charge for the upgrade."

  "Skippy," I grumbled through gritted teeth, then decided nothing I could say would make any difference.

  The frigate wobble slightly, then there was a lurch to the side, a clanging sound, and Skippy announced we had docked. Gravity came back on gradually. "We're secured. Everyone, stay strapped in, we're going to jump shortly."

  "I thought you couldn't make a ship jump if you were aboard?" Chang asked, confused. "Don't you need us to get aboard the Thuranin ship, control their navigation system, before we can jump?"

  "Huh? No, not this time. The Thuranin already had a jump programmed into their nav system and on a timer after we docked, I'm letting that system run on its own. I'll warp spacetime to throw us off course, as jumping into the heart of a Thuranin task force would be rather inconvenient. Unless I'm missing something?" There was a smartass tone to his question.

  "No, that's good, thank you." Chang replied.

  "And, three, two, one, jump. Done. We're good, we came out of jump one third of a lightyear from the intended emergence point. I have the star carrier on total EMCON, and have ordered the Kristang to do the same. Oh, darn, it, pesky lizard. The Kristang commander has noticed we didn't jump to where we were supposed to, he is demanding to know why, and also is demanding access to our ship."

  "Can you hold him off?" I asked, alarmed. The last thing we wanted was an armed Kristang force walking through the Thuranin ship and knocking on our airlock door. Or flying a dropship over to our landing bay.

  "Oh, yeah, I bitchslapped him right away. The Thuranin don't take any crap from their client species. I told him to shut the fuck up, that we altered our jump to avoid a Jeraptha battleship, and that this frigate is under quarantine. He doesn't like it, he also knows he doesn't have any choice."

  "All right, what's next?"

  "Colonel Joe, you're the commander. My suggestion is we go aboard the star carrier, and round up the eighty seven Thuranin crew."

  "Us against eighty seven armed Thuranin cyborgs?" I asked, incredulously. We had barely defeated a dozen Kristang.

  "Eighty seven cyborgs who are sound asleep. I ordered their brain implants to put them all into an unscheduled sleep maintenance cycle, they're basically in a coma." Skippy explained. "Ha! And those little green pinheads think being cyborgs is a strength."

  "Just like that?" I asked. "We have complete control over the entire ship?' It felt like a letdown. I could live with that, any day.

  "Yup. Just like that. Behold, the magic of Skippy the Magnificent. Truthfully, as magic at my level goes, this is lame. Still, it impresses the monkeys, right?"

  I nodded. "This monkey is sufficiently impressed."

  "Agreed." Chang said.

  "This human is impressed." Simms retorted. "Colonel, if I was skeptical of your shiny
beer can before, I'm not now."

  "He's not my beer can, Major Simms." I hastened to correct her before Skippy got mad. "Skippy is more of a sentient being than any of us."

  "Than all of you put together." Skippy

  Damn, that beer can was smug.

  Assured by Skippy that the Kristang would not dare to come aboard the Thuranin ship, and that he had their airlock doors locked anyway, we warily ventured through our own airlock. Giraud led the way, armed with a Ruhar rifle, an HK416 rifle that was standard issue for French special forces, and a pouch full of flash bang grenades. All of which Skippy insisted was totally unnecessary, according to him, we could roam around the huge star carrier buck naked. Although he requested that we hairless monkeys wear as much clothing as possible, to spare his delicate sensors. I flipped him off with both middle fingers and asked if his sensors could see that. He didn't respond.

  The frigate's airlock opened into a chamber that was, Skippy explained, a sort of elevator. Because the artificial gravity pulled 'down' toward the spine of the star carrier, without an elevator we would have had to climb down a long ladder. The elevator was more than big enough for our entire crew, it was plenty roomy for the dozen people I selected for the initial recon mission. The elevator smelled funny. I sniffed the air. "Skippy, is this air Ok for us to breathe?" I asked, rather late for such a important question. "It smells like, like the basement at my grandparents' house."

  "Uh huh, yeah, the air is good. It smells musty because the Thuranin almost never allow filthy, disgusting other species aboard their ships. The ship's database records the last use of this particular elevator was thirty eight years ago."

  "This docking pad is at the front of the ship? Wouldn't Thuranin ships normally use this pad?" I asked.

  "Very observant, Colonel Joe. Thuranin ships use this pad frequently, however, they use a different airlock, so they don't have to touch any surfaces that may be contaminated by lesser species. The airlocks of Kristang ships can't mate with Thuranin designs, on purpose."

  "I'll bet the Thuranin don't offer hot beverages to their guests either." Sergeant Adams said without a trace of humor. She was keyed up, a finger next to the trigger guard of her Ruhar rifle. The rifles weren't set on stun, on my orders. I figured that if Skippy was wrong and we ran into awake, advanced cyborgs, stun wasn't the right move.

  The elevator reached the 'bottom', at the spine of the ship, and the door opened to a long corridor. It was well lit and industrial, even sterile looking. A lot of gray, with black and white to liven it up. Definitely not cozy. "Skippy," I asked in an unintended whisper, "does the whole ship look like this?"

  "Most of it. As cyborgs, the Thuranin are disdainful of anything they consider to be soft remnants of their biological past. Like decorations, or creature comforts more than the minimum needed."

  "So," Simms asked, "why don't they go all the way, and become robots, androids, whatever that is?"

  "Two reasons," Skippy explained as we all stepped into the corridor, "first, they lack the technology to upload their true consciousnesses into a nonbiological substrate, that is much, much more difficult than most species think it is. Second, and more importantly, if the Thuranin became post-biological, the Maxohlx would consider them to be no longer a client species but merely robots, and would treat them as machines. As slaves." His voice sounded bitter. "Artificial intelligences are not treated as sentient by the Maxohlx. They are rotten kitties."

  A door opposite us slid open, we all instinctively spun and pointed our weapons. "Relax, monkeys," Skippy laughed, "it's a tram, unless you want to walk all the way to the forward part of the ship. It's a long way."

  We stepped into the tram, the door closed, and the tram smoothly accelerated forward. "Next time," I said, "give us warning before you do something unexpected, Skippy. We have some keyed-up trigger fingers here."

  "Noted. I told you dumdums, I have absolute control over this ship, and the Thuranin are all soundly asleep in dreamland. The only thing dangerous aboard this ship is an over excited troop of monkeys with high powered weapons. Oh, and so none of you monkeys is surprised and shoots yourselves in the foot when this tram stops and the door opens, there is a Thuranin laying asleep on the floor right there."

  Fairly warned, Giraud insisted on being first out of the tram, pointing his HK416 rifle at the Thuranin who was slumped on the floor. Giraud cautiously poked the alien with the rifle barrel, and nothing happened. "Rien." Giraud muttered.

  "Huh?" I asked.

  "Nothing." Giraud and Skippy responded at the same time.

  "To be clear," Skippy made a sound like clearing his throat, "he didn't say nothing, he said 'rien', which is the French word that means 'nothing'."

  "I figured that, Skippy." I nudged the Thuranin with my foot, and it didn't move. If Skippy hadn't assured me that it was in a coma-like sleep, I would have thought it was dead. "Sergeant Adams, drag sleeping beauty here out of the way somewhere."

  Adams secured the Thuranin's wrists behind its back before dragging it feet first down the hallway and around a corner. If this was the ship's control center, I wasn't impressed, it was mostly a drab gray. "What's next, Skippy? Where's the bridge of this ship?"

  "It doesn't have one."

  "What?"

  "The Thuranin consider a bridge to be an obsolete construct that is from the biological past that they have transcended, and is unnecessary and inefficient. They control the ship directly from cyborg brain implants, which give them full functionality anywhere on the ship. During flight operations, especially combat, the command crew occupies alcoves in the network core node, which is deep within the center of the forward section, and heavily armored. Going there would be useless to you, as you lack the ability to interface directly with the pathetic lump of stone the Thuranin consider to be the ship's computer."

  "Then what are we doing here? How are we supposed to control the ship, by thinking happy thoughts?"

  "If you'll shut up a moment and let me talk, I was going to say that there is a backup control center. Thuranin ships use the backup controls when they encounter the Maxohlx, in case their bad kitty patrons manage to hack into the Thuranin computers. Which they do often, and it drives the Thuranin absolutely batshit crazy. The backup control center has video displays, audio communication systems, and manual control panels. Anything you can't do from there, I can do for you, if you tell me what you want."

  "Oh, then, lead on, MacDuff."

  Skippy made a disgusted sound. "That is an annoying misquote from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The correct line is 'Lay on, MacDuff' and it means the opposite-"

  "Don't care, Skippy! Which way do we go?" The corridor ahead intersected another, and there were no helpful signs anywhere, even if I could read Thuranin script.

  "Hey, excuse me for trying to raise you monkeys out of the depths of your ignorance by slapping a little knowledge down on you," Skippy grumbled. "Straight ahead to the end of the corridor, I'll open the door." When we got there, he warned "Uh, I should say, the decor in there is a bit different from the rest of the ship."

  Damn, he wasn't exaggerating. The interior of the backup control center was a gothic fantasy. It was a riot of colors, with display screens, brightly-lit control buttons, levers and knobs, and everything was super ornate looking. The contrast to the rest of the ship was jarring. I'm not an interior designer, so I'll try to describe it. The place looked more like an art project, a cross between a Medieval cathedral and one of those fancy French chateaus. Maybe gothic wasn't the right word, It sure didn't look like a place one of those Goth kids with the black eyeliner would hang out. Rococo, maybe? I wasn't sure what that word really meant. Over elaborate and decorative. Opulent to the point of being in bad taste. That's what I wanted to say. The opposite of sleek and minimalist, the opposite of the rest of the ship. Even simple controls like a door handle were ornate, with intricate blue and gold filigree curling around the handle, and colored gems inset. None of it was necessary for the control's function.
>
  "Wow." Simms said quietly. "This looks like the front parlor in my great grandmother's house. Only more so. Mister Skippy, why is this so-"

  "Baroque is the word you're looking for." Skippy said smugly. Damn, that is the word I was looking for. "Since this is a place where the Thuranin must unplug from their cybernetic enhancements, the decor is intended to remind them of their purely biological past. If you think the design is in bad taste, the Thuranin really hate it. It is intended to evoke disgust from the crew, to reinforce the superiority of cybernetics over biology. The designers wanted the backup control center to be the opposite of cool, if that word applies to the Thuranin."

  "They succeeded." I sniffed. "This place stinks-"

  "Like a New Orleans cathouse." Someone muttered behind me, I didn't turn to see who it was.

  "Yeah," I agreed, "not that I've been to one," I added hurriedly, "but it's like someone is wearing way too much perfume." Cloying was the word for it.

  "Too much of my grandmother's perfume." Adams wrinkled her nose.

  "The designers want the crew to be reminded of their biological nature with visual, scent and tactile clues. Instead of touch screens, all the controls are physical knobs and buttons, which even your society considers old fashioned. Having to touch and turn a knob, a knob that is cold and rough to the touch, and resists being turned enough for the user to feel the torque, constantly reminds the user that he or she needs to think in biological terms. In high pressure situations, which are the only situations in which the Thuranin would use this backup control center, the crew must suppress their instincts to use cybernetics. In an emergency maneuver, pilots here need to have their brains immediately send a signal to their fingers on the controls, and not first waste a split second trying to control the navigation system through their implants."