"Can you turn up the ventilation, to suck this stink out?" I asked. "And it smells musty like the elevator."
"It's musty because this compartment is not used often. I have deactivated the scent emitters, and the ventilation is on full. Leaving the door open will help, I calculate your noses will go scent blind within the hour, and the scent will have dispersed below detectible levels by tomorrow. If one of your females becomes pregnant, with her enhanced sense of smell she may be able to still-"
"That's not going to be a problem, Skippy." I shared a side look with Simms, and looked around. The backup control center was roughly oval shaped, with a central oval section walled off by floor to ceiling windows, or what looked like windows. In the central section were three of what looked like pilot chairs, and a larger chair behind them, all surrounded by control stands. Ringing the central section, and facing the glass, were workstations with chairs, chairs that were too small for human backsides. "Are the flight controls in that glassed-in area?"
"Yes, that is the core of the backup control-"
"That name is too long, we'll call the core section the bridge, and the rest of this the CIC." I declared. Chang and Simms nodded agreement.
Captain Desai settled into one of the three pilot couches, it was a tight fit for her, even with Skippy extending the couch open to its maximum size. "It's all right, sir, I'll manage. I'm more concerned about all this," she gestured to the confusing array of manual controls surrounding her.
"Most of these controls are for subsidiary systems that I'm handling," Skippy assured her, "we'll begin with the basic controls, the jump drive first."
I watched Desai wriggle to get comfortable in the too-small chair. Then I looked at the ceiling, and the door we'd come through. "Skippy, since the Thuranin are such little guys, how is it we don't have a problem bumping our heads in here?"
"Thuranin have built their ships to accommodate their Maxolhx patrons. Very rarely in history has the Maxolhx lowered themselves to come aboard a Thuranin ship, but the Thuranin very much wish to avoid any awkwardness. Also, occasionally Kristang or other client species do come aboard, and although intellectually the Thuranin consider their compact size to be more efficient, and therefore superior to other species, they are self-conscious about it. Other species banging their heads on Thuranin doorways would be a constant reminder how small the Thuranin are."
"All right." I set Skippy down on top of a console next to Desai's couch. "Pilot, you're going to be busy learning the controls. Colonel Chang, you have the conn, while I deal with the Thuranin, Sergeant Adams, Sergeant Thomson, you're with me."
I left Skippy to instruct Desai, Chang, Simms and some others how the bridge and CIC controls worked, while I dealt with the ship's former crew. Out in the corridor, I realized I had no idea what to do. "Skippy," I asked over zPhone earpiece, "you got any ideas what to do with the Rip Van Winkles here?"
"I assume you mean the sleeping Thuranin."
"Affirmative."
"There are several possibilities, depending on what you intend to do wit
h them later. In the meantime, this ship has detachable cargo pods, any one of them is large enough to hold the entire Thuranin crew."
"We stack them in there like cordwood?"
"More like lay them on the floor, but, yes."
I considered. What the hell was I going to do with eighty seven unconscious Thuranin? It would have been easy for me if Skippy had killed them instead of putting them into a sleep cycle, because that would have taken the responsibility for the hard decision away from me. Although, if Skippy had been able to kill them, and asked me if I wanted to do that, or make them sleep, what would I have done then? It would have been simpler to make that decision aboard the Kristang frigate, when it was not certain we could, in fact, take a Thuranin star carrier without firing a shot. Simpler to make a decision that at the time was merely theoretical, rather than actual, like it was now. So, I punted. Delayed making the decision. "How long can you keep them asleep?"
"Without being hooked up to life support, about three days, their cybernetics minimize their autonomic functions."
"Mmm hm. Ok. And how long until we can jump again? I assume we want to leave the neighborhood, in case a Thuranin search party comes looking for us."
"We do, and they are. I have detected jump signatures from two Thuranin ships who are searching for us. We're in little danger because without our transponder replying, which it won't, the Thuranin are unlikely to find us before we jump again, in about three hours. The delay is because in addition to performing a thorough check of the jump engines and navigation systems, I'm erasing the Thuranin jump control system software, and replacing it with something closer to being actually useful. That's like installing an AI operating system in a cinder block, only with less memory capacity."
"Sounds like a challenge for you, then. Sergeant Adams, gets these Thuranin rounded up, and loaded, what, Skippy, aboard the tram?"
"That is a good start, yes, I'll direct your crew from there."
"Very well, sir." Adams gestured to three of the enlisted men, and they began carrying inert Thuranin past me to load onto the floor of the tram.
Only the Thuranin weren't all completely inert, which our crew discovered. Sergeant Adams and I watched in amusement as the crew rounded up the little green aliens.
“Man, who knew these little guys would snore like this? Damn! Oh, man, and he’s drooling on me! That’s disgusting!”
“Hey, look at this one. His eyelids are fluttering, and his leg’s twitching. My dog does that when he’s dreaming about chasing a squirrel.”
“How do you know what your dog dreams about?”
“What else do dogs dream about?”
“Humping your leg?”
"You two, shut the hell up," Adams barked, but I could see her eyes sparkling, "and get a move on."
While Adams handled the sleeping beauties, Sergeant Thomson and I went back to our hijacked Kristang frigate to bring the wounded aboard the Thuranin ship. Skippy had assured me the medical facilities of the Thuranin were vastly superior to the cramped and limited sickbay on the Kristang ship. We moved our three wounded soldiers one at a time, hooked up to Kristang medical monitors, to the Thuranin hospital. This was a task I wanted to take care of personally, even with the wounded sedated and stabilized. Skippy had taken control of the Thuranin medical systems, including the creepy-looking immersion pods that we put the wounded into. The pods had the ominous appearance of caskets, with the insides lined with nanoscale probes. Once the lids closed, the nanoprobes would extended and provide oxygen, nutrients, drugs and nanonachines that would accelerate healing. According to Skippy, he had reprogrammed the Thuranin medical computers to adapt them to human biology, and he had complete confidence all three soldiers would make a full recovery. We had to move carefully, gravity in the medical bay was reduced to fifteen percent of Earth normal, to minimize stress on the bodies of the people being treated.
"Is there anything I can do?" I looked around the medical compartment with a frown. There were tubes and scary-looking robot things everywhere, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a patient in this hospital.
Doctor Skippy disparaged my offer of help. "Unless you have a thorough understanding of Thuranin medical pods, no. Joe, I've got this. It looks scary, it's also fairly sophisticated medical technology, human physiology is pretty simple so these cases are easy. Go do something useful, and let me work."
"All right. We're not leaving these people alone. I'll get Major Simms to assign people shifts here-"
"Totally unnecessary, Joe."
"Physically unnecessary, maybe, Skippy, this is a human thing. I want our people here to know they're not alone. When they wake up, there needs to be someone here."
"A human thing, fine, whatever." Skippy relented.
"Great. What's next? Let's check out the crew quarters on this bucket. They, uh, do have crew quarters, right?" Given the profound weirdness of the Thuranin obsession with
cybernetics, maybe they slept standing up, plugged into the wall or something.
"They do have individual quarters. There is one down the hall to the right."
We walked down the hall, and a door slid open. I stepped in. "Oh, boy. This could be a problem." The quarters were nicely set up; a bed, cabinets built into the walls, a closet, and a bathroom with a shower, a table and one chair. The features of the compartment were not the problem. The problem was they were all Thuranin-sized. The bed wouldn't fit me unless I hung my legs off the side. The ceiling was maybe six and a half feet tall, some of our crew would need to be careful not to bump their heads. To take a shower, I'd need to kneel on the floor, with my legs sticking out.
"I don't know," Adams said with a smile, "it looks cozy to me."
"Cozy like warm and comfortable, or cozy like a real estate ad that really means cramped and depressing?" I asked.
"The second one." Adams opened the closet door. "Huh. They don't go in much for fashion." All the outfits were the same dull gray and blue gray the sleeping Thuranin had been wearing.
"What the hell," I shrugged, "we'll make do. Everyone gets their own quarters, that's luxury enough."
"Sir?" Adams prodded me, "the food situation?"
"Oh, yeah, good point. Skippy, show us the mess hall, or I guess it's a galley on a ship."
"There isn't one, Joe."
"No galley?" I shared a puzzled look with Adams, "then where do they eat?"
"In private," Skippy explained, "the Thuranin consider most things that remind them of their biological past to be taboo, particularly biological functions like eating. Consuming food is done in private, in their sleeping compartments, like this one."
There wasn't anything like a kitchen in the tiny compartment. "All right, fine." We humans could find some space on the ship to use as a mess hall, us being social animals, and mealtimes being a prime social activity. "Show us the food."
"In that cabinet behind Sergeant Adams."
Adams opened the cabinet and pulled out a handful of clear plastic tubes which contained a thick beige fluid. "What is this?" She peered into the cabinet, in case she'd missed something, then opened the other cabinet. Same clear plastic tubes.
"That's their food. The best translation of their term is sustenance sludge."
"Sludge?" I asked, appalled.
"Hmmm, that word may have a negative connotation." Skippy mused. "How about gunk, or muck, or goo, or slime? Darn, those words also have negative connotations."
"Ya think?"
"Think of it as a smoothie?" Skippy tried.
"You're not helping." I took one of the tubes and examined it. "This is all they eat?"
"Yes, it contains everything a Thuranin needs."
"What does it taste like?" I asked, grasping the cap on the top to open it.
"Well, don't eat it, dumdum, it's designed for Thuranin biology, it doesn't have the proper mix of amino acids and vitamins for humans. I have the synthesizers working now to make sludge, I mean smoothies, for humans."
"Wonderful. And what will that taste like?"
Silence for a moment, then, "Like I have taste buds, Joe."
"Oh, sorry about that."
"However, I have built what I consider a fairly accurate model of human senses, including taste-"
"Of course you have."
"-and it will taste like, the best way to describe it, I think, is a combination of oatmeal, carrots and bologna."
"Shit." Adams made a sour face. "This is going to be a long voyage."
"Skippy, this is unsat. You told me we could eat Thuranin food, as in food. This," I shook a plastic tube and the sludge oozed unappealingly from one end to the other, "is not food. An army runs on its stomach. Damn," I looked at Adams, "this is going to be terrible for morale. What the hell is the crew going to do?"
Adams pulled her shoulders back and set her jaw in determination. "They'll embrace the suck, sir." Some things in the military simply sucked, and there wasn't anything you could do about it, so you embraced the suck and did your duty. "Soldiers have been embracing the suck since we fought with wooden spears. We're not out here for a pleasure cruise."
Her attitude was encouraging, I hoped others felt the same. The two pallets of food, mostly MREs, that we'd brought aboard the Dodo would need to be rationed, with priority being given to the wounded. For sure, I was going to set an example by eating nothing but sludge, or 'smoothies'; if the crew saw their commander was sharing the pain, they'd take it better. For now, I decided the crew would be limited to one real meal per day, and see how that went.
"Joe, I didn't realize this would be a significant problem. Let me play with the food synthesizers and see what flavors I can make."
"Chocolate would be good. Everybody likes chocolate, right?" I suggested.
"The cocoa bean is a subtle and complex flavor, I'll do what I can."
"Fine, great. I'll be your taste tester," I volunteered. "Now, is there a gym on the bucket, or someplace we can make into a gym? People need exercise, and we'll need space to practice combat tactics."
"There is nothing like a gym, the Thuranin rely on their cybernetics rather than muscles. One of the cargo compartments is mostly empty, and I can get the robots to clear more space by tossing stuff into space, we don't need any of that cargo. For running, there is an access corridor that runs the length of the ship's spine, next to the tram, I can open and close airlock doors as people run between sections."
That was good news, running sprints was good exercise. Exercise I needed myself.
"Sir, I'd like to handle setting up a gym," Adams volunteered.
"Very well, Sergeant, you do that. I'm going to check on our wounded." I was eager to view the Thuranin medical facilities that Skippy had been raving about. We had brought nothing more than basic first aid kits with us, if anyone needed a blood transfusion, we would be in trouble. So many, so many things, even seemingly little things, could go disastrously wrong on this mission. And it was all my responsibility.
On my way back to the bridge, I called Simms via zPhone and asked her to meet me in the corridor. “Major, I need your advice.”
“What about?” She replied, and I could see in her eyes the discomfort we both felt, about me being her commanding officer.
“The Thuranin.”
Now her eyes reflected a discomfort for a different reason. “What to do with them.” It wasn’t phrased as a question.
“Legally, and morally. Maybe, more legally? Shit, I don’t know.” What kind of morality applies among alien species that are vastly apart on the technological development scale? Where the technogically superior species could wipe out the inferior species with laughably minimal effort?
“I hate to ask this, but have you asked, uh, Skippy?” She suggested. “He’s surely memorized every US Army and UNEF regulation on the books.”
“I’m sure he has, and I’m afraid that’s all he’s done; read and store in his memory. That doesn’t mean he understands any of it. Particularly that he doesn’t understand the purpose, the context, the history.”
“Colonel,” she avoided my eyes when she addressed my rank, “you’ve been in combat. I’ve been Supply my entire career.”
“You went through officer training. UNEF gave me silver eagles, and a giant email of courses I was supposed to take, then I got sent out planting potatoes. I didn’t even get formal training to be a sergeant. I got promoted, had a week with my fireteam at Alpha, then we shipped out and were posted to a village as an EOT straight away. It was on the job training the whole way.”
She thought silently for a moment. “There’s no equivalent to the Geneva Convention out here. That big list we got of The Rules of interstellar warfare, don’t address treatment of prisoners, or any rules of engagement, other than the basic rule that you don’t screw with habitable planetary biospheres. We have the Army code of conduct, but, I think, here’s where Skippy is exactly right; we’re pirates. This mission isn’t sanctioned by UNEF, or any hu
man authority, military or civilian. We’re on our own.”
“Great.”
“Colonel Joe, if I may provide some advice of my own?” Skippy spoke through the zPhone on my belt.
“You’re going to anyway, right?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Major Simms is correct, there is no formal, agreed, written rules of engagement out here. Such rules wouldn’t apply to piracy anyway. You know what you’re going to do, Joe; you’re going to blow the Thuranin into space, because that is the only practical way to achieve your mission, and keep the Thuranin from discovering that humans hijacked one of their starships. You have to kill them to keep your entire species safe. You know what you have to do, you’re only looking for someone else, like Major Simms, to tell you it’s all right. You’re a colonel, you’re the commanding officer, you need to take full responsibility for your decisions.
Through clenched teeth, I said “Thank you, Skippy. That's very helpful.”
Simms gave me a sad, sympathetic smile.
“Oh, no problem, you’re welcome, any time.” He responded cheerily, oblivious to my sarcasm, or ignoring it. “If it makes you feel any better, the Thuranin would never spend a second agonizing over a question like this, they’d squash you humans like bugs and not think anything of it. Any Thuranin who even questioned such a decision would be subjected to neural reprogramming.”
“Being told that I’m morally superior to Satan is not a positive, Skippy.”
“I only mentioned it because, if the Thuranin somehow ever do learn that you hijacked their ship, you having killed their crew won’t make the Thuranin any more angry; they would expect you to do that in war. They’d also expect their crew to die in combat.”
“So, no downside, you’re saying?” I wondered if he picked up on the bitter sarcasm in my voice.
“Nope. It’s not a win-win, but it is a win-don’t lose any worse.”
“No downside except for my soul.”
“Can’t help you there, Colonel Joe. Although I don’t remember anything in scriptures about aliens.”
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 33