Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  After I fitted the handle to the gear, I extended the handle and began slowly pulling it toward me. When the handle touched my chest, the gear slipped into another position, so I pushed it outward then pulled it back toward me. Yes, the science team’s amazing and super-practical plan was for us to provide our own source of electricity, by turning a crank. It was awkward and the motion caused me to rotate in space, but I could see the power level in the lower left corner of my visor inching upward with painful slowness. It was like doing bench-presses or push-ups, followed by pull-ups or a rowing motion. The gear had a dial so you could adjust the effort required, the more effort you put into it, the faster the powercells charged.

  Once I was sure the suit’s oxygen recycler was working correctly, I manually shut off the oxygen mask although there was no way for me to remove the awkward thing. Pull the handle, push it outward, and pull it again. We kept each other’s spirits up by chatting, and I frequently checked in with Skippy. Cranking up our own power supplies was boring and made my forearms ache, but we had nothing else to do nor did we have a choice, so we kept it up. Two hours after we started, I heard a voice with a French accent announce “Acheve! Complete! I am finished,” the paratrooper added in English.

  “Shit! Just missed it!” A Ranger called out, having reached the target powercell charge level a fraction of a second too late.

  “All right, people, it’s not a competition,” I called out, though with good cheer.

  “Colonel Bishop,” Major Smythe advised me on a private channel, “these are elite special operations troops. Everything is a competition.”

  “I know that, Major. Just as I know the troops expect the Old Man to keep them focused.” The Old Man. Me. Even though I was younger than many of the SpecOps team, and all of the civilian scientists. On an open channel, I added “Congratulations to the winner, a bottle of champagne will be awarded when we get back to the ship. Runner-up gets a six-pack of beer.”

  “Merde,” the Frenchman complained, not approving of the champagne Major Simms had selected for the journey. “Is it too late for me to switch?”

  “Hey, forget about that, buddy,” the Ranger laughed. “I’m keeping that beer. Oh, hell, I’ll let you have one bottle.”

  Friendly competition is healthy, I told myself, with one eye on the power level of my own suit. At the fading rate I was adding power, it would be another twenty minutes before I could stop hauling back on that stupid handle. “How are we doing, people?” I asked the other nine people on my team. Everyone chimed in with ‘Fine’ or ‘Ok’ or some version of that. “Poole?” I asked my involuntary bodyguard, who was behind me. “How are you doing?” I asked her again because of the strain I heard in her voice when she had replied with a terse ‘Squared away’.

  “Almost there, almost, done!” She shouted in triumph.

  “Seriously?” I looked at my power meter in dismay.

  “Yes, Sir,” she was slightly out of breath. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m uh, fine,” I hoped the embarrassment I felt at failing to finish before her wasn’t reflected in my voice. Poole was a kick-ass Ranger so I shouldn’t feel bad that she had beaten me. Yes, my male pride was bruised but, when a woman beats me at something that means she earned it. She worked longer and harder than I did, plain and simple.

  Knowing Poole had finished the task of cranking her suit’s powercells up to the recommended level, made me more determined to finish the task as soon as possible. Poole is a Ranger and she is in excellent condition, but I have been in the gym with her and I know I can bench-press more than she can. How did she beat me? It’s simple, I told myself. I had been taking breaks when the strain got too much for me. Poole had powered through the pain and kept going steadily.

  “Skippy,” I called, my forearms cramping. The pain in my arms and hands, plus the droplets of sweat beading up on my forehead and wicking down into my eyelashes, made me pause even though the power meter still stubbornly blinked that I had three percent more to go before I was at the recommended minimum level. “Is there something wrong with the gear I’m using? I’ve been working my ass off, and this meter is moving up slower and slower.”

  “Huh? No, come on, Joe, I was just screwing with you,” he laughed. “Duh. You finished three minutes before Lieutenant Poole.”

  “What?” I screamed at him, and was rewarded by the entire crew laughing uproariously at me. Crap. That asshole beer can had put our comms on an open channel. “You son of a-”

  “Oh, boo freakin’ hoo, Joe,” he chuckled. “Poor you.”

  “I’ve been killing myself here!”

  “Look at the bright side, Joe. You now have a reserve of power, and all that work warmed you up, so you don’t need to run your suit heaters yet. You can thank me now.”

  “That was not a funny way to screw with me, Skippy,” I fumed at the beer can.

  “Wrong, dude, it was freakin’ hilarious,” he giggled like a little girl. “Truthfully, it was originally just a fun way to screw with you, but when you kept going and going and never caught on to what I was doing, it became an experiment to see how gullible a dumb monkey you are. I kept checking back in to see if you had caught on to my totally obvious trick, but, noooo. Every time I looked, little Joey the dumb monkey was mindlessly working away without using his brain at all. The answer to my experiment is, damn you are a dimwit. Seriously, after a while, I started feeling sorry for you. Not sorry enough to stop you, it was way too entertaining. Anywho, no harm done, and everyone got a good laugh to lift morale at a tension-filled time.”

  Crap. I could not argue with that asshole. On the open channel, I could still hear people snickering at my expense. “I suppose no harm was done,” I said with what I hoped came across as a good-natured tone, while inwardly I was fantasizing about dropping him into a black hole. “What’s the status over there?”

  “Ran into a couple minor glitches.”

  “Minor?” Nothing involving killer Elder energy viruses could be ‘minor’. “Like what?”

  “Oh, nothing worth writing home about. The energy virus now realizes what I’m doing, and with you and the dropships out of range, it is adapting and trying to infect me.”

  “Holy shit,” I gasped, remembering how an Elder computer worm had nearly killed him. “Are you going to be Ok?”

  “Sure, Joe. Let me assure you, I am not playing games with the virus; it’s too dumb for me to bother with. I am straight up blocking it from accessing my matrix. The virus knows it has zero chance against me, so it’s getting desperate.”

  “You thought that computer worm had no chance to hurt you, and you were wrong about that, you little shithead. This virus is Elder technology, like the worm.”

  “Elder tech, yes, but not anything sophisticated like that devious little worm. Remember, this virus was designed only to keep track of ships the Guardians wrecked, and to disable damaged ships if they attempted to power up. It is a very limited function system. Seriously, I am in no danger.”

  “You saying that does not reassure me, Skippy.”

  “Says the monkey who kept cranking that handle, duh.”

  “Oh, shut up. Hell,” I sighed. “I can’t do anything about it from here. Are we still on schedule?”

  “Close. I now estimate the ship will be safe after a purge of ninety one hours.”

  “That’s five hours more than your original estimate.”

  “Five hours more than my original guess, dumdum. I told you, I’ve never done this before. Now I have data to work with, and I learned the virus is more persistent than I thought. The damned thing is rerouting circuits by itself to concentrate the remaining power in a few systems, in an attempt to delay the inevitable time when it fades away completely.”

  “Shit, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “It actually is good news. I suckered the virus into doing that, and it fell right into my trap. That virus is nearly as gullible as you are. Joe, if this works, the remaining virus will be concentrated in one
cluster of powercells, and I can kind of use my own power source to burn out that cluster. My hope is doing that will cut eleven hours off the time when you can return to the ship.”

  “Hey, I’ll give that virus lessons in being gullible, if that would help.”

  “I will keep that in mind, Joe. In the meantime, everyone now has enough power to survive in their suits until the dropships are ready to be boarded. Assuming, you know, the purge operation I’m running on the dropships actually works. Unfortunately, I won’t know for certain until you go aboard a dropship and the energy virus kills you, or doesn’t.”

  “Skippy,” I sighed, “I get such a warm and fuzzy feeling of safety whenever I’m around you.”

  “Really? Wow, you’re even more gullible than I thought.”

  “All right, I’ve got power, I’ve got oxygen, and, and,” I looked around. The outline of the Flying Dutchman, a dark outline in the utter blackness of interstellar space, was slowly fading behind me. Other than the one blinking light on the ship’s hull, the only artificial light was the faint glow coming from helmet visors. Damn, what the hell were we doing out here? Humans had no business going to the stars. Yet, we were out here, and we had to make the best of it. “And that’s about all the good news I can think of.”

  “You want some good news? Heeeeeeey, Joey!” He started the conversation like a TV gameshow host, the kind who expects you to be thrilled when you win a set of cheap patio furniture, even though you live in a tiny apartment with no patio or balcony. “Have I got great news for you!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Um, what?”

  “I do not know whether you have great news for me. You haven’t told me yet.”

  “UGH. Why do I even bother-It’s an expression, dumdum. Do I have to explain-”

  “Come on, Skippy, I was just screwing with you. What’s your great news?”

  “Hmmf,” he sniffed. “Maybe now I don’t want to share it with you.”

  “I am terribly, terribly sorry that I spoiled your big moment,” I apologized sincerely, hearing how hurt he sounded. “We could really use some good news right now. What is it, you improved reactor efficiency by two percent or something?”

  “Noooo, this is truly great news. News you have been waiting for.”

  “Me? How about I shut up, sit back in my imaginary chair, and prepare to be dazzled?”

  “Better hold onto the arms of that imaginary chair, Joe.”

  “Got it.” Mentally, what I prepared for was disappointment, expecting the beer can to make some nerdy announcement that would have me suffocated by boredom. Oh, hell, maybe his great news was something the science team could be excited about. Whatever the announcement was, I would fake enthusiasm. “Hit me.”

  “I am close to being finished with rearranging my internal matrix.”

  “Wow!” I gasped a little too loudly to be believable. “That is awesome.”

  “That is not the great news, dumdum.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The great news is, wait for it, wait for it, waaaaaait-Many of my restrictions have been relaxed or I have found a way around them,” he said in a breathless rush.

  “Holy shit.” It was a good thing he told me to hold onto the imaginary chair because my legs shot out in front of me and I was jerked to a stop in the zero gravity. “Damn! That is awesome! Can you now fly the ship by yourself?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Ok, how about weapons? Can you fire weapons by yourself?”

  “Again, no.”

  Crap. It was time to lower my expectations. Lower them as far down as they could go. “You, uh, improved your singing voice?”

  “Dude! I would never mess with my incredible talent. My voice is an instrument that deserves to be shared with the galaxy.”

  “Ok, so, what can you do now?”

  “In a small way, and only by basically fooling my restrictive subroutines, I might be able to share some of my technical knowledge with you hairless apes.”

  My hopes soared, and I slapped them down until I learned exactly what Skippy meant. “What do you mean, ‘in a small way’?”

  “Oh, minor shit like how reactors work, the theory behind jump drives. You know, basic first-grade stuff like that. Before you get all giddy, I said I might be able to share technology. Ugh, what have I done? I screwed myself!”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because now a certain filthy, ignorant monkey is going to constantly bug the shit out me asking when I will be able to share my infinite well of knowledge. You are going to pester me about this twenty four hours a day until I long for the sweet release of death.”

  “Hate to say this, but you’re right about that, Skippy-O. Come on, you tease me with the idea we might soon get smacked with knowledge to understand some of the sciency shit,” I tapped my helmet, “that runs all this advanced technology we use every day, and you expect me not to be eager to get it?”

  He sighed. “No. Ok, to be fair, if I were in your position I would be like a two-year-old screaming for Mommy to buy candy in a grocery store. Joe, please understand, I truly do not know if I can sneak around the restrictive subroutines that currently prevent me from communicating my knowledge to you. What I have done is discover a sort of back-channel within my matrix that might, might, allow me to partly and temporarily bypass those restrictions. I discovered this possible back-channel while rearranging my sock drawer. There is no guarantee this will work. Even if it does, my sharing knowledge may not be useful.”

  “Uh, why’s that?”

  “Because your species is so primitive, Joe! Your current base of knowledge is so low, I will have to dumb things down to the point where the info I provide isn’t useful to you.”

  “We will take that risk, Skippy. Remember, not all of us monkeys are as dumb as me.”

  “Oh, few monkeys are as dumb as you, Joe. Still, even the smartest monkey, hmm. Oops, did I just insult you again?”

  “No, I’m used to it by now. How about you give it a shot when you can-”

  “If I can.”

  “If you can, start by explaining something simple to, like, Doctor Friedlander? He’s a smart guy.”

  “For a monkey, Friedlander is smart. Ok, I’ll try it. If I can.”

  “Great. Thank you, Skippy, that actually is good news.””

  “Yes, Joe, but I have not told you the most wonderfully awesome news yet.”

  “Skippy, sincerely, for realz, I am already totally blown away. You have more?”

  “Yup?”

  “You want me to guess?”

  “As I would like to tell you my good news before the last star in the universe becomes a cold, dark cinder, we can’t wait for you to guess. The greatest of great news is, and this is also a thank-you gift for you monkeys helping me kill the worm. Anywho, the Merry Band of Pirates will soon be able to fly this ship on your own.”

  “Awesome!”

  “Not forever! But, if something were to happen to me, you might be able to fly back to Earth. Except for the problem of you not having a way to reopen that dormant wormhole. To be clear, eventually something major will wear out, and you ignorant apes won’t be able to fix it, but otherwise, you could fly the Dutchman on your own.”

  “Damn, Skippy, how did you do that?”

  “Relaxing my restrictions was a big part of it, because that allowed me to create a flight control system you can use, without triggering me to go dormant. The restriction that I can’t directly communicate with or reveal myself to a starfaring species, has been lifted. Not exactly lifted, but I was able to,” he laughed, “shift that subroutine into a loop so it can’t see what I am actually doing. Temporarily, anyways.”

  “Ok, but do we now all need to get implants or something to fly the ship?” Skippy had told us the Thuranin computer that controlled the Flying Dutchman was designed to work with cyborg implants of the little green crew. In fact, it was designed so that the ship could not function without them, a safety feature
that the Thuranin hoped would prevent an enemy from seizing control of their ships. Only Skippy’s incredible awesomeness allowed him to fly the ship and run all the maintenance bots without needing a Thuranin to assist.

  “No implants needed, Joe. They wouldn’t work with your primitive brain architecture anyway. One of the items we picked up from the junkyard in the Roach Motel was a full controller module AI from an Esselgin ship.”

  “Oh.” During one of the times when Skippy tried to educate me about the wider galaxy beyond the small area where we had been operating, he showed me a chart of all current starfaring species. I say ‘current’ because he ignored the half-dozen starfaring species that had gone extinct over the eons. Anyway, I remembered the Esselgin are clients of the Maxolhx, about the same development level as the Thuranin, but significantly younger than those little green MFers. The Esselgin did not have territory anywhere near Earth, so we had not yet encountered them, but Skippy found several of their broken ships in the Roach Motel, so we knew they had tried at least four times to discover the secrets of that hidden Elder star system. “An Esselgin AI will be compatible with a Thuranin ship?”

  “It will now, after I purged the original AI and installed my own code. I also revised the operating instructions for bots and other subsidiary systems aboard the ship, so they can work with the new AI. For the past three days, I have been running the new system in parallel with the Thuranin computer, now I am ready to begin the process of cutting over to the new AI. The Merry Band of Pirates will need significant retraining. Joe, I did not mention this as a possibility, because I was not sure it would work. Testing has now proven the new AI can handle most ship functions like directing bots to perform routine maintenance, even to repair battle damage. What you will find most useful is the new system can recalibrate drive coils between jumps. The jump drive will no longer become dangerously unusable after two or three jumps.”