Mavericks

by Craig Alanson

  “Hmmm, you may be right about that, Joe. Kristang aeroshells are not known for being the luxury accommodations I provided for you for landing on Jumbo.”

  “That was luxury? Damn, Skippy, it felt like you slapped those things together out of duct tape. If our aeroshells were a hotel, they wouldn’t even be a Motel Six, they’d be, like, a Motel Two. Maybe less.”

  “Yes, it was soooo terrible for you biological trashbags to be stuck in there.” That was his turn to roll his eyes. “My point, dumdum, is you are right, the Kristang would not want the Keepers inside those aeroshells for more than a day or two. They wouldn’t trust the Keepers for longer than that. The infiltrators were chosen because they are the most stupidly stubborn fanatics, but even some of them must be having quiet doubts about why they are being sent back to Paradise. Of course, the Kristang would have installed kill devices inside the aeroshells, to prevent a Keeper who had a change of heart from blowing open the shell prematurely and sending out a signal.”

  That got me wondering if there was a way for us to trigger those kill switches remotely, but that was a problem we could work on after we located that ship. “Two days? Better make it three to be safe, the lizards might not consider comfort to be a factor true warriors need to be concerned about. So, that meteor shower can’t change course or speed. That means the Kristang have to insert the Keepers in that cluster of meteors two or three days before the meteors intersect the orbit of Paradise.”

  “Huh. Damn, this has never happened before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You helped me with a math problem.”

  “Uh, how’s that?”

  “Locating a single ship in an entire star system is basically a math problem, Joe. You somehow narrowed the search area to the vector those meteors will follow in the few days before they rain down on southern Lemuria. Incredible. Joe, the last time you solved a math equation of any significance was back in sixth grade when your teacher called on you in the middle of a daydream and you blurted out ‘forty two’.”

  “Hey! I remember that.”

  “Did you know what the question was, dumdum?” The beer can’s avatar asked with a smug smirk on its shiny stupid face.

  “No,” I admitted. “I got lucky. Hey, come on, Becky Miller was wearing her pink sweater that day and she smiled at me during lunch, so my brain was a little fuzzy. Anyway, I got it right, didn’t I?”

  “By luck.”

  “You keep telling me there is no such thing as luck.”

  “In your case, the universe has made an exception.”

  Just then, Margaret Adams stepped into my office carrying a tray. With a glass of iced tea. And potato chips. And a pickle. And a yummy-looking sandwich. With chocolate-chip cookies. “Have you two solved the problem yet?” She asked while she held the tray just out of my reach.

  “What makes you think we’ve been working on a problem?” I asked with a guilty look toward Admiral Skippy.

  She didn’t reply, she didn’t need to. She cocked her head at me and gave me a look. You know, a look. I folded like a cheap suit. She knew me too well. “Yeah,” I admitted, “we think we’ve narrowed the search area to a manageable size, and we’re fairly sure the Keepers haven’t landed yet.”

  “There is still a lot of work to do, Joe,” Skippy protested, then he shouted “Hey!” when Adams set down the tray, cutting right through the hologram of his avatar. “Hmmmph. If that’s the respect I get around here-”

  “We all know you didn’t solve the problem, Skippy,” Adams announced as she plucked a potato chip off my plate.

  “Is this my reward, Gunny?” I mumbled over a mouthful of deli deliciousness.

  “You get cranky if you miss lunch. And you need strength for my barre class this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” I groaned. “Do I have to? That class kills me! I swear you make up half that shit just to hurt me.” The last time I attended one of her classes, I was barely able to get out of bed for two days.

  “Pain is weakness leaving the body, Sir,” she said with a stone-faced stare.

  “Unless you get shot,” I grumbled to myself. “Ok, Ok, I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  We arrived at the chosen star system, another boring red dwarf star surrounded by a couple small rocky inner planets and one reasonable large gas giant, where I ordered us into orbit. Major Desai took the first shift flying dropships into the atmosphere to collect fuel, and I went to the gym to keep my mind off the danger our two dropships were taking.

  As I suspected, Adams had dreamed up new ways to torture me, so after her class I limped back to my cabin, showered then sprawled on my bunk, unable to move. My body was beat but my brain wandered as usual. “Hey, Skippy, I have a question. No,” I added to short-circuit whatever smartass remark he had prepared, “It is not about girls, or shoelaces. The last time we were at Earth, you-”

  “Hey, I did not ransack that hotel room. Those hotel rooms. Totally not my fault. Ok, sure, uh, shmaybe I shouldn’t have set up an open bar, and I only set off the fire alarm when the party got completely out of control. But I didn’t throw that couch into the pool. That was impressive, actually. I would have bet those idiots could not hit the pool from the seventh floor, especially with Darrell still passed out on the couch, but that guy cashed in all his karma points or something and, damn! He just made it,” the beer can chuckled. “Anywho-”

  “What hotel? Who the hell is Darrell?”

  “Uh, your question is not about a certain hotel in Cabo San Lucas? An incident there that I was totally, no way involved in, at all? That you know of?”

  “Oh, crap. No! My question was not about that, but now I-”

  “Oh, goodie. Like I said, I was not involved in any way that the authorities could ever prove, so we’re good. We should, uh, move on from that subject.”

  “Oh, dammit, fine,” my mind was still wondering if the United States Army back home had docked my pay for repairs to some freakin’ hotel at a Mexican resort. “Last time we were at Earth, I asked if we could leave one of your magical microwormholes in orbit there, so we would have a constant datalink back home.” That had not been my idea, it had come from a group of egghead scientists assembled by UNEF Command.

  “Yes, I remember that. I also told you it was a stupid idea that proves you monkeys know absolutely nothing about higher-dimensional physics. You wanted one end of the microwormhole at Earth, with the other end aboard the Flying Dutchman. I told you, that won’t work, because as soon as the Dutchman jumped, that would sever the microwormhole.”

  “Ayuh, I remember the nerdy slide show you made us sit through while you belittled and humiliated that team of scientists about how stupid their idea was. Then I had to suffer through an awkward cocktail party with them afterwards, making apologies and excuses for you.”

  “Nerdy? Joe, from now on, whenever I create a presentation to explain something to you, there will be only two slides; a smiley face and a frowny face.”

  “Oh, that would be great. You can skip all the nerdy details like math and stuff.”

  “Oh, this is hopeless. Joe, were you hoping that if you asked again, my answer would change?”

  “Yeah, kinda?”

  “O. M. G,” he sputtered. “What, you think the laws of physics have changed recently? Joe, the universe does not get periodic updates to its software.”

  “No, I am hoping your understanding of physics has changed. Or, improved is what I should say.”

  “Improve? My. Under. Standing?” He was utterly astonished. “Me? Joe the-”

  “Look, you said the connection between both ends of a microwormhole would collapse when the ship jumps, because the ship’s jump wormhole would sever the connection. But, wait! Uh!” I shushed him with a finger wagging at his avatar. “Let me finish. We jumped the freakin’ ship through an Elder wormhole. We already created a wormhole inside a wormhole,” I pointed out with very smug satisfaction. Score 1 to the monkeys, zero to the beer can. �
��So, why can’t you sustain a microwormhole connection through a jump wormhole?” I sat back with satisfaction, waiting for him to realize once again how clever monkeys are.

  “Wow. Your monkey brain made the connection between sustaining a jump wormhole through a stable Elder wormhole, and sustaining a microwormhole through a jump wormhole?”

  “Yup, a monkey brain did that,” I agreed with justifiable pride.

  “Hmmm. It makes sense that a monkey brain thought that. Because it is stupid!” He laughed. “Joe, we broke that Elder wormhole, in case your memory of the event is foggy. And we emerged from that jump way off target, and in the gosh-darned future, because our jump wormhole was prematurely severed when the Elder wormhole collapsed. No, dumdum, my understanding of physics has not changed. Yes, Ok, shmaybe we could take one end of a microwormhole with us when we jump away from Earth. But, as soon as our jump was complete and the event horizon of the far end closed behind us, the microwormhole would be severed. Duh.”

  “Oh, shit,” I did not need to see the faint reflection of my face on my tablet display to know a good description of me at that moment would be ‘crestfallen’. And ‘chagrinned’. Probably some other fancy words too, if I had a thesaurus handy. “We can’t do it?”

  “We? You can’t do anything more complicated than tying shoelaces, and you screw that up. I can do mind-bogglingly incredible things, except when ignorant monkeys distract me by wasting my time with moronic questions.”

  “Sorry. I just thought-”

  “Thought? Is that what you call it? Listen, Joe,” he dropped the snarky tone. “You have dreamed up ideas that made me question my understanding of physics, like when you suggested we project a jump wormhole through an Elder wormhole. So, keep the ideas coming. But, I suggest you not pat yourself on the back until I confirm your idea will work.”

  “Again, I’m sorry. I should have realized it wouldn’t work. One more question, please? If we could make a jump wormhole stable, keep it open, then could the connection of a microwormhole be sustained?”

  “Hmm. That is a good question, however, it would not be necessary. Joe, if we could keep a jump wormhole open, we could use that for communication back to Earth, we wouldn’t need a microwormhole.”

  “Oh,” I could feel my cheeks turning red. “Duh. Damn, my brain is asleep today. There is, uh, no way to keep a jump wormhole open?”

  “No. Remember, even Elder wormholes turn on and off in this spacetime. The event horizons of wormhole endpoints disturb spacetime, can even create a tear in the quantum grid fabric of spacetime if the wormhole is open long enough. I told you, even comparatively weak jump wormholes have a bad effect on spacetime in the immediate area.”

  “All right. Damn it, then. If we ever wanted instantaneous communications, we would need to put one end of a microwormhole into a super-high-speed missile and send it to another star the long way. Crap! It could take thousands of years for a missile to get to Paradise from Earth.”

  “What? No, no, no. Joe, that won’t work either. What keeps microwormholes from collapsing is me. If we sent one end of a microwormhole away in a missile, that wormhole connection would stay open only as long as I maintain it. The first time I lose concentration, or the first time a ship jumps with me aboard, the microwormhole would collapse. Microwormholes are a temporary, kind of short-range technology. They are something I invented, as far as I know. Ok, actually, they are an extension of existing Elder technology, but still they are a shining example of my awesomeness.”

  “I guess they are. Hey,” I added quickly. “I meant that seriously. Your awesomeness is so great, most of the time we don’t even notice it.”

  “For realz, homeboy?”

  “For realz. You know, part of the problem with you being an arrogant asshole is it distracts us from how incredibly beyond us you are.”

  “Ah, yes,” he sighed. “My awesomeness is a burden, but I bear it happily.”

  “We thank you.” That time I could not resist adding an eyeroll.

  “Joe? Most of the time, your ideas are an insult to the word ‘idea’. But you should keep trying, huh?”

  “Sure thing, Skippy. Because once in a while, one of my ideas is a nugget of gold?”

  “Um, I meant more like mocking your idiotic thoughts is an endless source of amusement for me, but let’s go with the gold nugget thing if you like.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Hey, uh, Joe,” Skippy’s voice whispered from the speaker of my laptop.

  I looked at my desktop behind the laptop display, then around me in both directions. No avatar. There was no Grand Admiral the Fleet with his ginormously ridiculous fore-and-aft gold-braided hat, and that was a bad sign. It meant whatever Skippy wanted to talk about, it was extra serious. Oh, shit, I said to myself silently as I pressed the button to close the door of the closet I used as an office. We had enough problems to deal with already. Our dropships had gotten worn out from flying millions of miles around the Roach Motel, so we had to be extra careful during the refueling operation. That meant not going as deep into the atmosphere, and not extracting as much fuel on each flight, which meant more flights were required. “Hey, Skippy, what’s up with your fine self?” I asked in an unsteady voice.

  “I am not so fine right now, Joe.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?”

  “You can come to my mancave so we can talk face to face, sort of.”

  Uh oh. Skippy never asked me to visit his beer can in the escape pod where we kept him safely strapped in. Regardless of what he said, I regularly stopped by to visit him, and I think he appreciated the gesture, although he complained about filthy monkeys contaminating his mancave. Either this was extremely serious, or he was planning to screw with me. “I’ll be right there.”

  The escape pod wasn’t far, so I arrived quickly and ducked down to squeeze myself through the hatch that had been designed for much-smaller Thuranin bodies. That escape pod came with the optional claustrophobia package, which I did not like at all. Closing the hatch would have set off alarms in the CIC and brought unwanted attention to a discussion Skippy wanted to keep private, so I sat with my back to the hatch. Since the escape pod was on a dead-end passageway, no one would be walking by unless they were specifically coming to the pod. I spoke quietly. “I’m here, what’s going on?”

  “Joe, we may have a big, huge, massive-You know, there aren’t words to describe how big a problem this is.”

  “Holy shit, Skippy. What the hell is it now?” My mind raced through every disaster scenario I could imagine. The Maxolhx or Rindhalu or both had learned the truth about the Flying Dutchman and were coming to crush our pirate ship? Or, worse, the senior species had discovered that a small group of humans were flying around the galaxy making trouble, and were already at Earth to punish humanity?

  “You need a little background before I can explain the problem. I was finally able to recover data from that dead AI we found on Newark. It-”

  “Goddammit, Skippy!” I glanced behind me into the passageway in case someone heard me yelling, then lowered my voice although I wanted to scream at him. “After all the crap we went through getting off Kobamik without you, then spending a whole freakin’ year looking for a stupid conduit thing to fix you and rebuild the ship you broke, and still you go poking your nose around in-”

  “Damn, take a chill pill, Joe. I didn’t go back in that canister.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. Even I am capable of learning a lesson, whether I like it or not. No way am I going back in that hellhole.”

  “Crap! You didn’t send Nagatha in there, did you?” I thought that unlikely, as Skippy told me he had not been able to revive Nagatha yet.

  “No, not Nagatha either. She saved my life and, despite her being a royal pain in my ass, I have grown rather fond of her.” His avatar popped to life atop a couch opposite me, with the avatar wagging a finger at me. “I will deny everything if you tell her t
hat.”

  Skippy thought he could keep secrets from Nagatha, I wasn’t sure that was true. “Not Nagatha, then. How did you get info out of that dead canister?”

  His avatar removed its oversized hat and mimed wiping its forehead, then wearily set the hat back on, tilting it back so I could see the eyes. For the first time, the avatar sat down and bent its head, staring at its tiny shoes for a moment before Skippy spoke. “The incident with the energy virus was unfortunate, however, it gave me an idea. As you know, I have previously sent expendable subminds into the dead AI canister-”

  “Before, you mean. You sent them in before you tried going in there yourself.”

  “Yes, and also recently. Again, chillax, Joe! Loading subminds in there is a one-way process, they can’t, cannot, no way pose a threat to anything outside the canister. That is a solid gold promise, Joe. The reason that I gave up on subminds and went in there by myself, was because I wasn’t getting any useful data from them, they burned out too quickly, and they weren’t able to effectively transmit their findings to me, the data was garbled. Yesterday, I decided to try something new. I upgraded a submind with the ability to create a low-grade energy virus in a dimension above this spacetime. The first three times I tried it, I wasn’t able to detect the effects of the energy virus, but I had a breakthrough this morning. The energy virus is creating faint but recognizable patterns, sort of ripples in higher spacetime. The ripples form a signal, and I am able to read the data. Since that breakthrough, I have been sending a series of subminds into the canister, they still burn out quickly, but now I can guide them, so each one retrieves data that is new. From this data feed, I have been able to build a very rough picture of the AI that used that canister as an anchor in local spacetime.”

  “Great! So, was it like you?”

  “Its basic matrix was very much like me, which is troubling because of what else I learned.” The avatar froze and flickered for a second, nearly making my heart stop but before I could say anything, the avatar moved again. “I would like to double-check my analysis, but I am confident there can be no mistake about it. Joe, that AI was involved in throwing the planet Newark out of its original orbit. That Elder AI wiped out an intelligent species.”