Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5)

by Craig Alanson

  “Jump now, debate later, Joe. I strongly urge that we jump now, like now.” Skippy declared in a tone that invited no arguments.

  In the command chair, I nodded, and the pilots pressed the appropriate button to send us on a moderately long jump. Option Echo meant Skippy suggested we not try the next two locations the wormhole was scheduled to emerge, and instead go toward a safer location much farther away. Due to the distances involved and the time required to recharge the drive capacitors between jumps, we could only choose from those three locations. There was no point debating what to do; we had all discussed our situation and options during the long race to the wormhole. “I trusted you on where to jump, Skippy, now I want some answers. Those two ships you found weren’t near the wormhole. In fact,” I ran back the main display, “they were behind us. Why couldn’t we have waited another few minutes until the wormhole opened, and go through?”

  “Joe, you are still thinking like a ground-pounding grunt and not like a starship captain. You keep forgetting to factor in the slow speed of light. Gather ‘round, children, and Professor Skippy will give you a remedial lesson in Space Combat Maneuvers. Again. Joe, our sensor pulses detected two large stealthed ships roughly eight lightminutes away from us. That means by the time our sensor pulses bounced off those ships and returned to us, more than eight minutes had passed. Eight minutes is a lot of time in space warfare, those ships could have jumped anywhere in eight minutes. If there are only two enemy ships here, one of them probably had orders to jump in front of the wormhole when they detected our sensor pulse, and the other would try to jump toward our position and ambush us.”

  Crap, I thought. He is right. One major problem with using active sensors is that an enemy ship detects your sensor pulse and can establish your position long before your sensor pulse has time to slowly crawl all the way back to your ship. A danger ships have to be aware of when using active search is that an enemy ship can use the pulses to fix your position and jump in on top of you, before you have any idea other ships are in the area. In our case, the gamma ray burst of our inbound jump had already given away our position, so using active sensors did not add to our level of risk. “Ok, Ok, you’re right,” I admitted. “Why didn’t the Thuranin have one of those ships parked in front of the wormhole?”

  “I suspect they did not want to scare us away. If we had only scanned the immediate area around the emergence point, we might think this location is safe. Assuming the Thuranin commander is reasonably smart, their plan probably was to wait until shortly before the wormhole opens, then jump their ships in front of the event horizon to block our path. That way, they could ambush us. Also, and this might be a bit of good news, I think those two ships arrived only a short time before we did. When they arrived, they should have swept the area with a brief active sensor pulse, then gone into stealth to wait for us. Our sensors picked up very faint backscatter of Thuranin-type active sensor pulses, bouncing off stray hydrogen molecules. That tells me they initiated an active sensor sweep less than forty minutes ago.”

  “They beat us here by only forty freakin’ minutes?” I complained. “Damn it, our luck is for shit today.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, Joe, the fact that we detected only two ships within eight lightminutes gives me hope the Thuranin have not had time to establish a solid blockade yet. So, yes, we had rotten luck here, but we still have a chance to go through this wormhole before the Thuranin can set up a full blockade.”

  “Skippy, it’s going to take us over five hours to get to the next emergence point. That is plenty of time for the bad guys to plant starships right in front of where we need to go.”

  “I know that, Joe.” He answered quietly.

  “Sorry. I know it’s not your fault. Physics is not my friend today.”

  “Physics hates you, Joe. You have screwed with laws of physics too often, like shooting a maser through a microwormhole, or landing dropships from orbit on a yoyo string. By now, physics must be totally humiliated at being messed with by a filthy monkey.”

  That made me smile, which was Skippy’s intention. “Could I send it a fruit basket to say I’m sorry?”

  “No, but the Law of Entropy could use a nice pair of socks, because it is getting cold.”

  “Entropy getting cold, hah hah,” I chuckled. “I understood that joke. Any chance those two ships will be following us?”

  “There is always a chance, Joe, but I doubt it. Based on the rough profile I received from the sensor pulses, both of those ships are large; possibly a battlecruiser or battleship. That is an educated guess, you understand, the sensor pulse can only partially penetrate the enemy stealth fields. Most likely those ships have orders to blockade that particular emergence point, while other ships are assigned to hunt us. I think the Thuranin are throwing ships at this operation as soon as they can get here, whether they are suited to the task or not. Light cruisers and destroyers would be the best ships to use for search and pursuit, with slower and heavier ships best assigned to blockade a static location.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” I agreed.

  For the next two jumps, I stayed on the bridge, until I was absolutely sure no ships from the wormhole location had followed us. Those ships certainly would report that a strange ship had jumped in and then quickly jumped away, and with even a single warship covering that emergence point, we had one less option for going through the wormhole.

  After I relinquished the command chair to Lt. Colonel Chang, I went to the galley for a snack and brought it to my office. There was a series of reports stacked up in my laptop’s inbox, and I especially did not feel like dealing with them right then. With a groan, I set down my water bottle and went to click my email open, when the laptop screen went blank. And my office door slid silently closed. “What the-”

  “Joe, we should talk,” Skippy announced as his avatar popped to life above my desk. “We are in significant trouble.”

  “How is that news?” I picked up the water bottle and guzzled half of it. “We are always in one type of trouble or another.”

  “This is big, big trouble, Joe. Like, I have no idea how we can get out of this. I am very worried. That emergence point we just tried to go through was not the one closest to our original location; I chose it because I thought it was the one that had the best chance to not yet be guarded by Thuranin ships. That emergence point is one of the farthest from any Thuranin fleet bases, so I figured it would be one of the last to be blockaded. Joe, the problem we are facing is simple math.” My laptop screen came to life with a 3D star map, showing the yellow banana icon for the Flying Dutchman in the center. In glowing blue were emergence points for the wormhole. “I am only showing the next thirty six emergence points for the wormhole, for clarity. From where we are now, we can only reach seven of those points before they close and move on.”

  “Why thirty six?” I asked.

  “Partly random, partly because after about twenty or so, I expect major elements of the Thuranin fleet to arrive.”

  “Ah. Got it. Go on, sorry I interrupted you.”

  “So, we can choose from seven emergence points right now. We are currently on course for this one,” a glowing icon changed from blue to green. “Now, watch this. Once we get to the next emergence point, if enemy ships are there, our options shrink dramatically.” Blue icons began blinking out until only eight were left.

  “Wow, eight? Out of thirty six?” That seemed like a lot to me.

  “Yes, Joe. We will have burned time getting to the next point. From there, we only have eight locations we can get to before the wormhole there closes.”

  “Shit. And the longer we screw around out here, the more time the Thuranin have to bring in ships to block us,” I stated the obvious.

  “Not just Thuranin, Joe. The Thuranin will report we have attempted to use this wormhole, and after that information reaches the Maxolhx, I expect them to reassign some of their ships here.”

  “That is majorly bad news. Ok, but nothing ch
anges, right? We keep going and hope this next emergence point is not guarded. If it is, we try one of these other eight.”

  “It’s not so easy, Joe. Of those eight, two will be at the far edge of our jump capability. If we have even a slight hiccup in the drive, or have to change course to evade pursuit, we will not reach those points before the wormhole changes position. The number is not truly eight, then, it is four.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because, Joe, four of the eight have no other option if we can’t go through in those locations. The remaining four each have only a single other option, and three of those are considered high risk.”

  “Ok,” I stared at my empty coffee cup, wishing I had more. “Our options shrink from thirty six to four, then to one.”

  “Correct,” he said quietly, and did not even make a smartass remark about my poor math skills. That told me how concerned Skippy was, and that frightened me. “Joe, the odds of us successfully getting through the emergence point in front of us is only twenty eight percent, and I am fairly confident of that number. If we fail to go through our next destination, our odds drop to seven percent, then basically zero.”

  “Zero? Come on, Skippy, you told me it is very difficult for even a large fleet to maintain a blockade for a long time. We could just- Oh crap. Zero Hour.”

  “Yes, Joe. Zero Hour. We do not have the option of going dormant and waiting in stealth for years until the Thuranin give up. This is, once again, my fault. If our jump drive was in better condition, or if I were still Skippy the Magnificent rather than Skippy the Meh, we would have a much better chance to escape from this trap.”

  “Nothing we can do about that now, Skippy. I mean, other than what we are already doing.” I also knew that if Skippy was his old self, he could simply command that wormhole to open in a different location that was not on its planned schedule, and we could zip through without the Thuranin knowing we were ever there. We had done that many times before. “You, uh, told me all this happy info to cheer me up?”

  “No, Joe, I told you all this because I need you to pull my ass out of the fire. Again.” His voice was almost strangled, telling me how much it pained that arrogant asshole to admit he needed help from a monkey.

  “Ah, listen, Skippy, if you need someone to check your statistics or something like-”

  “Phhhhhht!” He blew a raspberry. “Dude, puh-lease,” his usual pompous snarkiness was right back. “The day I need any meatsack to verify my math, I will let the worm get me and put me out of my misery. No, Joe, I do not need any sort of logic. I need the exact opposite. I need, we all need, you to engage that disorganized sack of mush in your skull, and think up a crazy-ass way to get us out of this mess. The mess I got us into.”

  “Disorganized sack of mush?”

  “Ok, I was being generous, but give me a break; I’m trying to get you to work with me here. If the dumbest beings in the galaxy opened your skull and took a dump in there, it would be smarter than-”

  “This is how you ask for a favor?”

  “I’m new at this, Joe. I am sending up the Bat Signal and I need your help.”

  “Bat Signal? I always wondered about that. I mean, in like the 1950s I could see using a searchlight to shine a signal on the clouds, but even then, what happens if it’s a clear night? Or it’s a sunny day and they need Batman right away, do they have to wait for nightfall? And, does Batman sit up all night looking for a light shining on the clouds? What if he is sitting on the can when-”

  “Joe-”

  “These days, wouldn’t they just send him a text, or post on his Facebook page or Instagram account? I’m sure Batman could get a burner phone at 7-11, right?”

  “Joe-”

  “Although I guess if Batman had a Facebook page, maybe he would waste all his time watching cute videos of baby goats or someth-”

  “JOE!”

  “What? Sorry, got off the subject there.”

  “Ya think? Damn, and you call me absent-minded.”

  “You have to admit I have a point. Some of this superhero stuff makes no sense. Like, does Thor ever use his mighty hammer around the house? He needs to hang a picture of Odin on a wall, and if he’s not careful, BAM! There goes the wall, and half the city.”

  “Ugh,” Skippy was thoroughly disgusted. “Joe, I will be happy to debate the finer points of nerdness with you some other time, Ok? Now, pretty please, with sugar on it, will you try to think of a way to escape the Thuranin?”

  “Oh, well, since you asked it that way-”

  “Oh thank God,” he breathed. “If I had to suck up to an ignorant biological trashbag like you for another freakin’ second, I was going to-”

  “Skippy? It is really best if you stop talking right now.”

  “Understood.”

  “You, uh, got any hints for me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a possible way out of our predicament?”

  “Oh for- Joe you dumdum, if I had any clue how to escape from the Thuranin, I would not have to ask you for help!”

  “Ok, Ok,” I held up my hands. “So, you have run every possible scenario through your super-duper logic circuit, and you got nothing. That means I need to think of something truly off the wall.”

  “Yes, and please hurry.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  I tried everything to think of a creative way for us to sneak through the wormhole without the Thuranin intercepting us, and the whole crew also put their thinking caps on. When none of us could dream up a solution, we switched to trying to think of a way for us to force our way through a blockade. We kicked around truly wild ideas, like using our self-destruct nukes as offensive weapons or merely to screw with enemy sensors. Most of the ideas I thought of got rejected by the crew before I could waste Skippy’s time. Thus, Skippy was very, very, crushingly disappointed in me when we were ready to jump in near the emergence point, and I had not pulled a magical solution out of thin air. “Joe,” he said while shaking his avatar’s head, “I am extremely disappointed in you.”

  “I can’t dream up crazy shit on demand, Skippy! It’s a creative thing, I can’t control it.”

  “All I know is, true champions step up when the pressure is on. Any amateur can get lucky when the stakes don’t matter. Did Michael Jordan choke in the playoffs? No he did not; he played better, because he knew he had to. There are many athletes who are great in the regular season, and become true choke artists in the postseason. Consider the Boston Red Sox, for example, they have a pitcher-”

  “Skippy!” I cut him off. “Can we continue the sports analogy later?” I pointed to the clock on the main bridge display. “We are jumping in four, three, two, one, jump!”

  We jumped in three lightminutes away from the Elder wormhole. That distance was close enough that we could reach the wormhole directly with one short jump, but far enough away so we could check if enemy ships were there. Skippy warned we could only detect ships on this side of the wormhole; if there were other ships lurking beyond the wormhole we would be screwed. Going through an Elder wormhole, like going through a jump, temporarily disrupted the effectiveness of a ship’s defense shields, stealth field and sensors. Ships emerged from a wormhole partially defenseless and nearly blind, so we would be in trouble if the Thuranin had ships waiting for us on the far side. We had an advantage when Skippy the Magnificent was with us, because his own sensors recovered much faster than the ship’s gear did. Now that our beer can was Skippy the Meh, we had to rely only on our Thuranin sensor gear.

  “Well?” I asked, forgetting about Skippy’s weakened condition.

  “Nothing on passive sensors, Joe,” Skippy responded peevishly. “Our active sensor pulse will not get a return for another one hundred ten seconds. Go, I don’t know, get yourself a juice box or practice tying your bootlaces again. Maybe a miracle will occur and you’ll get it right this time.”

  In the command pilot chair, Desai had her fingers poised on
the button to initiate an emergency jump. If there was an imminent danger, she did not need to wait for my order to jump us away to safety. While the photons of our sensor pulse slowly meandered away from the ship at a tortoise-like 186,000 miles per second, and then leisurely dawdled their way back, I drove myself crazy with worry. The main bridge display had a countdown clock to the time when we expected to receive an echo if the sensor pulse contacted an enemy ship. That clock counted down to zero while I held my breath, then went to plus one second, plus two seconds. I pumped a fist in the air and was about to exclaim my happiness when Skippy ruined everything.

  “It’s a trap!” He shouted in the hoarse voice of his best Star Wars Admiral Ackbar impression. “Three ships detected at the wormhole position! It took a few seconds for the sensor system to process the data,” he explained. “We are screwed. And we are outa here. Jump option Bravo.”

  “No, wait! Belay that!” I ordered. “Jump option, uh,” I checked the list on my tablet to confirm, “Foxtrot.” Desai hesitated, momentarily confused. I did not blame her; she trusted Skippy more than me about hyperspatial jumps. “Engage,” I said firmly, and Desai nodded. The Flying Dutchman jumped a mere ten lightminutes away, rather than the much longer jump Skippy had wanted.

  “Ok, Joe, I know it goes against protocol to question the captain in public, but what in the hell did you do that for?” Skippy asked. “We burned up precious capacitor energy for an almost useless jump.”

  “I, uh, um.” Why had I done that? On the surface, I knew that if we could not go through the wormhole here, our chances of survival were effectively zero. Skippy’s long-range jump sounded good, but it would only take us from the fire into the frying pan. Either way, we were dead.

  That was the surface explanation for why I ordered a much shorter jump. The real reason was that, in the back of my mind, there was an idea brewing. I didn’t know yet what that idea was, but I knew we needed to hang near the wormhole if we had any chance of going through it here.