Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5)

by Craig Alanson

  The two pilots turned in their couches to look at me, and everyone in the CIC was also staring expectantly at me. And I had nothing. No idea how we could through the wormhole without being fired on and sliced up by powerful Thuranin warships. Maybe Skippy was right, it would be better to run away and live to fight another day. Except, no, if we didn’t go through the wormhole right here, there would not be another day for us. “Damn it,” I gritted my teeth and pounded a fist on the arm of the command chair. “No way we can get through?”

  “I don’t immediately see a way for the ship to survive running that blockade,” Skippy explained gently. “The spatial distortion from the wormhole will deflect the far end of our jump wormhole away; the closest we could jump in would be roughly eighty thousand kilometers from the event horizon of the wormhole. Then we would need to run the gauntlet between those ships.”

  “That is too much time for us to be exposed to enemy fire,” I agreed glumly. “Those warships would tear us to pieces.”

  “Yes they would, Joe,” Skippy’s voice sounded depressed. “And if we got into trouble, we couldn’t jump away. Those ships are projecting a powerful damping field. There is no- Oh! Two more ships jumped in three lightminutes behind us. They’ve got us bracketed. And, two more ships four lightminutes away to our starboard. They’re searching with active sensors, Joe. Our stealth field won’t conceal our position for long.”

  “Crap. And,” I glance at the timecode in the top left corner of the main bridge display, “that wormhole closes in less than five minutes.” I thought furiously, picturing the tactical situation in my mind. Three ships in front of us. More ships behind and to one side, and those were just the ships our sensors had detected so far. There could be other ships farther away, and the light from there hadn’t reached our position yet. Thinking of light as something that travelled slowly was the most difficult, and most basic, element of commanding a starship in combat. Before I left Earth, I thought of almost all real-time communications as instantaneous. Other than a sort of hollow sound and an almost imperceptible lag when bouncing a signal off a Milstar satellite in geosynchronous orbit, I never had to think about the speed of light. Most of the time when I called home from deployment, I used something like Skype, where you expect a bit of lag from buffering, but not from the signal traveling one place to another. In the command chair of the Flying Dutchman, I had to think of incoming and outgoing signals as real, physical things that crawled along at a limited speed.

  So, our ship was surrounded, the wormhole we wanted to go through was blocked by powerful enemy warships, and that wormhole was soon about to close and shift to the next position in its endless figure-eight pattern.

  We were running out of time.

  The gamma rays from our own inbound jump would give away our position as if we used a strobe light, but those gamma rays showed where we jumped in, not where we were now. The ship had been moving at twenty eight thousand kilometers per hour before we jumped, and we retained that momentum after the jump. Since we jumped in, we had coasted almost a thousand kilometers.

  I also had to remind myself that one thousand kilometers was an inconsequential distance in space warfare. Within minutes, the gamma rays we created would reach the surrounding ships, and they would jump in to bracket us. Whatever we were going to do, I needed to make a decision quickly.

  We couldn’t go through the wormhole. Not here.

  “Skippy, can we jump to the next emergence point of this wormhole?” I was hoping we could arrive early at the next point in space where the Elder wormhole would appear, before the Thuranin realized where we had gone. It was almost certain the Thuranin would follow us through the wormhole, and we would be right back in the dangerous situation of trying to escape multiple task forces that were pulling in more and more ships. But it was better than remaining where we were. If we stayed at our current position and the wormhole closed, there was almost no possibility of us eluding pursuit long enough for the wormhole to cycle back to a location we could reach.

  “No, Joe, we can’t,” he replied with a sigh. “The next location the wormhole will emerge is too far for us to reach in one jump. Actually, give me a moment, no. By the time we completed multiple jumps to the wormhole’s next position, it would have already have closed and moved on. We go through the wormhole here, or forget about going through and go to Plan B.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Yeah, sure, Joe. You know, Plan B. The Merry Band of Pirates always has a Plan B.”

  “Skippy,” I shook my head. “This is, like, Plan Z. We already tried everything else.”

  “That’s not good, Joe. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I ignored the beer can, mostly because I didn’t have a good answer. “Does anyone have an idea how to get out of this mess?” I asked no one in particular. “Quickly?”

  Major Smythe spoke up from behind my chair. “If we attempt to run the blockade and the ship becomes disabled, the Thuranin could board us. And discover our secret,” He warned with a raised eyebrow. “We would then be forced to-” he didn’t need to finish his thought.

  “Ok,” I breathed. “Does anyone have a suggestion that does not involve us self-destructing the ship?”

  Other than the sound of people awkwardly shuffling their feet, my question was greeted by silence. Crap. People crowded into the bridge and in the CIC were looking at me to get them out of our perilous situation. Even Hans Chotek, behind the glass in the CIC. He met my gaze and nodded slightly. Even he expected me to pull a rabbit out of a hat. This time, the problem was not a rabbit going through the rim of a hat, it was our starship going through the event horizon of a stable ancient wormhole. We needed to go through, except we couldn’t risk getting sliced apart by the three powerful warships guarding this end of the wormhole. How could we go through the wormhole without-

  Through.

  Go through a wormhole.

  “Skiiiiippeee,” I said slowly while rubbing my chin.

  “Oh goody!” Skippy replied. “It’s about freakin’ time.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “I know you by now, Joe. You’re considering a monkey-brained idea you just thought of, and either way, it’s good for me. You might have a good idea; unlikely but stranger things have happened. Or you could tell me a truly idiotic idea, in which case I get to laugh and insult you mercilessly, before you have to self-destruct the ship. That’s a win-win for me.”

  “Oh, great,” I rolled my eyes. Even when facing imminent death, Skippy could not help being an asshole. “Here’s my question. The spatial distortion field around that wormhole prevents us from projecting the far end of a jump point close to the wormhole, right? We can’t jump right in front of the event horizon and zip straight through. We have to jump in far away from the wormhole, then travel through normal space while those Thuranin ships take potshots at us?””

  “Correct. That is a safety feature of the Elder wormhole network, to prevent two wormhole event horizons from overlapping and interfering with each other.”

  “Uh huh. That makes sense. How about this, then. Can we project the far end of our jump point on the other side of that wormhole? Project a jump right through that wormhole?” When Skippy didn’t immediately respond, I added “Instead of going through the wormhole in normal space, I mean. Skippy? Hey? Oh, crap, don’t blue screen on me now!”

  “Skippy is still with us, Joseph,” Nagatha advised. “He is thinking furiously, so much that he does not have the capacity to respond at the moment.”

  “He thinks this might actually be a good idea?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no, dear,” she said with a laugh and the dismissive voice schoolteachers used when kindergarten children ask whether the Earth is flat or cows could fly. “Initially, Skippy was considering a list of insults, ranked by originality and wittiness. He expects this might very well be his last opportunity to disparage your intelligence, so he wants to make this special. Skippy tested several insults on me to get my opinion,
then he abruptly told me he needed to check on something, and he has been frantically busy since then.”

  “And the two of you discussed all this in the blink of an eye?”

  “We do think substantially faster than you humans do, dear,” Nagatha said gently.

  “Yes we do,” Skippy interjected with a sigh. “But we aren’t always as smart,” he added with a disgusted grumble. “Joe, your so-called genius comes from the fact that you are too stupid to know what questions not to ask.”

  I took that as an encouraging sign. “We can do it, then? Jump through a wormhole?”

  “If by ‘we’ you mean the Merry Band of Pirates and our beat-up star carrier, the answer is a resounding noooooo. The jump drive navigation system would lock up if you tried to project a jump through that wormhole; the drive computer wouldn’t be able to determine an end point in local spacetime.”

  “I understand the jump drive controller can’t handle the navigation math. My question is whether Skippy-the-Still-Incredibly-Awesome can do it.”

  “Wow. Joe, if that was your idea of flattery to boost my self-confidence, you need to work on your sucking-up skills. No, I can’t do the impossible, dumdum. Damn, if you knew anything about the subject, you wouldn’t-” I could tell Skippy was winding up to a full-scale rant that we did not have time for, so I was about to stop him, when he interrupted himself. “Hmmm. Um, let me think. Crap, that kind of math doesn’t exist for me to even do the analysis. Which is not surprising, because no one in the history of the galaxy has asked such a lunatic question. Huh. Well, attempting to create the math just to determine whether it is possible would be a monumental task. Like, if I can successfully develop the proper equations, I will totally be eligible for the Elder AI equivalent of the Fields Medal and the Abel Prize.”

  “Goodie. Hey, instead of those nerd prizes, I’ll bake a cake for you, Ok? Can you hurry?”

  “Hurry? If you’re so freakin’ smart, why don’t you do the math?”

  “I never claimed to be smart, Skippy, you did. Are you telling me your mind-bogglingly incredible genius is not capable of adding some simple numbers?”

  “You, oh, you. You!” He sputtered. “You idiot monkey can’t even- Huh, wait, I might have solved it. Ah, I see what you did there, Joe. You babbled on nonsensically to distract my higher consciousness while my logic processors crunched the numbers. Very clever of you.”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s what I did, let’s go with that.” I held up my hands and silently mouthed ‘I have no idea’ to Chang in the CIC.

  “Ok, Ok, Ohhh-Kaaay,” Skippy stretched the words out dramatically. “Hmmm. This might be possible. Might! O.M.G. If I can do this, all the AIs in the universe should bow down to my astonishing brilliance. Joe, I have to tell you the truth, this is so gargantuanly stupid that I can’t even begin to calculate the odds of us surviving this crazy stunt.”

  “Is this hold-my-beer type of stupid?” I asked hopefully.

  “Joe, this is like rednecks-on-meth stupid. This is stupid on the level of a buck-naked Florida redneck crashing his stolen truck into a police station to complain that the meth he bought isn’t, you know, methy enough. Wow, if this works, I will be cool to, like, the infinity power. Luckily for you monkeys, you have the incomparable genius of Skippy the Magnificent. I am calculating a jump through the wormhole, and it ain’t easy. It’s never been done before. I’m fairly certain it has never been considered before. It’s kind of amazing, Joe; every star-faring being in the history of this galaxy has failed to ask the question that you, out of your bottomless ignorance, just dreamed up. See? I knew your monkey brain could do it!”

  “Uh, thank you?” Although I was fairly sure he had just insulted me again, I figured it didn’t hurt to cover all bases.

  “You’re welcome. Joe, your personal motto should be: ‘Trust the Ignorance’. The Thuranin jump navigation system’s safety protocols are trying to stop me from even loading the calculations, so I’m erasing that pain in the ass code and replacing it. Unfortunately, at the same time, I am having to invent a whole new branch of N-dimensional mathematics, and running calculations through it. I am literally making this up as I go. Until I have the math complete, I can’t finish writing the navigation system code. It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing.”

  “Uh huh, you are truly awesome beyond our comprehension. Can we do it or not?”

  “I think so. Mmm, more like a solid shmaybe?”

  “You think so?” I kept one eye on the clock that was counting down to when the wormhole would close.

  “Give me a break, Joe. No one has ever done this before. I, damn it, I hate to admit this. The truth is, I am not sure I am smart enough to do this math. This type of math didn’t even exist until like ten seconds ago.”

  “Crap. If you are not smart enough, then it’s impossible?”

  “It might be impossible. The calculations are getting all jumbled in my head, and it’s not like I can have my work peer-reviewed, you know? It looks like I will have to adjust the calculations right up to the picosecond we initiate the jump, so I’ll be feeding revised data to the jump computer while our jump wormhole is forming. With the signal lag between the jump navigation computer at the center of the forward hull, and the drive coils in the engineering section aft, I have to think ahead and guess the quantum state of the wormhole at the exact moment our drive coils warp local spacetime.”

  “Give me a bottom line here, Skippy.” There was less than a minute before the Elder wormhole closed. On the display, I noticed the CIC crew had updated the tactical plot: two more Thuranin warships had jumped in, four lightminutes off our port side. We were boxed in, and more enemy ships would surely be arriving soon. The Dutchman was being swept by active sensor pulses; on the display I could see there was already a twenty four percent chance one of the Thuranin would receive a signal return strong enough to determine our position regardless of our stealth field. Inevitably, the enemy ships would fix our position with enough accuracy to launch missiles that would generate a temporary damping field, preventing us from jumping away until the Thuranin ships could arrive to hit us directly. At any second, I expected gamma ray bursts of enemy ships jumping on right on top of us.

  “The bottom line, Joe, is that I need more time. Jumping through a wormhole is something I would like two or more days of meatsack time to calculate, test and consider.”

  “More time? You have forty eight seconds, Skippy.”

  “I know that, dumdum,” he complained with irritation. “This will go right down to the wire. If you want to help, press the jump button and hold it down. This will be a split-second thing if we do it; I won’t have time to wait for you to respond. I’ll have to feed the coordinates to the jump computer and have it initiate on its own.”

  “Desai, do it,” I ordered anxiously, and she pressed the button on her console with two fingers for safety. “What happens if this doesn’t work?”

  “Let’s put it this way, Joe: the resulting explosion of our jump drive and the Elder wormhole will make a supernova look like a firecracker.”

  “Uh, maybe we should try something else,” I had a horrible feeling that I was about to get us all killed for nothing. “The odds of us going through the wormhole at another location are still zero?” I wanted to confirm before I committed us to unknown danger.

  “The odds of us going through before Zero Hour are close to zero, so, yes.”

  “Anybody have a better idea?” I asked the pilots and CIC crew. In matters of tactical ship operation, I did not need to get Chotek’s permission.

  “Sir, I am not sure this stunt qualifies as an ‘idea’,” Simms’s eyes were wide open from anxiety. “Skippy is correct, this may be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. But if it’s the best we’ve got, we should go for it.”

  “Better a spectacular death than a slow one,” Chang suggested, confirming why he would not be a good choice as the ship’s Morale Officer.

  “King Kong is right about that,” Skippy used his
personal nickname for Chang. “If this fails, it is going to be epic! Ok, jump option is designated ‘Omega’.”

  I wondered at that. “The phonetic alphabet for ‘O’ is ‘Oscar’, not ‘Omega’, Skippy.”

  “Joe, if this doesn’t work, it will be the last thing we ever do, so-”

  “Omega, got it,” I nodded, knowing Omega was the last letter of the Greek alphabet.

  “Oops. Huh. Oh boy, I screwed up some of the math. Wow. That was embarrassing,” Skippy chuckled nervously. “How can I- nope, too late for me to fix all that now. Ugh. Oh, what the hell. I’ll just have to wing it.”

  “This is a bad idea, Skippy. Don’t-”

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hold my beer.”

  “No!”

  We jumped. Or something like that.

  The ship disappeared around me. Like, it went transparent; I could see stars in every direction, followed by a brilliant flash of light, and I was slammed back in my chair. The ship flickered back into existence as if unsure whether the universe was allowing it to be, or not to be. The main bridge display blinked to show a new star field, then froze as if confused. Then the power went out completely, not even emergency lighting. Gravity cut out. And in a terrible wave of nausea, I passed out.

  When I woke up, I was still strapped into the command chair on the bridge. Emergency lighting was on, and the bridge display had a symbol that meant it was powering up. Gravity was also gradually coming back on, because whatever I had barfed up was slowly settling to the floor. “Skippy?” Oh, man, I had a splitting headache.

  “Here, Joe. Don’t move, just relax and rest. You, the whole crew, have suffered a bad shock. There are no serious injuries among the crew, everyone is shaken up and I expect you will all need time to recover.”

  In front of me, Desai and the other pilot turned and waved at me weakly; Desai gave me a thumbs up sign. People in the CIC were also regaining consciousness; I could see Chang checking on people there. “Ship?” I asked.