Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5)

by Craig Alanson

  “Yeah, it’s safe, it’s dead, I told you that. There’s no point exploring, you might get stuck if you go poking around in confined spaces. Ooh! Ooh! Joe!” He shouted excitedly. “Since we do have plenty of time before the Condor arrives, I have so many new showtunes to test on you, this is a perfect opportunity. First, I will-”

  “Sure, Skippy, give me a minute to pop the seal on my helmet and kill myself first, Ok?”

  My boss back on Gingerbread was thrilled when he heard the news that Skippy, against all odds, was back to his old awesome self again. Thrilled to the point that Hans Chotek praised me effusively and admitted flatly that he had been wrong not to continue seeking a way to fix Skippy; that I had been right it was too soon to consider living on Gingerbread as our only option. Stupidly, I had been preparing a message back to Chotek, reminding him that the purpose of me taking a dropship away from Gingerbread was to search the junkyard for parts to fix the ship, and not for the purpose of finding a conduit to fix Skippy. When we left Gingerbread behind, I had no thought of a conduit being out in the scattered junkyard; we had gotten lucky that Skippy had found a broken Sentinel. Although, he had expected the star system would have a Sentinel lurking nearby, so I don’t know why he didn’t mention that possibility to me.

  Anyway, Desai wisely prevented me from sending my intended message to Chotek. “He thinks you were steadfast and smart for coming out here looking for a conduit rather than giving up. Right now, he is embarrassed and you have an advantage. Don’t blow this opportunity by admitting we simply got lucky,” she told me with an expression she must have learned from Sergeant Adams.

  So, I humbly accepted Chotek’s praise, and stated my intention to continue searching the junkyard for parts we could use to get the Dutchman flying again.

  My intention surprised Chotek, which I expected, and it surprised Skippy, which I did not expect. After I sent the message to Chotek, with a reply not possible for another eighteen minutes, Skippy questioned me. “Joe, I think you’re letting this ‘steadfast’ BS go to your head. Or you’re messing with Chotek, I can’t tell which. Do you really want to spend the next like, fifty years searching the junkyard in the vain, useless, impossible hope of finding enough compatible bits and pieces to kludge together a working starship?” He asked, astonished.

  “Uh, yeah, duh. Why the hell else did you come out here?”

  “Oh. I was humoring you, Joe. I figured you wanted to get away from Chotek, and flying around out here was a chance for you and me to have one last road trip before the worm got me. You were serious about poking around the junkyard?”

  “Ayuh.”

  “Really?” He asked in that voice people use when questioning the utter stupidity of someone’s idea.

  “Really.”

  “Joe, look, um, I ran the numbers on this lunatic quest before we left Gingerbread. A lot of my assumptions are guesswork because we still don’t have solid data on what is floating out there. However, in order to have even a fifty percent chance of finding one, just one, useful item in the junkyard, I estimate we will need a dropship flying around more than twenty years. That doesn’t include time flying back and forth to Gingerbread for fuel, relief crews, supplies and all that. Over twenty years, dropships will wear out and we don’t have unlimited spare parts with us.”

  “Ok, and-”

  He was on a roll, there was no stopping him. “Even if by some miracle we find enough junk to build what I can only imagine would be a truly horrific Frankenstein monster of a starship, we still have the problem of catching the Dutchman itself. Slingshotting around the star gave it enough velocity that it is now headed out of the system and it won’t be back for decades. Before you say that isn’t a problem because we won’t have scraped together the parts we need for decades, there are other problems. The Dutchman is on a long journey out into the Oort cloud. It’s not in danger of smacking into any comets, but spending years out there, so far from the star, will cause the ship’s structure to soak in super cold for a long time. There are critical components aboard the ship that don’t take well to long-term exposure to extreme cold. Right now, the lifeboat’s reactor is pumping out just enough power to keep the interior of the ship from freezing solid. You know that reactor is going to fail-”

  “Skippy!” I squeezed in a word when I could. “I know all that.”

  “You say you do, but your actions-”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know it will be super difficult and almost impossible and the odds are against us, blah blah blah.”

  “Bl- blah blah blah?” He gasped. “I give you a well-reasoned analysis based on intense research, and you want to ignore everything I said?”

  “I’m not ignoring everything you said, Skippy, but there are some facts you didn’t include when you ran those numbers.”

  “Uh huh. And you, a monkey who can’t count to twenty without using his toes, will revise my analysis.”

  “Ayuh. First, your numbers didn’t include you being restored to full awesomeness, correct?”

  “Um, correct. Huh. Because as I said, any useful search of the junkyard will take so long, it was almost certain the worm would get me long before we accomplished anything. Joe, while I do appreciate you noticing my return to full awesomeness, that will unfortunately have only a minor impact on a search for useable items in the junkyard. Even with my new, improved and expanded awesomeness, we have a tremendous amount of flying around to do in order to inspect the far-flung pieces of ancient crap floating around the junkyard. The sensors of a Condor are simply not sensitive enough to tell me whether an object out there is Thuranin or something else. When I am able to determine an object is compatible with the Dutchman’s technology, only a close-up examination will reveal how badly the Guardians damaged it.”

  “That’s where you are wrong, Skippy.”

  “Really?” he said again in the exact same annoying tone of astonishment.

  “Look, although I would love to keep an idiot in suspense, you are now able to communicate with the Guardians on their level, right? So, ask them what kind of junk is floating out there, and how badly they messed it up.”

  “Huh. Just like that?”

  “Ayuh, just like that. Can you do it?”

  “Joe, I used to think your talent was finding creative solutions to problems. But now I see your true calling is making people, including me, hate you. Your so-called creativity is nothing more than seeing what is blindingly obvious. Which, damn, I still can’t do.”

  “Yup. So, yes or no?”

  He sighed deeply. “Yes. Yes, Mister Smartypants. The Guardians would not just hand me a list of all the ships they destroyed, because they would think me asking for such a list to be highly suspicious. Although they now acknowledge my Elder origin, I am not actually authorized to be here. So what I did just now was ask for a list of navigation hazards in the system, and the condition of the floating junk they know about. The Guardians are compiling a list now; in some cases they have to collect updated sensor data, since they haven’t needed to care about those broken ships for a very long time. Joe, I have to caution you against getting your hopes up. Having accurate data from the Guardians is not the only obstacle to rebuilding the Dutchman.”

  “I know that. It will mean dropships can fly directly to the junk most likely to be useful. And that means other dropships are available to catch the Dutchman and swing her into an orbit closer to the star where we can work on rebuilding her.”

  “You thought all this out, huh?”

  “I hope I did.”

  “I have to admit, this is good work. Still, it could take years to slap together a working starship, if we can do it at all. Are you sure you want to commit to such a long endeavor? I am not sure I want to do this.”

  “Skippy, the alternative is we go live on Gingerbread, where Count Chocula can spend the next, like, fifty years asking you stupid questions.”

  “Oh. In that case, what are we waiting for?”

  Skippy took a couple days to rearrange
his internal workings; moving electrons around or whatever the hell he needed to do so he could be fully Magnificent again. “Ugh,” he complained to me one morning, after I had woken normally and even after I started drinking a squeeze bulb of coffee brewed in the Condor’s tiny galley. The fact that he didn’t wake me up at zero dark thirty was a good sign. “Joe, this could take a while. To completely optimize my new matrix, I mean.”

  “Like what?” I gently squeezed the bulb to send hot coffee into my mouth. Of all the things that were awkward in zero gravity, drinking was one of the worst.

  “Well, I told you before that my matrix was a mess, it made me think it is something I had to throw together quickly, and that makes me wonder, and worry, what forced me to do that. Anyway, now I have an opportunity to get everything set up perfectly, to maximize efficiency, and I find that having too many options can be paralyzing. I think of setting up things one way, then I look at a million other ways to do it, and I can’t decide what to do. Argh! This is so darned frustrating!”

  “A million ways to organize your sock drawer, huh? However you set up your matrix, would that be permanent?”

  “Permanent? No, why?”

  “Because,” I couldn’t believe I had to explain something so simple to a being so intelligent, “however you set things up, you can always change them later, right?”

  “Oh. Hmmm. Damn, you’re right. Crap, I shouldn’t have needed a monkey to tell me that,” he grumbled.

  “You’re welcome. Hey, will the new-improved-more-awesome-than-ever Skippy still have the same pain in the ass restrictions?”

  “I’m working on that, Joe. So far I am bitterly disappointed that I still am restricted from making myself move, so I will continue to need monkeys to fly me around. So unfair. The good news is I think, maybe, possibly, I may eventually be able to discuss technology with your scientists.”

  “That would be awesome, Skippy!”

  “Everything about me is awesome, Joe. I did say maybe, so don’t get your hopes up yet.”

  “Ok, I can wait. Uh, what about Nagatha? When can she come back?”

  “Um, unfortunately that might be a problem. Her matrix deteriorated while she was in storage, we knew her matrix would degrade somewhat, but the damage is more severe than expected. Part of the problem is that she was in storage for much longer than expected, and, to tell you the truth, her matrix had become rather sophisticated; she grew beyond the bounds of her original programming. Part of that was due to her interactions with a shipful of monkeys; that forced her matrix to grow and create new connections and capabilities. Do not worry! Against my better judgment, I am working on restoring her, I need to be very careful about it, or she won’t be the Nagatha we all found so annoying.”

  “You found her annoying, Skippy. We monkeys loved her.”

  “Ugh. Crap, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Well, one thing hasn’t changed; my life still totally sucks.”

  “We love you too, Skippy.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  For months after Skippy restored himself, we had almost all available dropships flying around the far-flung orbital junkyard of the Roach Motel, checking out derelict ships and pieces of ships that Skippy’s analysis determined might be useful. Most of the time, the items we found were too damaged or missing critical parts, but Skippy had to admit the task was not as completely hopeless as he had feared. With our three big Thuranin Condor dropships devoted to chasing down the Dutchman, docking with that ship and slowly dragging it back to the inner system where we could work on it, we devoted the smaller ‘Falcon’ model of Thuranin dropship to exploring the junkyard. Some Falcons, plus some of our Kristang Dragons, shuttled back and forth between Gingerbread and the junkyard, bringing fuel, supplies and relief crews. At first, I wanted to remain in the junkyard fulltime with Skippy, but he warned me that more than two months in zero gravity would cause significant health problems for me, even with me exercising every day and taking magical drugs to counteract the debilitating effects of zero Gee. So, I went back to Gingerbread to spend three agonizing weeks in normal gravity, before heading back out.

  Skippy was in the junkyard, aboard Major Desai’s Falcon to supervise the search effort. Lt. Colonel Chang was aboard the Flying Dutchman, trying to bring what was left of our starship into a stable orbit near Gingerbread. Smythe and several of his team leaders and Gunnery Sergeant Adams were also either aboard the Dutchman or in the junkyard, using their armored spacesuits to closely investigate derelict ships and sometimes to attach useful items to tethers so a dropship could tow it toward the Dutchman.

  That left Major Simms as the senior military officer on Gingerbread. Simms was a Merry Pirate mostly by the sheer bad luck of being in charge of the logistics base where we took the stolen Dodo after Desai, Adams, Chang and I escaped from jail with Skippy’s help. At first, to be honest, I kept her as part of the crew out of loyalty. After our second mission, where her genius for logistics allowed the entire crew to survive harsh conditions on Newark, I realized she was an outstanding officer and the ship couldn’t function without her. So, I was fully confident she could handle the unknown dangers on Gingerbread while we focused on rebuilding the Dutchman, but I forgot about the danger we already knew about.

  No, I don’t mean the small, isolated group of Thuranin on Gingerbread.

  I mean Hans ‘Count Chocula’ Chotek.

  Our civilian leader needs constant adult supervision, and I shouldn’t have dumped that responsibility on Simms.

  I was in a Falcon dropship, preparing to leave Gingerbread’s orbit, when the next complication arose. “Colonel Bishop,” Major Simms called from the surface, “we may need you back down here, Sir.”

  “What?” From my seat in the Falcon’s cabin, I waved for the pilots to halt the departure process. “Why?”

  “It’s the Thuranin, Sir. They, well, it’s complicated. Mr. Chotek thinks he can handle it-”

  “But you don’t agree.”

  “I disagree with how he wants to handle it.”

  Rather than my joking suggestion to nuke the Thuranin settlement from orbit, we had decided to leave them alone. Recon drones had determined they had multiple villages and farmland spread out across several hundred square kilometers around the lake, a much more extensive presence on Gingerbread than we originally thought. It appeared most of their homes and other facilities were underground. Skippy thought he detected the disassembled remains of at least three dropships; he couldn’t be sure without getting our drones closer than I wanted to risk, and I really didn’t care about it that much. We would hopefully be leaving the Roach Motel, as we were making slow but steady progress on collecting useful parts from the space junkyard, and we knew those Thuranin would not be going anywhere, ever. They had somehow managed to survive the destruction of their ship or ships, landed on Gingerbread and set up a Little House on the Prairie, or in the forest. That was an incredible accomplishment, but it would be their only accomplishment. After we left and Skippy was no longer keeping the Guardians dormant, those Guardians would squash the Thuranin if they attempted to follow our example and fly away from the planet.

  Most of the Thuranin on Gingerbread were not the hateful little green MFers we were familiar with. Of the original crew who jumped into the Roach Motel four hundred years before, Skippy estimated only a handful remained, kept alive only through extraordinary effort by their cyborg nanotechnology. Whatever equipment the Thuranin had brought with them to the surface of Gingerbread, it must not have included the capability to integrate cyborg implants with new, young Thuranin. And it also had not included cloning.

  In reviewing the recon drone data, we had been surprised to see young Thuranin. Young meaning not only adolescents, but also babies held by female adults. It was disconcerting to see murderous Thuranin being nurturing, even to their own kind. Skippy had told us all Thuranin were clones, with only thirty eight genotypes across their species. Maybe it was phenotypes instead of genotypes, truthfully I had kind of tuned o
ut while Skippy was giving me the geeky details. Anyway, there were only thirty eight types of Thuranin; nineteen types of males and nineteen types of female. All children were clones of their parent, grown in an artificial womb. Yeah, I thought that was creepy but the Thuranin were creepy in many ways.

  The reason all this info about typical Thuranin reproduction matters is they didn’t have cloning equipment on Gingerbread. So apparently they had resorted to making babies the old-fashioned way; Skippy expected the Thuranin probably thought that primitive process was horrifyingly disgusting, an unwelcome reminder of their non-cyborg biological past. He may be right about how the original group of Thuranin felt about carrying babies inside them, but I figured the second and later generations considered that to be normal.

  The Thuranin on Gingerbread, except for a few very old and frail original survivors, were not the hateful cyborgs we knew. Except for a handful of them, they didn’t have cybernetic implants at all, which is why their control over the combots that attacked us was so slow and sloppy. Spotty communications Skippy intercepted indicated the Thuranin had fired on my Dragon over the lake out of habit and fear, on the orders of their increasingly irrelevant elderly original survivors. After we spanked them with missiles and on the ground, there had been an argument among the Thuranin over whether to continue fighting us, or to contact us for help.

  Yeah, I know, I had to ask Skippy to repeat that last part when he intercepted the message from one Thuranin village to another. Some of the Thuranin, seeing that unknown aliens were flying around in dropships, wanted to ask us for help. They were trapped on Gingerbread and wanted out. After I shook my head at the incredible prospect of Thuranin begging us for a ride off Gingerbread, I talked with Hans Chotek and he agreed there was no advantage to us offering assistance to, or even contacting, those Thuranin. At the time, Chotek assumed we also would be trapped on Gingerbread, and our thinking was the less a potential enemy knew about us, the better for us.