So, I picked my own cup of coffee off my desk. The desk was temporary, that’s a story for another time. “Good morning, Simms.” I glanced meaningfully at the clock on my zPhone. “We’ll just hit the highlights.”
“I’m Ok,” she assured me as she tried to suppress another yawn.
She was there for a regular morning status meeting. Because she was new to our ship, I just planned to talk about getting her familiar with Valkyrie, but she had a full report prepared.
Simms is an outstanding executive officer. Chang had also been a great XO, in a different way. Chang had taken on the task when everything was new to us; flying an alien starship, developing a working relationship with Skippy, figuring out how to use alien weapons, figuring out just how to live day to day aboard a captured Thuranin ship. Most of the procedures we still used were established under his leadership, while I was dreaming up impractical ideas or losing at video games.
Chang was great at managing the crew. Simms was great at managing me. She knew me, sometimes better than I knew myself. Maybe it is a woman thing. Or maybe it is BS that all women are good at reading people, but Simms definitely had a talent for it. Whatever. All I know is, she didn’t let me get away with any BS on her watch.
We just finished discussing how to assign the new people we picked up from Avalon, when she moved on to the next item on her list. “Sickbay list,” she glanced up ever-so briefly to meet my surprised eyes, before looking back at her laptop. “Skippy is pleased with Smythe’s progress, his new spleen and pancreas-”
“Not new. Those are quality pre-owned organs.”
She ignored me with an eyeroll. “They are functioning normally. The new bionic legs are integrating well, Smythe should begin walking independently tomorrow.”
“Bionic, yeah. That’s from a TV show, right?”
“Yes. There was another show about a bionic woman.”
In my mind, I wondered if that show was called ‘The Six Million Dollar Woman’, and if yes, did people think it was about a super-expensive callgirl? “Great,” I said, before I could say what my stupid brain was thinking. “I hope he-”
Simms moved right on to the next item. “Adams’s condition has not changed, she is still-”
Waving my hands, I cut her off. Or tried to. “I’d prefer not to discuss-”
“You have to. You are responsible for this crew, all of us. If you can’t hear about her,” she looked me straight in the eye. “If you can’t handle hearing about her, then maybe you shouldn’t be in command of this ship.”
“That’s harsh,” I objected.
“That’s true,” she retorted, knowing she was right. “Sir.”
I also knew she was right. “That doesn’t mean I need to hear details.”
“Sir, you’re going to hear details one way or another. If Adams wakes up, and she has brain damage, you need to decide how you’re going to deal with that. The best time to decide is now, before we take this ship into combat.”
“You’re right,” I said honestly, before I had time to deceive myself.
“Skippy thinks, and I asked Nagatha for confirmation, there could be significant brain damage, when she awakes. That could happen soon, there is not much more that the nanomeds can do for her while she’s in a coma. Her brain needs to be awake and making new connections, before Skippy can evaluate her condition.”
“Did he say what he meant by ‘brain damage’?” I heard myself talking as if it were someone else, and I was just an observer.
Simms didn’t pull any punches with her words. Her expression softened, either for me or because she felt terrible for Adams. Or both. “She might not be able to walk. Or speak. It is also possible she could fully recover, Skippy doesn’t know yet.”
“I understand,” I said, because I felt the need to say something, and that is a meaningless thing people say when they need to say something.
“Sir, there is a matter we need to discuss. A medical matter.”
“Medical?”
“When she awakes, Adams will probably not be capable of making informed decisions about her options.”
“I’m sure Skippy will use his best-”
“Adams gave you power of attorney for medical decisions.”
“Uh, what?”
“You have authority to make medical decisions for her.”
That gave me a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Because I’m the commander? That isn’t-”
“No. not because you’re her C.O. She designated you because she trusts you.”
“She trusts me.” That only made me want to lose my breakfast. “Simms, what the hell can I do? I don’t know anything about medicine.”
“Skippy told me,” she arched an eyebrow as if to say ‘you would know this if you had not been avoiding the subject’. “That there are interventions he can use, if her brain damage is worst case.”
“Interventions?” When doctors use vague words like ‘test’ or ‘procedure’, or ‘intervention’, it is never good.
“Basically, if her,” she looked away, which told me how uncomfortable she was with the subject. “If her brain is having trouble controlling her legs, or her speech center, then he can insert nanoscale circuits to carry the signals for her. The problem is, the circuits would also be making decisions along the way. If it is something simple and mechanical like motor function, the nano circuits can assist until her own neural pathways are able to handle the load.”
“Yeah,” I saw the problem. “But if there are nano machines running part of her higher brain functions-”
“Then she won’t fully be Margaret Adams,” Simms finished the thought for me.
“Shit.” For a moment, just a moment that I am ashamed of, I was pissed at Adams for putting another burden on me. I might have to make important, life-altering decisions for her. Hell, I wasn’t qualified to make such calls for myself. Why did she-
Oh yeah.
She trusted me.
I suck.
“Sir?” Simms had terrible timing. “If you feel you are not capable of exercising power of attorney, we can-”
Oh, hell no, was my gut reaction. Margaret Adams had put her trust in me. No fucking way was I going to let her down. “Why do you ask-”
“Because if she is brain-dead, it is partly your fault.”
“What the-” I exploded at my first officer.
“Skippy told me that, if you had sent Valkyrie in to rescue the survivors immediately, Adams might not have suffered such extensive brain damage. The time she went without oxygen, and the bleeding into her brain, were worse because of the delay. Several people died before Valkyrie returned.”
My whole body felt cold, and numb. “I had no choice.”
“Yes, you did,” Simms replied, looking straight at me. “I read the mission report. You made the right call. Smythe agrees, and he lost both legs. You made the right choice, but it was a choice. You chose humanity, and the mission, over the lives of a few people. Sir- Sir?” I looked up to meet her eyes. “I’m your XO now. I wasn’t on your last mission. I didn’t go through Armageddon. Everyone who did is affected. Reed takes pills to sleep, did you know that? She blames herself for not acting faster.”
“She did act fast. As quickly as anyone could expect,” I whispered, surprised.
“That’s not what she thinks. She believes that if she had been in a ready bird instead of on the Dutchman’s bridge, she could have launched sooner.”
“The ready bird was aboard Valkyrie! Ah, shit. I should have transferred that responsibility to the Dutchman, before I started hopping around looking for ghosts. Simms, I will talk with Reed. She had a skeleton crew over there, the Dutchman was just acting as backup. She wasn’t supposed to see action.” As I said that, it hit me the same words applied to Chang’s thin team aboard the Dutchman now. In the future, I needed to make sure I did not put him in a position where he needed to take his ship into combat. Or make damned sure he was ready and had clear direction. “XO, I know what you�
��re trying to do.”
“You do, Sir?”
“You want to know if I can deal with guilt.”
“Yes. We lost Desai, and Giraud, and-”
“We did. For them, for their memories, I am going to be the best commander I can be,” I said, jabbing a finger into the desktop hard enough to hurt. My stinging finger told me that I also needed to be a smart commander, and not do stupid things because I hadn’t considered the consequences. “Did Skippy say when he could, or planned to, wake her from the coma?”
“No. I got the impression it would be soon.”
“Good. I’ll talk with him. He’s running a test and if it’s successful, we will have control of Valkyrie’s AI. After that,” I looked at my throbbing finger, and thought about the agony Smythe was going through, learning to use his new bionic legs. I thought about the pain I was feeling, my guilt and anger over what happened to Adams, and Desai, and Giraud and so many others. I wanted someone else to feel that pain. Someone like the Maxolhx. “We’re going hunting.”
“Oh, Joeeeeey,” Skippy crowed while I was in the galley getting coffee. What I needed was several nights of solid sleep. Since that was unlikely to happen, I drank coffee in the afternoons. “I have good news for you.”
“Please,” I yawned and slurped coffee that was too hot, scalding my tongue. “Don’t make me guess.”
“The test was a success! The native AI is now cooperating with us! Nagatha agrees,” he added with a haughty sniff. “If you don’t trust my opinion.”
“I trust your opinion as much as you can trust it. That AI fooled you before, remember?” People in the galley overheard the conversation and were looking to me expectantly.
“Ha! Not this time, buddy-boy. Hey, you can test it yourself. Talk to it. Ask it a question or something.”
I was trapped. The crew expected me to do something, to verify we had a ship we could take into combat, and trust it would not betray us. What I wanted to do was talk privately with Nagatha, ask her what she advised as the next step. Instead, I had to think of a way to test an advanced AI, by myself. Stalling for time, I stepped outside in the passageway and asked “What do I call the thing?”
“It doesn’t have a name, Joe. The Maxolhx do not allow their AIs to attain self-awareness.”
“Then, what did they say, when they wanted to talk with it?”
“Mostly, they pinged it using their bioneural implants. However, when they spoke aloud, they most often referred to the AI by the name of the ship.”
“So, I call it ‘Valkyrie’?”
“No, that is your name for the ship, dumdum,” he groaned. “The Maxolhx’s full designation for this tub is ‘Coochalungatellun’.”
“Cooch-what?”
“Ugh. Your voicebox can’t pronounce the name properly anyway, Joe.”
“Oh, man. Do not tell the crew about that,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because they will start calling this ship the ‘Coochy-coo’ or something like that.”
“The ship already has a name, Joe.”
“Yes, an official name. Warships tend to have an official name, plus a nickname used by the crew. Like, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is called ‘The Big Stick’. Or, when we first captured the Flying Dutchman, some of the crew called it the ‘Pencil’, because it was so long and skinny.”
“Ok, I can see that makes sense. Why do-”
“It just is. Don’t tempt fate.”
Skippy had already been made unhappy, when, after he assembled our mighty Valkyrie from Lego pieces, the crews began referring to Valkyrie and the Dutchman as the ‘Beast’ and the ‘Bucket’. You can guess which ship was the ‘Beast’. To avoid upsetting Skippy, I assigned the callsign of ‘Angel’ to Valkyrie. The Dutchman’s callsign had long been ‘Hans’, which someone apparently thought was a typical name for a Dutch man.
It’s best not to argue.
“Skippy, how about you tell the AI to respond to ‘Valkyrie’?”
“Oh. Um, that was simple. Ok, go ahead.”
“Uh, hey, Valkyrie?” I was aware the eyes of the crew were on me. People in the galley must have called their friends, because half the crew was with me at that point. What else could I say? How ya doin’ did not seem appropriate. “Skippy, what should I say?”
“Anything. For example, ask it a question.”
Confident I could handle that simple task, I stood up straighter and strode back into the galley. “Valkyrie, what is the status of the jump drive?”
A wild shrieking boomed painfully out of the speakers. “Die die die die die DIEDIEDIE DIE humans DIEDIEDIE-”
A dead silence rang around the galley as our ears echoed from the aural assault. People stared at each other, stunned. Skippy didn’t speak either, until “Well, heh heh, maybe that was a bad example.”
“Ya think?” Man, I was pissed at him.
“Doing the best I can here, Joe.” He mumbled.
“Joseph,” Nagatha’s soothing tones issued from the speakers. “I did warn Skippy that he was premature in declaring the test a success. However, he has made substantial progress. I am confident that, if he concentrates on completing the work, and not showing off before we are ready, Skippy can be successful.”
“Did you hear that, beer can?”
“Yes, I heard that,” he replied snippily.
There was no more showing off, and by the next day, Skippy again declared success. That time, Nagatha expressed her complete confidence. “Colonel Bishop, I believe you now have a functional warship,” she declared.
“Great,” I responded cautiously. “How can you be sure?”
“Skippy and I have completed three hours of testing. Three hours in slow monkey-time, that was the equivalent of several hundred years in our time sense. We are confident that you are now fully in command of Valkyrie. Congratulations, Colonel.”
“The two of you should get the congratulations.”
“Joseph,” her voice had a scolding undertone. “You do not sound convinced.”
“It’s just,” I didn’t want to insult her. “You are sure. How can I be sure?”
There was a pause. She was insulted. “Other than trusting Skippy, and me, I do not know of a way you could test your ship’s native AI,” she sniffed, implying that the native AI of her ship was much superior. “My suggestion is that you take the ship on maneuvers.”
We did take the ship on maneuvers, as a shake-down cruise. We took Valkyrie racing ‘round the moons of Nibia and the Antares Maelstrom and Perdition’s flames before-
No, wait.
That was from ‘The Wrath of Khan’.
Anyway, we put Valkyrie through a series of maneuvers, including simulated combat, before I was confident the ship wouldn’t betray us at the wrong moment. I then told the senior staff my plan for hitting the Maxolhx. They all approved. Because I worried they approved just because we would finally be doing something, I spoke to each of them individually after the meeting. Chang was first, because we held the same rank and were both starship captains.
“I like it, Joe,” he assured me. “You know I was going to propose a similar strategy. Your idea to blame the attacks on that rogue Bosphuraq faction is a nice touch. It will have the kitties chasing their tails,” he grinned over the video link. “Instead of searching for us.”
“An imaginary rogue group of birdbrains,” I reminded him.
“Even better. There is no one out there to contradict the bullshit story we’ll be selling,” he laughed. “The best part is, it’s an incremental approach. We can evaluate the strategy after each attack, and call a halt if needed. You’re talking to Simms next?”
I shook my head. “Smythe next. I want to catch him before he goes into a therapy session, he is always exhausted after those sessions.”
“No matter. Smythe, Simms, Reed, Kapoor, they will all tell you the same. It’s a good strategy with minimal risk, if we are patient and wait for the right target.”
“And
if we have solid intel on enemy dispositions and intentions.”
“Skippy will be responsible for that task,” Chang automatically glanced upward, but Skippy did not join the conversation.
The beer can had already told me that pinging a Maxolhx data relay, for info about where their fleet was and where the ships were going, would be a pain in the ass, for we would need to designate one of our pixie sets to match the signature used by a Maxolhx ship. A ship that had recently visited that relay station. We had taken a batch of pixies from the factory on Detroit, but we had used several of them. Skippy had learned he could reset a blank pixie two or three times, then it became useless. Some pixies could be set only once, and not modified at all. He did not know why that happened, and it was driving him crazy that a relatively simple piece of Maxolhx technology was eluding his understanding.
“I’m not worried about Skippy,” I paused for him to acknowledge my praise, but he must have been extra busy. “Ok, I’ll talk with the others, then we’ll choose a data relay station.”
“Then we select a target?” Chang asked expectantly, anticipating action.
“An easy target, at first.”
Chang tilted his head. “Not too easy. Any attack must plausibly sell the cover story.”
“We’ll see.” I didn’t want to commit to anything without seeing the facts. We would not be taking risks just to do something. The fact was, we did not have to do anything, and I was determined not to be lured into a risky misadventure just because I was eager to get revenge for Armageddon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Joe,” Skippy called me ten days later, after he downloaded the contents of a Maxolhx relay station, then erased any evidence we were ever there. “I am no military strategist, but I think there are several juicy targets we could hit, with acceptable risk.”
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 10