“It would make it faster and easier to evac the planet, Skippy.”
He sucked in a breath. “You want to move everyone off Earth? That is billions of monkeys, they can’t-”
“Not everyone, Skippy. That’s impossible. We couldn’t get Avalon set up to support that many people. Besides, many people would refuse to go. If the UN announced we were pulling everyone off the planet because killer aliens are coming, there would be plenty of flat-Earth whackadoodle conspiracy nuts who wouldn’t believe it. My opinion about that is, bonus! Leave them behind and improve the gene pool.”
“True dat,” he muttered.
“There are plenty of other people who just wouldn’t be able to deal with leaving our homeworld behind. For emotional or religious or other reasons, they would not want to go. But people who are willing to go, the risk-takers, we need to bring as many of them to Avalon as possible. If the Sleeping Beauty wormhole is close to Earth, the Qishan and Dagger could get there by themselves, without needing the Dutchman to act as a star carrier. Even if we do use the Dutchman, a shorter trip means more cycles per month or whatever. We can move a lot more people.”
“Going through Sleeping Beauty would only dump those ships in empty interstellar space, Joe.”
“True. Is there any way you could move the other end of Sleeping Beauty, so it is close to another wormhole?”
“I don’t know if I can move it at all, Joe.”
“Let’s assume you can.”
“Ugh. Let’s assume that Santa will use his magic sleigh to-”
“Can you try to be helpful?”
“Fine,” he huffed. “How about we set some parameters, before you start expecting really ridiculous shit from me?”
“Deal.”
“The near end of Sleeping Beauty is currently eight point eight lightyears from Earth, roughly in the direction of Barnard’s Star, so it is in the opposite direction from Gateway. To make this work, I would need to move the near end almost nine lightyears. So, let’s assume I can also move the far end that same distance. Otherwise, this is all just a waste of time.”
“Agreed. Is there another wormhole within nine lightyears of Sleeping Beauty’s far end?”
“While I would love to say no, because that would end this discussion, unfortunately I am cursed by being a veritable paragon of truthfulness.”
“Yes, that’s what everyone says about you,” I said with one side of my mouth, because I was biting my lip on the other side.
“There is another wormhole within six lightyears of Sleeping Beauty on the far end. It is an active wormhole. That’s the good news. The bad news is, the active wormhole gets a lot of traffic, and it connects way out past the Trifid Nebula. Because I know that description doesn’t mean anything to you, it is a long way, Joe.”
“You know how delivery companies like FedEx have route-planning software, that determines the easiest or shortest route between two points?”
“Most humans have similar technology on their phones now, Joe.”
“Right, great. Assuming you can move both ends of Sleeping Beauty, can you use your ultra-nerdy math skills, and show me the best route from Earth to the super-duty wormhole that connects out to the Sculptor Dwarf?”
“Define ‘best’, Joe. Shortest? Safest? Least-”
“Safest. Show me the safest first. Then if that route takes too long to fly, we up the risk level until we find a combination of paths that is a good trade-off between safety and speed.”
Crap. I should not have asked him to give me multiple options, because there were a lot of them. Two hours later, I was losing my will to live, but we had a good plan. The absolute safest option, the first one he showed me, used very isolated wormholes, but would take four months to fly one-way, even with the upgraded Flying Dutchman. That wasn’t going to work. The option I selected would take forty-eight days to get from Earth to the beta site, if nothing went wrong. Figure a minimum of ten days at Earth to load the ships and perform maintenance, plus another ten days at Avalon to unload. No, ten days was unrealistic, better assume two weeks each to load and unload. And the transit time needed a pad to account for something going wrong, to include a safety factor. That yielded less than three roundtrips per year, which was not great. Plus, it was not really three trips each year, because some ships would need to carry food and supplies instead of people.
“Shit,” I slumped back in my chair. “That’s no good.”
“Sorry, Joe,” he commiserated with me, because he had been hoping for a better result, before he did the math. “Most of the transit time is taken up by jumping from one wormhole to another. They are just too far apart.”
“Then this whole discussion has been a big waste of your time.”
“Um, that’s not entirely true, Joe. You got me thinking about whether it is possible for me to move a wormhole. If that works, I might be able to reconfigure the entire network, within limits. Also, no matter which route ships take from Earth to Avalon, moving the Sleeping Beauty wormhole makes a big difference in reducing travel time, so it is worth trying to make that happen. But it is all talk right now. I do not know if a wormhole will move on my command. Especially moving across lightyears. I simply do not know if that is possible.”
“Fair enough. Let’s fly to some random wormhole, and you can ask the network.”
“That’s no good,” he shook his head. “I need to check that particular wormhole, Sleeping Beauty. It is dormant, and I suspect it is damaged. We need to know if I can move that wormhole.”
“Ok, so we fly there.” I stood up from my chair. “I’ll tell the pilot.”
“You really want to do this, Joe?”
“Yeah, why? I can’t think of anything else useful we can do right now.”
“I can’t either, but, attempting to evacuate Earth is an extreme step, Joe. You haven’t considered all the potential downsides.”
“People on Earth will panic, sure, but-”
“That too, I guess. I’m talking about the truly horrific aspects of your plan.”
That made me pause. Crap. What had I forgotten this time? “Like what?”
“Thousands of monkeys packed into each ship? Ugh. Imagine the smell.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After I explained to the crew what we were doing, I ordered our little squadron of two ships to set a course toward the wormhole we called ‘Sleeping Beauty’, and we began jumping. Simms came into my office, her right hand held behind her back.
“You have a surprise for me, XO?” I asked.
“Yes, Sir.” She held out a small white box, with what looked like tissue paper sticking out over the open top.
“What is- Oh!” It was a peach. A small one, but it looked perfect. And it smelled, Mmmm, wonderful. “Where did-”
“It came over from the Dutchman on the last shuttle. Compliments of Colonel Chang. There are dwarf fruit trees in one of the hydroponics gardens. This is the first fruit to ripen.”
Sticking my nose in the box, I inhaled deeply. It smelled like a summer day. “The first?”
“Chang instructed me to tell you it is the first. There might have been some they ate before aboard the Dutchman. To ensure quality, of course.”
“Of course.” Out of a drawer, I pulled a knife, and sliced around the stone in the center of the fruit. Twisting the peach into two neat halves, I offered half to Simms.
“Thank you,” she said without any of the bullshit polite refusals people usually do. “Oh,” she had juice dripping down her chin. “That is so good.”
“Reminds me,” I used a sleeve to wipe juice off my own chin before it ran down to my collar. “Of home.”
Silently, we ate, enjoying the fresh fruit and each other’s company. She finished before me, and looked around for a napkin. I dug into a desk drawer for a package of them. “Sir, how did you get the idea of moving a wormhole?”
There was no point telling her about the rowing machine that had inspired me. “I know stars move around the center
of the galaxy, and they don’t all move at the same speed, or in the exact same direction. I figured wormholes must have a mechanism to keep them in the proper position, so they don’t collide with stars, wandering planets, each other. That sort of thing.”
“It’s kind of brilliant.”
Simms is great at reading me. I am not so great at reading her, or anyone. In this case, I did not need to be an expert at body language. “I’m sensing there is a ‘but’ in there, XO?”
“It is brilliant. What I want to know is, that’s it? We are evacuating Earth now, not trying to save our planet? Have you given up on saving the world again, Sir?”
“An evac is not instead of saving the world, Simms. It’s a backup plan.” That was bullshit, and we both knew it. Our home planet was doomed, there was nothing we could do about it. Our days of Saving The World were over. “Besides, it’s not really an evac. At best, we are talking about pulling thousands of people off Earth, not millions. Not billions. Not everyone. Moving a wormhole sounds impressive, until you realize it’s just a gesture. If we can’t save everyone, we work to save someone. Because the alternative is giving up.”
She didn’t look any happier with my answer than I was with myself. We made some awkward small talk, then discussed routine ship status stuff, and she left. That’s the problem with saving the world. You do it once, and people expect you to do it every time.
Those days were over.
Walking down the passageway toward Valkyrie’s gym, I ran into Adams. We had not spoken much recently, I had a feeling she was avoiding me. It was surprising to see her coming out of the gym, because I had passed by the gym that morning and saw her in there at that time.
“Gunny,” I nodded to her, trying to keep a neutral expression on my face. Pointing to the gym with a thumb, I asked “Are you overdoing it?”
“No. Skippy say’s it’s Ok. I, I need it.”
“Oh,” I could feel my face fall and I looked away. “I understand.”
She jerked her head to one side, indicating a side passageway. Following her, I looked both ways to assure we were alone.
“You Ok, Adams?”
“Sir,” she searched my face, her eyes darting back and forth. “Skippy had me in a coma, I know that.”
“It was for your safety.”
“He explained that. What he doesn’t know, or didn’t tell you, is that after he tried to wake me up? When I was still not conscious?”
“Yeah, I remember. He was concerned, but not worried.”
“I was conscious. Sort of. I could hear sounds, maybe they were voices. My eyes wouldn’t open, I couldn’t speak. And I hurt. All over. In my head, I was screaming. It felt like forever. My fear was that I was trapped in a useless body and that it would never end. I wanted to die.”
“Adams, don’t say-”
“No. I wanted to die. My body was broken. I wanted it to be over. You understand?”
“You weren’t exactly in the best condition to make rational decisions back then, but, yeah. I understand. If something had happened to you- Something worse. If you didn’t recover, I-”
“Don’t say that.”
“Gunny,” I looked away. “There are some things you just can’t live with. Some things you’re not supposed to live with.”
“Soldier, you stow that shit.”
“Adams, I appreciate-”
“Bullshit. You don’t get to take the easy way out, no matter how much you’re hurting. People need you. Until Earth is safe, really safe, you have to keep fighting. You wear that uniform, that’s what you signed up for.”
“If that had been on the recruiting poster, I might have changed my mind.” My attempt at humor fell flat.
“I’m serious,” she lowered her voice. “It’s dangerous out here, we never know what will happen. Any one of us could get killed tomorrow, including me. You need to promise me,” now her hand was squeezing mine painfully. “If I’m gone, if all of us are gone, this ship, the Dutchman, all of it. Even Skippy. If you’re still breathing, you need to keep fighting. Promise me.”
“If I don’t, will you come back as a ghost and kill me?”
“I will come back as a ghost and make sure you can’t die.”
“Listen, Adams, you say people need me, to get us out of this mess. Part of the reason we’re in this mess is me.”
“That’s true.”
“Have you been taking lessons from Skippy?” I laughed bitterly. “Your pep talks suck.”
“Have you screwed up? Sure, probably. You still have more wins than losses on the scoreboard. If it’s your fault that we’re in this mess, you need to fix it. Not someone else. No one else can fit it.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a tiger by the tail, and I don’t know what to do next.”
“What you can’t do is let go and hope someone else will grab the tail.”
“Maybe we need a better metaphor.”
“I’m a Marine, Sir. We use rifles, not fancy language.”
“Don’t you give me that dumb jarhead crap, Gunny. You’re not just a trigger-puller. Enough about me. You’re doing better now?”
As an answer, she raised one leg to stand on the other, demonstrating her balance. There was a wobble to her stance, she had to put her foot down after a few seconds. “Getting better. Physically, I’m recovering well, according to Skippy. I feel good. It’s in here,” she tapped her temple. “That I still don’t feel completely like me yet.”
“Like, how? You’re speaking perfectly now.”
Shaking her head, she lifted her shoulders. “It’s hard to explain. I say things I would not have said before. It’s like my filter is switched off sometimes. Also, I say things differently than I used to, like I’m hearing another person talking. My thoughts are different too, that’s the scary part.”
She was right about that. It was scary. Everything she said to me that day, when she called me ‘Joe’, was that all just the brain damage and alien nanobots talking? Fearfully, I searched her eyes but couldn’t read her expression. My fear was not just that the person who opened up to me that day was not Margaret Adams. I feared that she was embarrassed about what she’d said, and that was why she had been avoiding me. Feared that what I thought we had was nothing more than the effect of alien nanobots screwing with her head.
My greatest fear was that I had taken advantage of her. Sure, I didn’t know that at the time, but I should have known. That day, she had been early in recovery from a traumatic, nearly fatal brain injury, and what she said had surprised the hell out of me. Surprised me and made me so happy that I didn’t think about what was really happening. “Listen, Gunny, you get a free pass for saying crazy shit. Like when you told me your favorite music was bluegrass.”
“What? I said that?”
“Surprised me too,” I winked. “Hey, bluegrass is not my favorite. But I do like a good bluegrass-death metal fusion.” Pinching my nose to get that affected nasal Bluegrass twang, I growled in the lowest voice I could manage. “Haaaaail my lord Satan.”
“You,” she laughed. “Are an idiot. Sir.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
That was followed by an awkward silence. We both knew I had joked to deflect the conversation away from what we both were thinking. She remembered what she said. Saying that her inner filter was switched off was her way of telling me she was embarrassed by calling me ‘Joe’. And maybe by other things she’d said that day. Maybe now that her brain was back to working more normally, she did not feel the way I hoped. Or she wasn’t sure how she felt. Either way, it wouldn’t do either of us any good for me to remind her about the subject.
And maybe, the person who recovered from having alien machines crawling around in her brain was not the Margaret Adams I recognized, and this new person no longer had any special sort of feelings for me.
She was alive. She was outwardly healthy and happy, at least, happy with her progress.
I needed to be happy for her, and forget everything I h
oped for.
That wasn’t easy.
“Well, Gunny,” I tugged at the towel that was still draped over my shoulder.
She took the hint. “Have a good workout, Sir.”
It was a good workout, because I exercised like a madman. Kapoor came over to check on me while I was doing bench-presses, lifting thirty pounds more than my usual max. I was angry and hurt and generally pissed off at the Universe, Fate, Karma, whatever you want to call it. Taking my anger out on a mindless piece of exercise equipment was better than unleashing my foul mood on the crew. “Aaaaaaah!” I screamed as I forced the weight bar upward, digging deep for reserves of strength. My arms shook and I hated them too, hated their weakness. Slowly, inch by inch, the bar lifted off my chest, and I was able to slam it back on the brackets.
“Colonel?”
I looked up, blinking, to see Kapoor’s concerned face looking down at me. “I’m Ok, Major. Working out my frustrations, that’s all.”
“Oh,” he nodded and stepped back. “I do that too. Do you want a spotter?”
What I wanted was for him to go away. That wasn’t fair to him. Being alone with my thoughts right then wasn’t healthy anyway. “Sure,” I rolled my shoulders to get ready for another set. “Might as well use this energy for something useful.”
We flew Valkyrie to the far end of Sleeping Beauty, with the Dutchman flying in formation with us. Nagatha completed minor adjustments to the upgraded normal-space drive, and whatever else she thought could use improvement while we were in flight. Getting to Sleeping Beauty required us to go through a wormhole that was frequently used by Torgalau, so we had to be careful that no one saw our bad-ass battlecruiser. When I say that starships of the Torgalau went through that wormhole ‘frequently’, I mean something like several times a week. And Torgalau ships were not actually capable of interstellar flight, so they hitched rides on Jeraptha star carriers. With the beetles still busy fighting against both the Thuranin and Bosphuraq, their ability to transport ships of their clients had been strained, and traffic through that wormhole was greatly reduced. With each wormhole having multiple emergence points, the odds of us stumbling across another ship was slight anyway. Sure, it was possible that a senior-species ship might sneak up on a wormhole emergence point, if that ship arrived early and engaged full stealth, but there was no reason for a Maxolhx or Rindhalu ship to be lurking around such a comparatively unimportant wormhole. Plus, Skippy’s ability to tap into the sensor feed of a wormhole, a feature the network had not yet blocked, assured us that no ships were lurking on the other end.
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 28