by Mark Tufo
“Holy shit.” I somehow sat up straighter still; swear I felt my rib pop back into place as there was actually some relief. “Do you know what this means?”
“I don’t, really,” BT said.
“We might be five years off course, but the Progs know the signature of this ship. They’ll be mighty curious when this thing starts pinging on their buckle detectors. Got to imagine there will be an armada of welcoming warships. Pender is saying that he can make it look like we’re coming at them from one place but actually show up in another and that other can be up to a hundred and eighty-two thousand miles away. That about the gist of it?” I asked Beckert.
“Yes and no, sir.”
“Here comes the flip side,” BT said.
“He says the math is solid; he’s had different programs created just to check the calculations.”
“But…” I prodded.
“It’s all theory until it’s actually done, sir,” Beckert said. “And here’s the kicker, he’s not entirely sure the ship can make the maneuver.”
“Make? In what way?” BT asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Like the rear end falling off a car as it makes a hard-left turn at speed, like the wings of an airplane falling off during a barrel roll, like a train tipping and jumping the tracks as it does a ninety-degree turn, like we could have pieces of spaceship scattered across the cosmos not able to make it,” Beckert told him.
“A little too rich in detail for that explanation,” BT told him.
“I know you have odds. Let’s hear them.”
“One in eight.”
“One in eight we blow up, or one in eight we make it?” I asked.
“One in eight we’re destroyed.”
“Well, that’s pretty friggin’ good news,” I said happily.
“Cracker, did you hear the man?” BT turned to me with an incredulous look on his face. “He said we’re playing Russian Roulette with a sidestep!”
“Revolvers typically only have six chambers in them, and statistically I’ll take a seven out of eight as opposed to five out of six empty ones any day of the week.”
“Only takes the one bullet, Talbot,” BT said.
“Here’s something to think about that the computer can’t figure in. Near as I can tell there is going to be at least a half dozen ships waiting for us as soon as we pop out. We’ll have a small element of surprise as they won’t know who is at the helm, but once we start firing that will be over. Just getting a shot off to the home world will be lottery type odds, a second one won’t happen. I think we have a decent shot at blasting two and if we’re really lucky three of their warships out of the sky; after that, it’s a crap shoot. We’ll have taken damage and they’ll be calling up reserves.”
“I knew this was a one-way mission the entire time, just wasn’t expecting to hear about how we were going to go out.”
“Pender changes that, BT. Gives us a hell of a lot more chance at doing this than we just had. There’s a chance we could go home.”
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”
“Why the hell would I say something I don’t mean?”
“People do it all the time,” he felt the need to explain.
“When have I ever said something I didn’t mean?”
“Sirs, there’s more,” Beckert interrupted.
“I don’t want more, Lieutenant, and I mean that, too,” I said for clarification.
“He says he’s at least a week away from getting all the necessary code and additional modifications done to the buckle drive.”
“That it?” I asked speculatively. “There’s no other hidden rider clause in this absurd contract?”
“You yourself just said this was a great idea.” BT took me to task.
“Figure of speech. So, Beckert?”
“Nothing else, sir. He started talking about some of the things he needed to do to the drive. When he started to lose me I just told him to point to where he needed things and we’d get it done. Sir, permission to speak freely?”
I looked around. “Now you’re asking? When have you ever held your tongue, Beckert?”
“It’s Pender, sir. He’s doing things he shouldn’t be capable of.”
“How so?”
“Sir, when he first joined the UEMC he was so bad with a rifle they were going to make him a dish washer. I took pity on him.”
“Beckert.” I knew a lie when I heard one.
“I needed a gopher-slash-grunt, sir. We were short one after Wendig died at the battle for the Hill. He was so thick, when I sent him for a cable stretcher he went missing for two days. Thought he’d gone AWOL.”
“Cable stretcher?” BT asked.
“Doesn’t exist. Engineering’s way of screwing with people, sort of like a normal guy’s wedgie but without all the pulling and tearing, and eventual screaming as cotton fibers are forced deep into one’s ass crack,” I explained.
“You a recipient?” BT asked.
“What do you think?”
“So, you’ve been a dick for a good long while.”
“Safe to say,” I told him. “Beckert, that doesn’t necessarily make him slow.”
“He once heated up a can of tuna in the microwave.”
“I mean hot tuna is kind of gross but that hardly makes him an imbecile.”
“No, I mean it was still in the can and the can was unopened.”
“Forgetfulness?” I lobbied.
“Sir, I could go on for days with some of the things he’s done. I was seriously regretting my decision. So much so I had gone to the Master Sergeant in charge of the mess hall and asked if he’d be willing to trade. I didn’t even mention Pender’s name and he flat out refused saying there was no way he was going to take someone who thought bacon came from cats.”
“What the fuck?” BT asked.
“I’d like to tell you these were isolated incidents, but… Sir, he used to have a hard time reading comic books. Now he’s pouring through alien tech manuals like they are beginner readers.”
“Has he been checked for a tumor? What? There have been documented studies that show something like that can affect great areas of the brain, sometimes for the better. At least for a while.”
“I had a scan done on him right before he brought the idea up about stopping the buckle. He’d been making great strides in some of the things he was learning; that was why I’d even had him on my personal team. At first, I thought I was just a patient and thorough teacher.”
BT involuntarily coughed. “Sorry. Did you say ‘patient’? I once saw you try and hit the chef at the chow hall because it took him too long to scoop out the eggs.”
“To be fair, that was the same man that wouldn’t take Pender off my hands. Sir, I can’t explain his exponential growth.”
“Could it be the circumstances? You know, ordinary men rising up to face the challenge, doing extraordinary things.”
“Is that from Rocky?” BT asked.
“Sir, I know that’s your story, but pardon me for saying it, most of the things you did were physical. You didn’t go from a french fry cook to being able to teach Einstein a thing or two.”
“That’s true. Yeah, if anything, Mike has probably gotten stupider.”
“Thanks for that, BT. Don’t you have some buses to bench or something?” I hated the thought of delaying our attack by an additional seven days, even if I somehow gained some extraordinary, unheard of, control of the ship, but I hated the thought of being blown up even more.
“Before I even sign off on this, we’re still in an emergency buckle, and I have not one iota of desire to drop out of time again. Going to be really weird if we go back to earth and we witness Moses parting the Red Sea. Cool, but weird.”
“He says he’s found a safe way around that as well,” Beckert replied.
“Screw it. Can’t hurt to hear him out. Beckert, when you get back to engineering please send Pender up to the conference room and I’ll think about having him putting us in normal
drive.”
“It’s actually a catalyst propulsion system,” Beckert corrected.
I gave him a look that said I didn’t give a goddamned fuck what it was called. He got the hint.
“Yes, sir.”
“Just send him up. Thank you.”
“Mike, umm, General, maybe pick another spot,” BT said.
“You’d think I wouldn’t have such an easy time forgetting I was almost blown up there.”
“You wouldn’t forget it if you went there.”
“Beckert, send him to the observation deck. Dismissed.”
Beckert had no sooner left when Tracy came up to me. “Isn’t this something we should have discussed? Your crew is primed and ready for a fight now; delaying is going to take the edge off the knife you have been honing.”
“Executive decision.”
“You don’t even know if this is going to work.”
“It’s worth the extra time to see if it does. This could be an unprecedented advantage for us.”
“Or a total loss.”
“Colonel if you want to bust my balls when we’re in our room that’s one thing, but I will not have my subordinates questioning my directives openly. Take the rest of your shift off.”
I’ve seen my wife pissed, plenty of times. Wouldn’t doubt if she had to physically reach into her mouth to keep her tongue from lashing out. I got a steely glare that let me know this little disagreement was far from over. “Yes, sir,” came like a warning from a coiled rattler as she left the bridge.
BT had been leaning as far back in his chair as was humanly possible and he was now getting back into a more normal posture. “You’re fucked.” He let out a breath he’d been holding.
“Yeah, on the fuckometer that’s a solid six, maybe six and a half.”
“That all?”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“True that, my suggestion would be to never do that.” He shuddered.
“What’s the problem? I mean you can only have your dick chopped off and shoved down your throat so many times.”
“You think she would do that?” BT gulped.
“Did you see that look I got because I just pulled rank?”
“Red heads, man. My nana told me to cross the street whenever I saw one coming. Said the red in their hair was from the blood they drank. There was this skinny little kid in my neighborhood, white as a piece of paper, sixty-two pounds soaking wet, but his hair was the color of a brand-new penny. I was scared of him until I was fourteen.”
“What changed?”
“He moved.”
“Where the hell was your nana when I was getting married?”
BT shrugged. “Where are you going?” he asked as I got up.
“Going to talk to Pender.”
“Want me to come?”
“No. Somebody has to be in charge of this ship.”
“Not me, man. Get Fields.”
“Probably sleeping.”
“Get your wife back.”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Mike, I’ve never run the ship.”
“Just do what I do. Sit in my chair and look like you know what you’re doing. Don’t worry, man. We’ll be coming out of buckle. For the most part, we’re just lazily drifting around in space.”
“Lazily drifting around? We’re still traveling like a hundred thousand miles an hour.”
“We are? That’s pretty fast.”
“I hate that you’re the commander of this ship sometimes; other times I just flat out don’t believe it.”
“Probably not the only one. I’ll be back soon. If anything happens just tell someone to hit an alarm. I’ll come running, more or less.”
“What if we run into a star or something?”
“Lieutenant Dominguez, are we anywhere near a star that we need to worry about?” I asked.
He looked at his screen and did a couple of calculations. “Not for another seven years, sir.”
“I’ll be back before that,” I told BT.
“Join the UEMC he says. It’ll be fun, he says. Should have broken his damn nose.” He was still mumbling as I headed out.
I’d had Pender’s records transferred to my tablet and was glancing over them as I headed down the corridor, not really noticing much of anything. I was thinking about why I wanted to meet with Pender, why it was so important to me to learn about him and his unexplained mental growth. When I got to the observation deck he was already there, sitting with a small computer, hitting the keys at a pace that almost defied logic, or so it seemed. I was wondering if we at some point had developed cyborgs, just no one told us. Seems like something I would have known about.
He must have heard me come in. He turned quickly and spoke. “It will work, sir.”
“I have no doubts about that–well maybe a couple of doubts, but it still sounds like our best chance. That’s not why I asked the master…I mean the lieutenant to send you here.”
“He hates being an officer. He was thinking about doing some petty infraction to get himself busted.”
“I’ll talk to him later. It’s you I’m curious about.”
“How so, sir?”
“Your service record states that you grew up in Kansas, graduated high school somewhere in the bottom third of your class.”
He looked sheepish, maybe slightly ashamed.
“I’m not judging, corporal, I was a horrible student as well. Too busy doing things I shouldn’t have. I sometimes regret the amount of education I let slip to the side, but then I think it might have been those things that put me where I am. Funny thing, if not for this war there’s a good chance I’d be asking people if they wanted fries with that shake or maybe extra pickles on their hamburgers, that sort of thing.”
He was actively avoiding looking at me. I wasn’t a world class interrogator and that wasn’t what I was doing anyway, but he sure was hiding something, and not well, mind you.
“Were you bored in school? Not enough stimulus maybe?” I kept my eye on him, he finally looked up.
“No sir, I tried my best. My father was a farmer. I watched his body break a little more each year. He always told me to do my best at learning so that I wouldn’t have to work the land with him. Now, he always said it was satisfying work, feeding people and such, but he wanted better for me.”
I decided for the direct approach. In life, sometimes the best way to get somewhere was to go straight through the impediment instead of around.
“Help me here, Pender. It appears you were a C student with an unsatisfactory SAT score which kept you from going to the University of Kansas. Your superiors have never spoken highly of your…contributions, yet here you are a few years later playing with quantum physics like a ten-year-old might a set of Legos. Meaning you’re good at it, if I wasn’t clear enough.”
“You were, sir.”
“You going to make me pull this out of you or are you going to freely tell me what’s going on?”
“I used to work in Doctor Baker’s lab. Well, I mean, not really work in his lab; I was a guard.”
Took me a second, but like a toddler with one of those two-piece puzzles, I figured it out. “Uut, you guarded Uut.” That had my attention. I was wondering if maybe he had been compromised and if this was somehow a giant, unfathomably elaborate set-up to win the long game. My hand slid down to my sidearm almost of its own volition. I’d already seen what Uut could do to a fragile mind; it had twisted Beth into doing all manner of true evil. What could it do to maybe not a simple mind, but a malleable one, perhaps?
Could I have potentially put myself into another assassination attempt? If Pender had a grenade on his person there wasn’t much I could do about it now. I was seriously thinking about putting a round in his forehead. The possibility of getting blown up tends to make you think irrationally.
“And?”
“And the doctor was doing all manner of experiments with that Stryver.”
“Were you involved?”
“
If you’re asking if Doctor Baker used me as an experiment, no, sir, he did not. What I did I take full responsibility for.”
“What did you do, Pender?”
“You’ve got to understand, I did it to help us.”
“Corporal. Just tell me.”
“I injected Stryver brain matter into my blood stream.”
I backed my chair up. My hand was on the grip of my pistol. “Keep talking before I have you arrested and maybe dissected.”
“I know it sounds strange.”
“Strange? Oh, it’s a little more than strange, Corporal. Fucking lunacy starts to encroach on what I’m thinking.”
“It’s not like that. It wasn’t an unprecedented test.”
“Are you saying Doc was doing clinical trials on people? Because I’m pretty sure I would have vetoed that decision when and if it had ever been brought up. And he’s not really the type to go rogue.”
“He was doing tests on rats. Had puzzles he was putting them through. Smart little fellas. Then something amazing happened. He started injecting them with some proteins he had pulled from Uut’s brain serum. I think he was actually looking for the chemicals that caused or allowed for the psychic connections the Stryvers share, but something else happened instead.”
“You don’t say.”
“What Doctor Baker was hoping to do was have one rat go through a maze or other series of tests and then telepathically tell the next rat how to do it. Instead, the rats just kept getting smarter and smarter to the point where he was having a difficult time creating hard enough tests.”
“Where are these rats now?”
“He destroyed them. He said he was worried about being the cause of a Planet of the Rats type event.”
“Score one for the doctor. And you?”
“I was a guard, sir; no one would have me on their team. I was watching helplessly as my world, our world was getting destroyed. I wanted to be more than someone that watched things. I wanted to actively help, and I saw a potential way to attain that.”
“You stole a medical sample and illegally injected yourself with it without knowing the potential side effects?”
“Sir, in the annals of history, who would remember me?”
“Is that what this is about? Legacy?”
“No sir, you misunderstand me. There’s a girl back in Kansas, well there was before we left. I love her with my entire heart, the way she looks at me, the way she smiles, the sun in her hair th…”