Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7)

by Craig Alanson

  Before going into the gardens, I had scrubbed my hands and face and put on a white coverall, with a mask over my nose and mouth. Skippy had assured us his biohazard detectors in the water system and air filters had not found any organisms dangerous to our precious crops, but we had to be extra careful on this mission. Our supply of seeds and bulbs and whatever else plants grew from was very limited and could not be replaced. If any type of plant died from infection, we would have to go without it until we returned to Earth. So many people had come aboard the Dutchman in Earth orbit that Skippy admitted the decontamination procedures had been rushed, and the Delta Force team had not gone through decon at all before coming aboard. If even one of them had brought a nasty virus or bacteria or a crawling mite stuck to the bottom of a boot, our fresh food supply could be in jeopardy.

  Working slowly and carefully, I went up and down the rows, checking on each plant. Mostly I was keeping my mind off the impending failure of our mission and the doom of humanity. What I did was mostly monitoring the nutrient levels in the water, looking at the leaves to verify there was no yellowing or spots that shouldn’t be there. For sure I was not an expert, um, what do you call a plant expert? A plant-ologist? That’s not right. Not a biologist, they study more than plants. Wait, I read it somewhere, uh, a botonist! That’s it! I remember that from listening to the audiobook of ‘The Martian’, that astronaut Mark Whatney guy was a botanist. So, I was not an expert botanist. My knowledge came mostly from helping my mother in the garden back at home. I remember she had rose bushes near the vegetable garden because roses can be more susceptible to diseases and will show symptoms before other plants. One time, the roses got some awful fungus, it caused whitish-gray threads to grow on the leaves, making them curl-

  Threads.

  That’s what I remembered about flying unicorns that could teleport themselves from one place to another, I read that in a book. Only the book was about dragons, not unicorns. There was some sort of fungus-like thread stuff in the air, and the dragons used their fire to burn up the threads before they could reach the ground. Or something like that, I read that book a long time ago, like I was young enough to have to look up the meaning of words while I was reading.

  Teleporting dragons.

  That was the idea I was looking for. “Hey, Skippy, meet me in my office,” I called out as I trotted for the door, ready to remove the coveralls and mask.

  “I haven’t gone anywhere, dumdum. Fine, my avatar is waiting for you.”

  “Wait, wait!” His avatar held up a hand before I could speak in my office. “Let me guess, please. You were all excited when you called me, and you were in the hydroponics garden, so whatever idea that popped into your head was inspired by the plants there. Are you planning to grow an army of mutant ninja tomatoes to sneak into the factory and steal the pixies?’

  “Sadly, no. I do have an idea, and it does not involve elves or unicorns or dragons, but it sort of does involve teleporting.”

  “Ok, this I have to hear.” His arms folded across his chest. “What lunatic-”

  “Show me a schematic of that factory again, not just the factory, all the substructures too. No,” I added, “expand it farther. That’s it,” I jabbed a finger at my laptop display. “That’s what I remember, there’s a cavern under the factory complex.”

  “There are multiple caverns beneath the complex, some are natural, some were created and some natural caverns were enlarged by the-”

  “Mm hmm, yeah, fascinating history lesson. Listen, are there any caverns that have access to the factory above? Like, if we got into that cavern, we could go up a tunnel or something?”

  “Um, Joe, you have clearly lost your mind this time. You agree it is impossible to approach the factory because of the sensor fields, but you propose to go past the factory to a cavern below it, then come back up? Perhaps you need a refresher course in-”

  “I’ll take a raincheck on the geeky lecture, Professor Nerdnik. Answer the question, please. Is there even one cavern that has access to the factory above?”

  “Hmm, I am responding only because I am intrigued to learn what truly whacky idea is in your monkey brain this time. Yes, there are three caverns that have tunnels or pipes or other access to the factory area. Is this one of those stupid exercises where you imagine what life would be like if facts were different? I can assure that in this case, the facts can’t be changed.”

  “If I’m right, the facts are Ok just the way they are.”

  “This is why I truly hate you, Joe. Please, do not keep me in suspense. I am not mocking you,” he sighed, “because I have learned that too often, that sack of mush in your skull dreams up a way to accomplish what seems impossible. What is your idea?”

  “Remember on our way back to Earth last time, we didn’t have much to do, and I asked you to explain how jump wormholes work?”

  “I remember that was the longest four minutes of my miserable life. You wanted me to explain hyperspatial physics without using any math that would make your tiny brain explode. That was like trying to announce the play-by-play of a baseball game without using words.”

  “Uh huh, it wasn’t four minutes, it was more like four freakin’ hours,” I recalled with a shudder. Even long after I gave up in despair, he would not shut up about it, continuing to try explaining stuff though my poor brain had shut down. “Anyways, I did understand part of it, those drawings were very helpful.”

  “Cartoons, Joe, they were cartoons. Listen, dumdum, if you want me to explain jump physics to you again, I am going to need a new box of crayons.”

  That made me laugh even though he was insulting me. “Crayons, that’s a good one.”

  “Um, I wasn’t joking.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered. “Ok, sit back and prepare to be dazzled.” So, I told him my idea.

  “Sir?” Simms knocked on the doorframe an hour later, leaning into my office where I was celebrating with peanut butter and Fluff on saltine crackers. It was delicious and it also had the bonus of leaving crumbs all over my office, which annoyed the beer can. “Skippy hinted to me that you have a plan to get into that pixie factory?”

  “Hopefully, yes,” I leaned back in my chair with a self-satisfied grin.

  “It is not really Joe’s idea,” Skippy sniffed, his avatar glaring at me angrily.

  Simms looked at me in surprise. “It’s not?”

  “No,” Skippy smirked. “The idea came from a book he read, called ‘Drag Queen Riders of Porn’.”

  “Drag queens?” Simms’s eyebrows shot up before I could protest.

  “It wasn’t actually a book, it was a video,” Skippy winked. “If you know what I mean.”

  Waving my hands frantically, I shouted. “It was a book, and it was about real dragons, not porn!”

  “Dragons aren’t real, Joe,” Skippy shook his head slowly. “Oh, this is so sad. Listen, by now, Jennifer knows all about your weird porn-surfing habits, so-”

  “It was Pern, not porn, Simms,” I insisted.

  “Right. I will, uh,” she backed out of the doorway, her eyes still wide in an accusing look at me. “I can see you are busy, Sir.” With that, she turned and walked away hurriedly, while I wished there was a nearby black hole I could throw myself into.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  The pixie factory was on, or actually under, a planet about the size of Earth except it had only a thin atmosphere. The planet and the entire star system was heavily monitored and guarded, and the Maxolhx had a big military base there and facilities to make other important things. But the entire purpose of the rotten kitties being in that star system was to manufacture pixies, and anything else there was to support the effort of making, securing and then transporting pixies. Stealing pixies while they were in transit from the factory to one of the two vaults was a possibility we considered and quickly discarded, because the ships transporting pixies were always escorted by an entire battlegroup designed to protect their precious cargo from the advanced Rindhalu. No way did our
pathetic Frankenstein monster of a space truck have any chance of surviving an encounter with a Maxolhx battlegroup.

  The planet, which we called Detroit because it was basically there for manufacturing, and because ‘Detroit’ is a better name than ‘Pixieland’, was surrounded by defense satellites and encased in sensor fields. What gave me hope that we might actually be able to break into the factory was seeing that the defenses were almost entirely in orbit, and the sensor fields did not actually extend all the way down to the surface. Skippy explained that planet had been chosen for its lack of a magnetic field that could affect the process of making pixies, and that was also why sensor field projectors were kept far away from the factory complex itself. The Maxolhx were supremely confident that nothing larger than a pebble could get through their sensor fields without being detected, and Skippy agreed. So, how was I planning to break into the factory, if there was no way for us to sneak through the pesky sensor fields?

  It’s simple. I planned to cheat.

  “Ok, the first package is in position,” Skippy announced in a weary tone. It had taken him three days, nine hours, thirty four minutes and I’m sure he could report exactly how many microseconds, to get the super-stealthy package down into the target cavern. The package was a tiny missile he built just for the mission, designed for the very difficult requirement of penetrating the sensor network around the planet, to get as close to the factory as possible. The answer, after a lot of argument from me, was thirty six kilometers was the closest we could get. My arguing had been because I assumed Skippy was being his usual pessimistic self of telling me everything was impossible and it simply couldn’t be done and why couldn’t I understand we should just give up and it was hopeless and maybe I should just drown myself in a bottle of tequila? Damn, sometimes he was such a downer that I should have named him ‘Eeyore’ instead of ‘Skippy’. In this case, after he made a couple of small tweaks to the plan at my request, I had to agree that even getting the package within thirty six kilometers of a heavily guarded senior species factory was pretty much a freakin’ miracle.

  The package’s cargo was a heavily-shielded canister containing one end of a microwormhole. The limited ability Skippy had to maneuver the missile was the key factor in selecting which cavern to use for our truly lunatic stunt. The canister with the microwormhole inside it could not be handled roughly, Skippy could not make the little missile perform sharp turns or accelerate hard. Those limitations actually did not matter, because abrupt maneuvers would be like us shining a beacon at the very sophisticated detection network surrounding the planet. Skippy had to do his old trick of mapping the sensor fields and anticipating how they would change, then feeding back to the Maxolhx sensor system what the computer expected to see if space around the planet Detroit were blank. Back when he had performed a certified Skippy miracle to get our Falcon dropship through the Bosphuraq sensor fields down to the moonbase, he had moaned and groaned and gone into full Diva-princess mode about how difficult that was, and how we monkeys could not begin to appreciate how incredible that feat of amazingness was, blah blah blah. Now, he admitted that what he’d done at the moonbase was merely a crude trick, compared to navigating the wormhole-carrying missile down to the surface of Detroit and threading it through underground tunnels and caverns. Nine times, the missile had to stop its flight and bore through solid ground to get to a tunnel. Cutting a route from one narrow underground passage to another was tricky enough without having to assure the Maxolhx did not see what the missile was doing. Twice, Skippy let the missile float along underground streams that flowed in the general direction of the target cavern. We all knew he was under a tremendous pressure because for the past two days, Skippy not only had not talked to any of us, when we tried talking to him, he had given a one-word reply. “Busy,” is all he said, so we left him alone. Nagatha told me privately that she was concerned about the little shithead, because he was concentrating so intensely. She had to run the ship all by herself, with of course very little help from us monkeys, and although that was good practice for her and our meatsack crew, it was worrying that if we ran into trouble, Skippy might not be able to help us unless he abandoned his control over the missile. Releasing the missile would instantly expose it to the Maxolhx detection system and blow any chance we had to steal a set of blank pixies.

  The first phase of our plan required getting a microwormhole into a cavern under the factory, as close as possible, and Skippy’s announcement of success meant we were ready for the next step. I guess technically the next step was also in process because there were five more tiny, custom-built missiles carrying microwormholes on their way down to the same cavern. The second missile was still forty thousand kilometers above the planet’s surface, with Skippy bringing that follow-on device down using the experience he gained from guiding the first missile.

  It took another nineteen nerve-wracking hours to get all six missiles, each carrying a microwormhole, down to the cavern, or near the cavern. Because the event horizons for microwormholes can interfere with each other if they get too close, only two of the units actually went into the cavern. The first missile’s nosecone split open, exposing the microwormhole, which Skippy used to project a stealth field through. At first, the stealth field was only two meters in diameter, slightly larger than the entire cavern. When I use the word ‘cavern’, do not think of a giant underground cave, this place was chosen for its convenient location and not for its size. A larger underground cavern would likely not have been allowed to exist anywhere near the pixie factory, so we were lucky to find even a very small one.

  The cavern we found was not large enough for a human, and we needed it to be much, much larger. So, Skippy carefully pulled the second missile inside the cavern to the far end, away from the microwormhole that was projecting the stealth field. That microwormhole was exposed on the end of a manipulator arm, and Skippy hugely expanded the event horizon so it was one point two millimeters across, about as big as it could get without becoming unstable. He used that tear in spacetime to dig out the compacted soil and rock around the cavern, making it larger and larger each time the event horizon passed through. What happened to the rocks and soil that went into the wormhole? Where did it go? It went through the other end of the microwormhole, which was in an empty cargo bay aboard the Flying Dutchman far out beyond the edge of the star system. We could watch that cargo bay through a camera, seeing a tiny but steady trickle of fine dust falling to create a cone-shaped pile on the floor of the bay. To our eyes, the trickle of dust came from nowhere, because no human eye could see the microwormhole. By the time Skippy was done expanding the underground cavern, the cargo bay was three-quarters full of dust and the microwormhole was worn out, with Skippy reporting he was having to work hard to keep the event horizon from collapsing. When the job was done to his satisfaction, he closed that second microwormhole, and then we had only five more to rely on for the mission.

  The good news is one of those five remaining microwormholes was a spare that we had brought along in case the excavation proved too stressful for one magical little spacetime rip. With the cavern dug out to optimal size using only one unit, we had an extra safety margin in case something went wrong.

  With the cavern complete and the stealth field wrapped tightly around it, and the Maxolhx giving no sign they had noticed unusual activity, we were almost ready for the next phase of the operation- the most critical, most dangerous phase. Before that, Skippy wanted to send gamma ray pulses through the third microwormhole, to see if the damping effect of his modified stealth field was effective in concealing those rays from being detected by the Maxolhx. He also was waiting to make sure the area around the cavern was stable, that the hole he had just laboriously dug was not going to fall in on itself. It bothered me that the little beer can was still not communicating, and I didn’t want to bother him, so I asked our ship’s AI. “Hey, Nagatha,” I called her softly, “can you ask Skippy how he-”

  “I can speak for myself, Joe,” he cut in
. He sounded tired, not just tired but worn out. That was of course impossible even if his internal store of metallic helium-3 was running low, because he drew most of his energy from higher spacetime or some sciency bullshit like that. For all I knew, he secretly recharged himself through a USB port when I wasn’t looking.

  “Hey, Mister Magnificent, you sound pretty burned out. Everything Ok with your power supply and all that?”

  “My power supply has never been better, Joe. If I sound worn out that is because I am emotionally drained. You know how absent-minded and ADD I am- I’ll deny the whole thing if you tell anyone I said that. Over the past more than two days, I have had to pay close attention and concentrate the whole time, and it suuuuucked. Slipping those little missiles through Maxolhx defenses was the most difficult thing I have ever done.”

  “Come on, Skippy,” I tried to cheer him up. “I saw you warp a freakin’ star.”

  “Technically, I used the star’s magnetic field to make it warp itself, but that was easy-peasy compared to what I just did. Joe, um,” he lowered his voice. “Please don’t tell anyone, but a couple minutes after the first mini-missile entered the sensor grid’s effective detection range, I realized I had underestimated the capability of the AI that runs their sensor network. Really, what I underestimated was the Maxolhx’s understanding of higher-order math and their surprisingly insightful grasp of quantum- ugh, why am I trying to explain this to you? Bottom line is the Maxolhx are smarter than I thought, they have discovered some facts about the nature of reality that I do not think even the Rindhalu understand.”

  “Uh huh, yeah,” it all sounded very impressive to me, “why does that matter?”

  “It matters because my ability to predict hidden patterns in the sensor fields was a lot more limited than I expected. Twice, I was forced to hold both the lead and follow-on missiles in place, while I rethought my approach and developed a new branch of mathematics. Joe, several times I feared that I had been outsmarted for the very first time. Fortunately, the nature of quantum reality is not as random as the Maxolhx think it is, so in the end I triumphed. My concentration continued while I guided the other missiles down to the cavern, so I went silent again shortly after those missiles neared the top of the atmosphere. What I want to say is after this mission is over, I seriously need to sit on a couch with a box of Cap’n Crunch and rot my brain by watching a SpongeBob Squarepants marathon.”