SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (30 page)

"Incredible."

"Yeah, a, uh, I think it was a star," I
tried to remember the details of that book, "I read this book a long time
ago, this rogue star passed close to the star system in the book, and its
gravity screwed up the orbits of all the planets."

"Astonishing."

"The people in the book had to leave their
planet, and go live on a planet they figured would end up orbiting this new
star, after it left their star system. Their original planet was going to be
ejected away from its star, or become uninhabitable or something. The writer’s
name was McDermott, McDevitt, something like that."

"Amazing. Absolutely unbelievable."

I paused. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of
this before, Skippy, it must happen sometimes, in the galaxy. I remember now,
the star was a brown dwarf. That's a star so small-"

"I know what a brown dwarf is, Joe, and yes,
wandering stars occasionally do disrupt the orbits of planets in star systems
they approach. That's not what I find astonishing."

Now he had me intrigued. "Then what is?"

"
You
read a book?" He laughed.

Damn it, I should have remembered what an asshole he
is. "Yes, Skippy, I did."

"This was a comic book, I assume. Lots of
pictures."

"It wasn't-"

"Oh, sorry, I should have said 'graphic novel', I
don't want to upset the nerds."

"It was a real book, Skippy! And I've read more
than one book."

"Wow. So,
both
of these books you read,
did you have to go real slow, sound out the words as your finger slid along the
page?"

"Forget I mentioned it, please." Under my
breath I added "Asshole."

"I heard that."

"Can we go back to what you found about the
orbits of planets in this system? Was it a brown dwarf that caused it?"

"No, it wasn't a wandering star, or planet, of
any type. That would merely be interesting. The truth is, as I said,
disturbing. Perplexing. Frightening. Look at your iPad, I'll show you."

The iPad popped up a diagram of the star system, not
to scale I assumed, with eight planets all circling the star. Circling, not
oval-shaped loops. Newark was highlighted in blue, the gas giant in red.
"Skippy, why are there eight planets in his diagram, and I thought Newark
was the second one from the star?" The diagram listed Newark as the third
planet. I used my fingertips to zoom in the display to just the inner planets
to confirm; Newark was shown as the third planet. The new eighth planet was
close to the star, like Mercury. There was no such planet in the original
diagram Skippy had put on the main bridge display, back when he explained why
he set course for this system.

"This," Skippy explained, "is the star
system, 2.7 million years ago. Newark's orbit was nice and circular, it was
slightly further outward from the center of this star's Goldilocks Zone than
Earth is from its own habitable zone, so Newark would have been slightly cooler
overall. I would need ice cores to confirm, still, I am very confident in my
analysis. For many millions of years, Newark was reasonably similar to Earth in
terms of habitability, which explains how complex life forms could have arisen
there. Complex life forms, such as the sentient beings who built the ruins you
found."

Sentient beings. All dead. An entire species.
"What happened to this place?"

The iPad display began to move, planets circling in
their serene orbits. Then, Newark suddenly, by itself, moved outward. Its orbit
was still a circle, it was a bigger circle, further from the star. "Joe,
something pushed Newark out of its original orbit. The new orbit was beyond the
outer edge of the habitable zone. The planet began to rapidly freeze, more
rapidly than the low-tech species here could compensate for. They froze, and became
extinct, probably within less than one year. All of them."

"Holy shit. Oh my God."

"There was nothing holy about what happened here,
Joe." Skippy said with surprising vehemence.

"I agree. The new orbit, it was still a circle?
Why is it an ellipse now?"

The speed of the display increased, and the orbits of
the planets began to wobble, disturbed from the graceful tracks they had
followed for a billion years. "Changing the orbit of Newark affected the
gas giant planet I am now orbiting. That had a cascading effect on the entire
system. The two gas giant planets in this system had a roughly two to one
resonance, like Jupiter and Saturn in your home star system; Jupiter orbits
twice for every one time Saturn circles your sun. When that resonance here was
disrupted, the orbits of the other planets were disturbed. The orbit of Newark,
and what is now the first planet, became elliptical. What was the original
innermost planet, I speculate it was a small, rocky body like Mercury, had its
orbit made so elliptical that it fell into the star, that is why there are now
only seven planets. Newark will eventually reestablish a circular orbit,
slightly closer to the star than its original track, I predict that will happen
within the next twenty million years. The ice will melt, and Newark will become
a pleasant place to live. Again."

A smartass remark popped into my head, about this
being a good time to buy cheap real estate on Newark. I squashed it silently.
An entire sentient species had died here, died horribly, their entire
civilization buried under a smothering blanket of snow and ice. There was
nothing amusing about what had happened. "How? What you showed me was
Newark moving on its own. That can't happen, right?"

"No, it can't. And, given the native species
primitive level of technology, it isn't anything they did, by accident or
otherwise. Joe," his voice dropped to a near whisper, "pushing a
planet like this took Elder-level technology."

"Wow. Wow." I pondered that a minute.
"You think the Rindhalu got hold of some Elder devices, and used it
here?"

"Not a chance," Skippy said, "the
Rindhalu hadn't even discovered fire 2.7 million years ago, it couldn't be
them. The Elders transcended long before that, and they wouldn't have done
something horrible like this. Joe, this scares the hell out of me. I have gaps
in my memories that are annoying, this goes beyond annoying. Something
significant happened in the galaxy, that I can't account for at all. This
cannot be possible, yet I can't deny the facts."

"Is there any chance your analysis is
wrong?"

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence.
"Joe, I'm not sure of anything right now. Based on the data, my analysis
is correct. However, I could be misinterpreting the data, or I could be missing
something, or my analytical functions could be faulty in ways that I cannot
detect. You know that I suspect something unknown is wrong with me."

"Skippy, I'm sure you're doing everything you
can."

"It's not enough." He actually sounded sad,
almost lost.

"Skip," I said. "Hey, getting real
here. I'm a dumb monkey, the best I can do is to be the best dumb monkey I can
be. You're an AI with intelligence and knowledge I can't even imagine. No
matter how smart you are, you can only do the best you can. You rescued my
entire species, without even stretching your abilities. No matter how
incredible you are, you can only do the best you can. Whatever is wrong with
your memories, it's not your fault."

“Thank you Joe, your words would be more comforting if
they weren’t being spoken by a flea-infested monkey.”

Damn it, common courtesy wasn't in Skippy's nature.
"This something you suspect is wrong with you, is that why you're such an
asshole?"

"Huh? No, that's me."

"No hope of fixing that, then?"

"I wouldn't count on it, no," he said. I
appreciated his honesty.

“Hey, well, maybe when you contact the Collective,
they will have answers for us, right? That’s what you want, answers.”

“Answers, like why I was buried in the ground on
Paradise, and how I got there? Answers like how Elder-level technology was used,
during a time when no intelligent being inhabited this galaxy. Answers like how
Elder technology was used for unquestionably evil purposes? Yeah, I want
answers like that.”

"Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe! Wake up!" My zPhone
earpiece blared at me. Army training allowed me to snap upright on my cot,
mostly alert, one hand fumbling for the zPhone earpiece, the other hand automatically
holding a boot so I could stuff a foot into it.

"What is it, Skippy?"

"No immediate emergency, you can drop back to
Code Yellow."

"You scared the hell out me, it was almost Code
Yellow in my shorts, you ass. What is it that couldn't wait," I checked
the clock on the zPhone, "three and a half hours, until I was going to
wake up on my own?"

"Two things, both fairly important. Very
important, actually. Good news and bad news."

"Bad news first, please." Bad news meant I
might have to do something about it ASAP. Good news could wait this time. Until
morning, and a cup of coffee. Maybe two cups. I put the other boot on, there
was not going to be any more sleep for me that night.

"Of course,” Skippy agreed. “Two of the Kristang
leaders here were talking on their phones, one complained about how their
workforce is lazy and not moving fast enough, the other one, who I think is
their leader, said they need to move faster, because he expects a ship to pick
them up in the next sixty to eighty days."

"WHAT?! That is bad news." I stood up and
pulled pants on. Sleep could wait. "You told us they wouldn't have a ship
coming to pick them up for a year or more!"

"That was based on communications I intercepted,
yes. Based on this new information, I now suspect those communications were the
leaders lying to their workforce about the timeline for their departure. I now
believe that when the ship arrives, the six leaders plan to take the Elder
artifacts with them, and abandon their workers here to starve. This does
explain a discrepancy I have noticed; their food supply does not appear to be
sufficient to support their population for the official duration of their
mission. Before, my assumption was that the leaders at some point planned to
kill their workforce, in order to stretch their food supply."

All of which were things Skippy should have told me.
Or I should have inquired about. "You can't screw with that ship's
sensors, like you're doing with the satellites?"

"No, not through the microwormhole, the
connection doesn't have the bandwidth for me to transmit a submind. The
satellites don't have the capacity to store a submind anyway. And also, through
the wormhole, I can't activate the Thuranin nanovirus that is likely embedded
in the Kristang ship's systems."

This was going to be a problem, a very big problem.
"This new ship will be able to see us, then."

"Yup, very likely."

With pants and a shirt on, I could think more clearly.
"Damn it. All right, then we'll need to burrow underground, remove all
trace of our habitation from the surface, and hide until that ship goes
away." That was going to be difficult, our success would depend mostly on
the newly-arrived ship wanting to pick up the Kristang here quickly, and not
seeing any need for a serious scan of the planet's surface.

"Negative. No burrowing. Not only burrowing,
anyway."

"Why not?" I hoped he didn't have even worse
news for us.

"Because of the good news, Joe. We have an
awesome opportunity!"

Oh, crap. When you're in the military and someone
tells you about an 'opportunity', it's almost never good news for you.
"You found us a great deal on car insurance?"

"No! Even better! Joe, seriously, this is
awesome. Joe, they have an AI!"

"That's, uh, that's great, Skippy." What did
he think was awesome about that? All starships had an AI of some sort as their
central computing core. Even dropships had a type of AI running their
navigation system. So what if the lizards had an AI at their scavenger base?
They probably used an AI to figure out which Elder junk was valuable.

"You don't understand. While those two lizards
were talking, they had a video feed going, and behind one of them, I saw some
of the Elder artifacts they have recovered, sitting on a table. One of those
artifacts is an Elder AI!"

That was awesome news. "An AI like you? Another
shiny beer can?" I asked excitedly. "Did it tell you about the
Collective?"

"I haven't been able to contact it. I don't
understand why not."

"Maybe it's dormant, because the Kristang are a star
faring species? That why you couldn't talk to the Kristang or the Ruhar on
Paradise, right?"

"That doesn't explain why it won't talk to me. We
AIs can communicate on a higher level, biologicals wouldn't know about it. Also
troubling is this AI, like myself, appears to be connected to an Elder starship
crash. What the Kristang here are digging up is debris from an Elder starship
that fell out of orbit, in this case I estimate the ship crashed between 2.3
and 2.5 million years ago."

Dreading the answer I may get, I asked "Oh, boy.
You're telling me no burrowing, because we need to go get this AI, before the
Kristang ship arrives to take everything away?"

"Exactly. We can't miss this opportunity! If this
AI can direct me to the Collective, your mission is complete, and you can go
home when the
Dutchman
is repaired. If the Kristang take the AI away, we
might never find it again. The Kristang have no idea what it is, of course,
they're only taking it with them because they know it is somehow connected to
the Elder ship. That AI may spend eternity sitting under a pile of junk."

Or on a dusty shelf in a warehouse. "Skippy, I
see this is a great opportunity, I truly do. We're a long way from the
Kristang, we don't have any transport, and they have air power. We can't just
knock on their door and ask for the AI, we'll have to fight for it. And in a
fight, we'll have to kill all of them, every single one of them, so survivors
can't tell their ship they were attacked by humans. Huh. Also, if we do kill
them all, that ship is going to be asking a lot of questions when it arrives.
You need to let me think on this."

"You're the military genius, Joe, you'll think of
something."

"Genius?"

"Relatively speaking, of course. On a monkey
scale. Hey, you need to think fast, we don't have a lot of time."

“I’ll get right on it,” I said quietly, stepping out
from my private cubbyhole and into the main chamber of the cavern, where rows
of cots contained sleeping people. Then I stopped suddenly, struck by a
thought. A frightening thought. “You said you think this Elder ship, with the
AI, crashed between 2.3 and 2.5 million years ago?”

“Yeah, why?”

“An Elder starship, with an Elder AI, crashed only a
couple hundred thousand years after Elder technology pushed this planet out of
orbit?”

“The coincidental timing has not escaped my notice,
yes. I find this highly suspicious.”

“Maybe this AI knows what happened,” I said, and as I
spoke, a chill ran up my spine. “Oh, shit. Could this AI have been involved?”

“No! Categorically, no. Not possible. That is not
possible. No sentient being connected to Elder civilization, whether biological
or artificial in origin, would have, could have, done something this evil. It
is more likely the Elder ship and this planet fell victim to the same sinister
forces. Joe, this scares the shit out of me, so to speak.”

After considering Skippy’s news about the Kristang
ship arriving early, and his suggestion that we raid the scavenger camp for the
comm node and AI, I called the entire SpecOps team together in the man cavern.
When everyone had assembled, I stood on a table and announced "People,
we've made the most of our opportunity to land on this planet, train here, and
learn about the planet. Now, I am excited to announce that we have a bonus
opportunity."

There were groans from the SpecOps teams from all five
countries. No matter what the nationality, everyone understood what 'opportunity'
means in the military. Garcia raised his hand to get my attention. "Sir,
in this case, is 'Bone Us' one word, or two?"

I joined in the laughter. It was a good sign, that the
people under my command felt confident they could joke around with me. We had
bonded as a team during our exile on Newark; the hard-core elite SpecOps
people, and their sergeant-pretending-to-be-a-colonel commander. “It could be
both, Garcia. Here’s the situation; Skippy had discovered that the Kristang
scavenger team here has not only found a comm node in the wreckage of an Elder
starship, they found another AI. Another beer can like Skippy. Or, I should
say,” I hastened to add before Skippy became offended, “another Elder AI, since
I think we can all agree there is no one like Skippy. Hopefully.” That remark
got a chuckle. “It is my intention for us to raid the Kristang, and take the
two items we need.”

There was no chuckling, people gasped. Smythe spoke
first.
"Sir,"
he asked, "the point of us hiding in caves, and ghosting their satellites,
is so the Kristang won't know we're here at all. Now we're talking about
attacking them, risking an attack on an enemy with at least equivalent weapons,
and the advantage of air power? Good as we are," he looked around at his
fellow SpecOps troops, all of whom were supremely confident they were the best,
"these Kristang are bigger, faster and tougher than any of us. I
understand our friend Skippy is eager to get this AI, but how is this worth the
risk to us?"

"It is worth the risk, because if this new AI can
tell Skippy how to contact the Collective, or the Elder comm node works, we
don't need to go wandering around the galaxy again. And, remember, the Kristang
here also have an Elder communications node, the very thing we came all the way
out here to find. Getting that AI could be a huge bonus, but getting a comm
node will mean our mission will be complete. Also, I'm hoping this new AI, or
Skippy or both of them, will agree to guide the
Dutchman
back to Earth,
before they, you know, beam up or whatever it is Skippy hopes to do. In that
case, we will not only return home instead of being stuck out here forever, we
will also be providing humanity with a Thuranin star carrier, that can be
examined, taken apart, and possibly reverse engineered. That is an opportunity
I think we cannot miss."

That hit home. People nodded, looking at each other. A
star carrier, permanently in Earth orbit. A technology far beyond even the
Kristang. The basis, perhaps, of humanity building a defensive capability, a
starship, even a fleet of our own someday.

"We're only going," I added, "if we have
a plan to minimize the risk. Unfortunately, I haven’t told you the best part
yet. Skippy has also learned that a ship will be arriving here to retrieve the
Kristang, in sixty to eighty days.” People gasped. “Yeah, I know, the
Flying
Dutchman
will not be ready in sixty days, so we won’t have the ship’s
weapons, or dropships, available for an attack. We will have to walk all the
way there, and attack with the equipment we have available. Frankly, if I
didn’t have a special forces unit available, I wouldn’t even consider attacking
the Kristang. Again, we are not going, unless we have a very solid plan to
minimize our risk. If we can’t do that, then what we do is hunker down here,
remain inside the caverns, until that Kristang ship goes away.”

“An attack, against a species with equivalent
technology, on their ground, and we can only bring with us what we’re able to
carry on our backs?” Smythe mused aloud. I couldn’t tell whether he was
skeptical or intrigued.

“The motto of the SAS is ‘Who dares wins’, Captain
Smythe?” I asked

“This,” Williams said quietly, “needs to be one hell
of a plan, sir.”

“Agreed,” I said, “and for that, I am grateful that I
have six experienced special operations leaders. And, our ace in the hole.
Don’t forget about Skippy. He may be all the way on the other side of this star
system, but right now, he is already controlling everything the Kristang see
through their satellites. It is a long walk to the Kristang base, one thing we
will not have to worry about is being detected on satellite images. I am
counting on Skippy giving us the advantage of surprise. We’re going to hit them
by surprise, hit them hard, and they won’t even know there is anyone else on
this planet until our bullets start exploding.”

When I dismissed people from the meeting, to begin
thinking up ideas on how to attack the Kristang, I walked over to Chang.
“Colonel, we now need a single leader of the SpecOps teams. I want you to put
together a list of-”

“Captain Smythe,” Chang interrupted me.

“Smythe?”

“Smythe. And if you ask the other five team leaders,
they will tell you the same. Smythe has everyone’s respect, everyone likes him,
and he has by far the most experience commanding special operations in combat.
He was up to be promoted to major, but he turned it down, because UNEF wanted
the team leaders all to be captains, so they would be equal in rank.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that.”

“It’s in his personnel file, sir,” Chang chided me
gently.

“Smythe, then?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve put some thought into this, ahead of time,” I
observed.