SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (38 page)

I nodded. "Lieutenant, one thing I've learned is,
you never know what you'll need out here, it pays to have a wide variety of
capabilities with you. I didn't think an archeologist, or geologist, would be
useful in space, and now I'm glad we brought them along. Finding those ruins
has given Skippy a puzzle he can't explain. The strangest things can have a use
out here, even a knowledge of, hell, what was that, Skippy, 17th century
Hungarian poetry?"

"Correct," he said.

Williams looked at me in complete surprise.

"It's a long story," I said simply,
"you've seen how Skippy can get off topic at times."

"Although, as I pointed out at the time,"
Skippy continued, "even a cursory familiarity of European romantic
literature of the Baroque-"

"Yes, Skippy," I interrupted as Williams
broke into a knowing grin, "thank you, another time, Ok?"

"You always say that, but there's never a time
you deem as appropriate," Skippy said in a peevish tone. "Man, I am
trying to bring culture to monkeys, and this is the thanks I get."

"Tell you what, Skippy," I winked to
Williams, "you get us safely off this rock, and I will dedicate one, no,
two,
two
full hours, for you to regale me with whatever topic you
desire. Without interruption."

"Huh. You say that now, but-"

"Have I ever made a commitment to you and not
kept it? Like, leaving Earth and coming out here on this fool's errand to find
your magic radio?"

"Perhaps you have a point. Two hours, huh? I
shall prepare accordingly. You're not going to regret this, Joe."

Crap. I was regretting it already.

"Taking one for the team, sir?" Williams
asked. "We appreciate it."

Shaking my head ruefully, I replied "You have no
idea."

Damn I was tired. And this was only the first freakin'
day, not even a full day. For the past hour, the straps of my pack could no
longer be adjusted not to be uncomfortable, they were digging into my shoulders
and hips. Also for the past hour, I had been watching clouds build in the
northern sky, and the wind had been gusting in our faces. "Skippy," I
asked, "weather report."

"Sucky, with a hundred percent chance of it
continuing to be sucky. You're going to get heavy rain in about two hours,
maybe less. The rain should be gone by morning, most of it, anyway."

"Thank you, Skippy. Captain Smythe!" I
raised my voice so he could hear over the wind, as he was fifty meters ahead of
me. He waited for me to catch up, I hustled as best I could without completely
losing my dignity. "Take five, everyone," I shouted. To Smythe, I
said "Time to look for place to camp for the night, I want us to set up
camp within the hour."

"Sir?" He pointed looked at his watch.
"There's plenty of daylight remaining."

"Captain," I said, pulling the pack straps
wide to give my aching shoulders a break, "this is why you need me with
you. When you're on a march with the SAS, no one wants to be the first to call
for a halt, right?"

"It's a matter of pride, sir."

"Exactly. It's even worse here, because the SAS
don't want to stop before the Rangers, who don't want to stop before the
Chinese, who don't want to stop before the Indian paratroopers, and so on. I'm
not special forces, so I can call a halt without my pride getting hurt. And
every one of us could use a rest. Skippy says there's heavy rain coming,"
I pointed to the clouds rolling in from the northeast, "I don't want us to
get caught out in that, we're still ahead of schedule and there's no reason for
us to push unnecessarily. The last thing we need is people risking further
exposure in this climate."

"Yes, sir, another hour. I'll tell scouts ahead
to find us a spot?"

Forty minutes later, Smythe touched his zPhone
earpiece, talked with someone, then dropped back to walk with me. "There's
a spot up ahead where we can camp, sir. The lads say there's another campsite a
bit further, but that spot could get a bit dodgy, if we get heavy rain."
On his zPhone, he showed me the images the scouts had taken of the two sites.
The one further away was in the shelter of a bluff, protecting us from the
wind, it also had a stream that could overflow and flood the campsite if the
rain came down heavily.

"Yeah, that further site is out, too risky. Last
thing we need is for everything to get wet again." The other site was a
flat spot on the south side of a hill, it was more exposed to the gusty winds,
it also wasn't going to flood. "We have to walk over that hill anyway,
we'll set up there." I felt like a scoutmaster on the worst Boy Scout
backpacking trip of all time; selecting campsites, making sure everyone had dry
socks. At least here I didn't have to worry about parents complaining that
their little Jimmy had come home with blisters and a mysterious rash.

The next morning, I already had sore muscles in place
that I didn’t know had muscles. Everyone was sore and tired, everyone got up
early that morning, no one complained, everyone pitched in to strike camp and
get us on our way. After half an hour, my muscles loosened up, and I felt
better. Then Skippy called me. "Hey, Joe."

"Hi, Skippy, What is it?"

"You busy? I want to tell you something I
discovered."

"Not busy at all, Skippy, we're walking, and
we've got a whole day of walking ahead of us. At least it's not raining right
now."

"That'll change, you're going to get rain and
sleet this afternoon."

"Sleet? Crap. I hate this planet."

"Unfortunately, Newark does not yet have a
comment section on Tripadvisor, for you to leave a complaint. So, what I want
to tell you is, I've been running an analysis with Doctor Venkman-"

"Oh, wow." Venkman was an astrophysicist, or
something like that, I'd read her profile and I still wasn't clear on her exact
specialty. "She's been helping you? That's great, Skippy."

"It is decidedly not great, Joe. Having a monkey
looking over my shoulder is a truly ginormous, epic, un-bee-lee-vah-bull, uh,
darn, it there are not words to properly describe how much that is a pain in
the
ass
. You know how annoying it is for me, to try explaining even the
most basic science to your dim monkey brain?"

By now, I wasn't even mildly insulted by that remark.
"Uh huh, yeah? Mostly I tell you not to bother explaining sciency stuff to
me."

"Exactly! That's awesome, I get to yank your
chain, and you don't waste my time with worthless attempts to elevate your
understanding of things way beyond your capability. It's like, you can teach a
dog to shake a paw, sit, lie down, and even roll over, but you would never try
training a dog to do your taxes, or drive a car."

"Although that would be awesome. Except if the
dog was driving, and decided to chase a squirrel with your car."

"Agreed," Skippy chuckled, "anywho,
when I'm talking to you, I don't have to waste time trying to think of a way to
dumb things down enough for you. Hell, I could just make up stuff, and you'd
never know."

"But you don't do that, right?"

"Not as far as you know. With Doctor Venk-"

"Hey! I heard that. Not as far as
I
know?"

"Does it really matter, Joe?"

"I guess not."

"Truthfully, no, I don't make up stuff for you,
it wouldn't be any fun. Now, with a slightly, and I do mean slightly,
infinitesimally slightly smarter monkey like Doctor Venkman, it would be great
fun to make up stuff, because she knows just enough to almost know the
difference, and I'd be kind of laughing my ass off at her."

"But you don't do that either?"

"Not as far as she knows."

"Skippy, come on, our science team came out here
to learn how the universe works, you leading them astray isn't helping. It
isn't fair, either, these people are risking their lives out here."

"Man, you are a total buzzkill. Remind me never
to invite you to a party, Joe. Those dummies on your science team, and, man I
hate to use the word 'science' so loosely, volunteered to come out here. Look,
in a lot of cases, I can't tell your egghead scientists the whole truth,
because such knowledge is too dangerous for monkeys. Not just monkeys, too dangerous
for any species at your level of development. Some of it is too dangerous even
for the Rindhalu, I'm not simply insulting monkeys. This is serious stuff,
Joe."

"Oh."

"Yeah, oh. You dumdum." He paused. "Uh,
what were we talking about?"

Skippy couldn't keep track of a conversation, and he
called me the dumdum? I let it go. "Some kind of analysis you're doing
with Venkman."

"Oh, yeah. Although to say that I'm performing
the analysis with her, is like when you were four years old, and your father
would put you on his lap when he drove the pickup truck, so you could 'help'
him drive. Incidentally, that wasn't the smartest thing to do."

"That old truck doesn't have an airbag, Skippy.
And there's no traffic on the back roads up where I grew up."

"Exactly! What if you hit a moose?"

"Oh my God. Did you ever see a moose, Skippy? You
hit one of those big freakin' things, a children’s carseat isn't much help.
Well, maybe. Whatever. I survived childhood."

"Is that how the brain damage happened?"

"Very funny. No, that's just me."

"My condolences. To your entire species, not just
you. Back to what I was saying, Venkman helping with my analysis, is like
little Joey helping your father drive the truck, it's more hindrance than help.
She is just smart enough to ask a whole lot of stupid questions, whereas you're
too dumb to even ask questions in the first place. That's why I prefer working
with you, Joe."

"Thank you, I think."

"You're welcome," he said, after insulting
me. "Getting back to the point, we ran an analysis. Technically, I ran the
analysis, while she sat in the corner, playing with blocks and eating sticky
Cheerios off the floor."

"Ha!" I had to laugh at that mental image.
"See, I would play with the toy trucks instead. Much more fun than
blocks."

"I'll take your word on that, Joe. The results of
our analysis are intriguing, they are so intriguing, so disturbing, so
inexplicable, that I want us to gather data for further analysis. Someday, I
mean, not right now."

"Skippy, I have no problem with gathering further
data, first you need to get us off this planet. What, uh, is so intriguing? You
find a tiny difference in the concentration of interstellar dust particles
somewhere again?"

"No, you dumbass. What is intriguing is, here, I
need to go back a bit and give you some context."

"Ok, I'm all ears, I won't interrupt you, I
promise." He had good timing, because we had started walking up a long
hill, and I was getting out of breath.

"You remember the star system where I was sure,
or pretty, very certain, I, Ok, yeah, smart guy. Stupid monkey," he
grumbled. "I know you're thinking it, go ahead and say it. Say it! I was
wrong. Wrong! There, you happy now? You big jerkface," he grumbled.

"Skippy?'

"Yeah?"

"I have no freakin' clue," I said, out of
breath, "what you're talking about. We've been to a lot of star systems,
which one is this?"

"Oh. Hmm. Maybe I'm somewhat too sensitive about
the few, the very few times when I am wrong. Hmm, actually, in this case, I
thought I was wrong, but I wasn't. I wasn't! Ha! I was not wrong, I was right
all along."

"So, you were wrong about being wrong?"

"Exactly!"

"Which means you were still wrong, about
something."

"I was- oh, shut up. Do you want to hear my
information or not?"

"I've been trying," I gasped, "to hear
it, if you will please get to the point. Damn, you are absent-minded sometimes.
Your mind wanders so far, I wonder if it’s ever going to come back."

“
Me
? Have you ever heard yourself talk, Joe?
You start a sentence, and halfway through, you’ve changed the subject, verb and
object three times. Half the time you’re talking, by the time you finish, I’ve
lost track of where you started. And you’ve lost track, too.”

“Oh. All right, maybe I’m a little guilty of that,” I
admitted. That wasn’t the first time people had remarked on my scatter-brained
thoughts. “I had an elementary school teacher, Ms. Evans, she tried to diagram
one of my sentances on the white board. I thought her head would explode.
Anyway, back to the subject,
please
.”

"Fine," he huffed. "The star system I
was talking about, is the one where I was very confident we would find an
unmapped Elder site. Extra confident."

"Uh, huh, something about force lines in the
galaxy?"

"Yes! And we didn't find any sign of an Elder
presence, even though I requested the
Dutchman
to fly around the system,
so I could perform an extensive sensor sweep."

"I remember," I said, using as few words as
possible, being out of breath.