SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (5 page)

"Are you learning how all this equipment
works?" I asked the doctors.

"No!" Said Skippy before any of the doctors
could reply. "That would be a huge waste of time, I've told you that. You
don't need clumsy monkeys poking around your insides with crude knives, when
Doctor Skippy can fix everyone up with medical magic. Real medicine, not the
idiot guesswork you monkeys use."

"Yes,” I said, irritated at having this
conversation again. “You have told me that, and I've told you that if, or I
should say when, you find the Collective and leave us, our own doctors need to
be able to use this equipment to care for the crew."

"Never going to happen."

"That is unsat-"

"For crying out loud, stop flapping your jaws for
a minute and listen to me, you might learn something. I doubt it, but miracles
do happen." Skippy sounded peeved, more than usual. "This equipment
relies entirely on nanoscale technology. I'm able to control the nano machines
by the picosecond, and they can move individual atoms around to assemble, or
disassemble, molecules as needed. The equipment was designed to be controlled
by Thuranin cybernetics, through their medical AI. It's a particularly stupid
AI, even you may be able to beat it at chess, wait, what am I saying? No,
that's crazy talk, don't know what I was thinking. It's a limited AI, and the
system architecture doesn't have the capacity for me to load anything useful
into it. It barely has the memory to store details of human anatomy and
physiology. Real physiology, not the ignorant guesses you monkeys have in your
medical journals. Without me controlling and coordinating the nano machines,
the whole system doesn't work. Since your doctors don't have cybernetics, and
Thuranin cybernetics can't be adapted to humans, there is no way you monkeys
can use any of this equipment by yourselves."

"You done?"

"Barely got started, but that's enough
explanation for you."

"Fine. You are, arguably, the most intelligent
being in the galaxy right now. That we know of, right?"

"I am by far the most intelligent being in the
galaxy. It's about time you gave me the respect-"

"Since you are so incredibly smart, then you
should be able to figure something out, for us to have even some limited sort
of control of this medical equipment, at least enough for basic medical care.
Consider it a challenge, Skippy."

"A challenge? Building an escalator to the center
of the galaxy would be a challenge. Teaching monkeys to use real technology?
Impossible." He complained.

"Impress me, Skippy." I knew he couldn't
resist that. "I'll give you mad props if you can do that."

"Great. Fine. You want the impossible. What am I
supposed to do, build a really, really tiny pair of tweezers, so you can move
molecules around by hand? Stupid monkeys. Damn it, I hate my life. I should
have stayed on a dusty shelf in that warehouse."

"Bye, Skippy, have fun." I left him
grumbling behind me.

When I was done in sickbay, including listening to the
two paratroopers apologize for having rendered themselves temporarily combat
ineffective, and me assuring them that accidents happen, I hurried to the
galley for dinner. Tonight's meal was meatloaf or salmon, and I was eager to
get there before all the meatloaf was gone.

There was enough meatloaf, what there wasn't much of
was lively conversation. Everyone was beginning to get bored already with the
routine, the time and vast distances we had to travel had sunk in to people's
minds, and the crew were subdued. That, and the training accident had put a
damper on morale.

"Ugh, this room is totally dead. Why all the
gloomy faces?" Skippy's annoying voice came out of the speaker in the
ceiling.

"It's been a tough week, Skippy," I grumbled
while staring at my plate. The meatloaf had gotten slightly cold, serves me
right for showing up late for dinner, and then spending too much time chatting
instead of eating. It was Ok, it had some strange spice in it that I was trying
to figure- nutmeg. Yes, nutmeg. Not a lot of it, but who puts nutmeg in
meatloaf? Looking across the table at Lt Hendrick's salmon in a maple and
ginger glaze, I was beginning to regret my dinner choice. Tonight's dinner had
been cooked by our US special forces teams, the Rangers and SEALs. "And
we've been cruising in interstellar space, in total darkness, with nothing to
look at. We could all use a change of scenery." Skippy had a point,
though, I needed to do something to boost crew morale. Maybe I should assign
someone to be the ship's morale officer. One of the PowerPoint decks, that I
was supposed to study, probably had some advice about maintaining unit morale.
How did a crew keep up morale on a nuclear missile submarine? Those boomers
were submerged and silent for months at a time. Like us, they didn't have
anything to look at. Unlike them, we had windows.

"I know what your problem is, Colonel Joe,"
Skippy announced, "you need to get laid. Hey, Major Tammy, you should mate
with Joe."

"Skippy!" I almost choked on meatloaf, and
Major Simms, who had just taken a sip of water, spewed it across the table in
front of her. The soldier seated next to her had to pat her on the back, to
keep her from choking.

"What? You're a male, she's a female, and for a
monkey, you don't smell too bad-"

"Stop it!" I shouted. Everyone in the galley
was staring at me.

"Hey, you know you need some sweet lovin' soon,
Joe. Major Tammy, you should have seen the raging boner he had in the shower
this morning-"

Now Simms had gone from shocked to amused, her
shoulders shook as she tried to suppress a laugh. Everyone was now trying not
to look at me, and laughing.

Putting my head in my hands, I banged my forehead on
the table. "Skippy, this is private stuff. You don't talk about it in
public. I am Major Simms' commanding officer."

"What, because you're a colonel, you can't bang
anyone in your command? Like
that
matters way out here. Well, you could
mate with one of the science team. This is good timing, because most the women
are ovulating this week, so they're extra horny-"

I saw all the women's faces register shock.
"Skippy! Shut! The! Hell!
Up
!" I shouted.

"Man, talk about ungrateful. I'm trying to get
you laid, you're sure not doing well on your own. Don't ask me to be your
wingman again."

"I didn't ask! And you're a wing
nut
, not
a wingman." In the future, maybe I needed to consider taking all my meals
in my cabin or my office. "Major Simms, I apologize-"

She shook her head, still trying not to laugh.
"Colonel, we all know Skippy by now, no need to apologize for him."

"Thank you. Everyone, I'd appreciate it if this
stayed between us," meaning the roughly twenty people in the galley.
"And since I know that's not going to happen," I added honestly,
knowing this was way too juicy not to quickly spread throughout the ship,
"keep in mind Skippy said it, I didn't." Dammit, after that I was
never able to look at Major Simms without wondering, you know, what she'd be
like in bed.

I didn't need any more distractions.

Jump, recharge, jump again. It was monotonous, and we
had a long way to go to our first target.  When we left Earth to find Skippy's
magical Elder radio, or whatever the hell it really is, we still had the same
problem that made us go to Earth in the first place. When we raided the
Kristang asteroid research base, we'd found an Elder communications node, the
thing Skippy thought should allow him to contact the Collective. It hadn't. The
stupid thing didn't work, or Skippy didn't know how to make it work, or it
worked fine but there was no Collective to talk to, or it worked, Skippy had
contacted the Collective, and they'd decided he is an asshole and ignored him.
I was betting on that last one.

Since the first comm node didn't satisfy Skippy, he
had wanted to check out the two other sites he knew for certain had intact
Elder comm nodes. The two other sites, I had told him even before we went to
Earth, were impossible for us to raid, forget about it, not going to happen.
The first site was on a heavily populated Thuranin planet. The second was nine
and a half thousand lightyears from Earth, at an installation controlled by a
species with technology superior to the Thuranin. Neither site was remotely
possible for us to raid, even with the
Dutchman
now crewed by bad-ass
special forces. Maybe, maybe, by some combination of luck, Skippy magic and a
random miracle, we might succeed in raiding one site. The odds were heavily in
favor of us failing, our enemies discovering humans had stolen a Thuranin
starship, and Earth becoming the focus of some very pissed off aliens. That was
not an optimal mission outcome.

Before we departed Earth, we, meaning mostly me, had
convinced Skippy to expand his search, beyond places confirmed to have his
precious comm node, to places that were likely to have a comm node. Sites that
were known to have a substantial collection of Elder artifacts, even though the
Thuranin data base Skippy downloaded didn't list a comm node in the inventory,
could very possibly have a comm node; Skippy said that before the Elders
ascended or beamed up or whatever the hell they'd done, comm nodes were
scattered all over the galaxy. Skippy had grumbled about trying to predict the
location of comm nodes being a waste of time, and that such an analysis would
take forever, in this case 'forever' took him seven minutes and twelve seconds
in meatsack time. After completing his analysis, he had admitted that there
were two very promising sites within three thousand lightyears of Earth, that
were much easier and safer to approach, investigate, and if needed, raid.

The first site was another Kristang research base, the
space station that had been abandoned, after a fight between two or more
Kristang factions left it damaged beyond repair. According to the data Skippy
had access to, the space station had held a variety of low-value Elder artifact
and various devices and doodads from higher species that the Kristang there had
been trying to reverse engineer for their clan, without much success. What
Skippy hoped was the
Dutchman
’s sensors could scan the debris field
around the station, and our merry band of pirates could board it to see if one
of his magic radios were there. Since the wormhole shift, that star system had
been ignored by the Kristang, and Skippy thought we wouldn’t find anyone there.
He thought that, anyway.

The second site was going to be a bit tougher for us
to investigate, tough enough that I hoped to find an alternative. The good news
is that it was a known Elder site that had been located by the Maxohlx
themselves, but barely explored by anyone. It was a large site, it had been a
substantial and busy facility back when the Elders were using it, so Skippy was
highly confident we found find a communications node, multiple communications
node, there. The bad news was very bad. First, it was a long distance from
Earth, a journey of four months to get there from our current position. The
journey was longer than it strictly needed to be, because we had to avoid
several wormhole clusters that were heavily used by the Maxohlx. The first part
of the bad news was merely inconvenient. The second part of the bad news was
dangerous, extremely dangerous. When the Maxohlx found the Elder site, they had
not been looking for nice toys like communications nodes. They had been looking
for weapons, Elder weapons. Devices the Elders may not have built as weapons,
devices that could be used for incredible destructive effect. Devices, that,
according to Skippy, could make stars explode. And exploding a star was a simple
trick, compared to some of the technology the Elders routinely used.

At the time the Maxohlx found that Elder site, and its
massive destructive potential, they already had a substantial arsenal of Elder
devices that could be used as weapons against the Rindhalu. According to
Skippy's admittedly foggy memories, the Rindhalu discovered that the Maxohlx
planned to attack them, and forced their hand. The Maxohlx had to accelerate
their plans, and launched the attack before they were completely ready. The Rindhalu
hit back with their own stock of Elder weapons, and a war raged for a brief
period, before Sentinels detected the use of Elder weapons, and struck at both
sides. The Sentinels, intelligent monitors left behind by the Elders to prevent
unauthorized use of Elder technology by younger species, did not care that the Maxohlx
had fired first. They did not even seem to care where in the galaxy Elder
weapons had been used; Maxohlx and Rindhalu star systems far from the fighting
were hit by Sentinels, with devastating effect. The purpose of the Sentinels
seemed to be to destroy star-faring civilizations; civilizations capable of
abusing Elder technology, whether they had acquired such technology or not.
Both the Maxohlx and the Rindhalu feared extinction, so powerful and relentless
were the Sentinels. Then, suddenly, for no known reason, the Sentinel attack
halted, and the Sentinels disappeared and went dormant. Sleeping, again, but
always watchful.

Since that time, the shocked Maxohlx and Rindhalu had
held their Elder weapons in reserve, and continued their long war through
proxies such as the Thuranin and Jeraptha, who had proxies of their own. And
the Elder site that the Maxohlx had been exploring at the time the Sentinels
struck had been off limits to everyone, by general agreement. Skippy thought
that, since he was built by the Elders, he could get us there without being
detected by the extensive web of sensors left by the Maxohlx. His plan sucked;
after a four month journey to get close to the site, we would fly in normal
space for another six months, sneaking up on the target by crawling slowly
along. The Flying Dutchman could not slow down much, as firing the engines
would risk detection, so we would need to fly across the final distance to the
target in dropships. Landing teams would spend almost a month in dropships,
under Skippy's crappy plan. After we located and picked up a communications
node, the landing teams would fly back to the
Dutchman
, and the ship
would continue traveling silently through normal space for another four months,
before we could risk a jump. Skippy's plan sucked. He wanted us to commit to a
fourteen month voyage, into an area of space that was closely monitored by both
the Maxohlx and Elder Sentinels, because he thought we had a good chance of
finding a comm node. I hated his plan, I told him that. I also did not have an
alternative plan.