SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) (20 page)

The missile symbols on the display, seven of them,
were coming in fast. Two of the symbols disappeared as I watched, destroyed by
our ship's point defense particle beams. The other five missiles continued
toward us, fast, fuzzing our sensors with their stealth fields and weaving as
they bored in. One more missile destroyed. Four still moving fast.

Jump drive at 40%.

Too close.

I turned the knob to release the plastic cover over
the self-destruct button, and turned to look through the glass wall into the
CIC compartment. "Colonel Chang."

He nodded, and I saw him flip back the cover to the
other self-destruct button, the confirmation. "Sir." He looked me
straight in the eye, and saluted.

I returned the salute. "Colonel Chang, we have
been down a long, strange road together. It's been an honor serving with
you." My left thumb hovered over the self-destruct button. The ship was
dying anyway. This was my fault. How the hell had I gotten us into this mess?

The ship rocked again from another sizzling particle
beam hit.

"Skippy," I said, "I'm sorry. Good luck
to-"

Skippy interrupted me. "Jump option Delta, do it
now."

Jump drive still at only 40%, I didn't argue.
"Pilot, engage jump option Delta."

Never before had I seen or felt a jump. Something had
gone very, very wrong with this jump, the ship seemed to ripple and distort in
my vision, it almost went transparent for a split second, and I had a flash of
stomach-wrenching nausea. In the CIC, I could see one guy wiping his mouth
after puking on the console. He hadn't lost focus for a moment.

"Skippy, what the hell was that?"

"I calculated at least one of those missiles was
going to slip through our defenses, and our shields can't make a direct hit, so
we jumped early. And I distorted spacetime to throw us off our original
emergence point, that was, I'll leave out the details, it was, let's just say
it was very bad for the jump drive. The good news is the Thuranin will be
delayed finding us again. I think."

"Long enough to recalibrate the jump drive, so we
can get out of here for real?"

"No, long enough for plan B. Joe, I need you to
come get me and bring me to the
Flower
, don't argue, we can talk along
the way. Let's go."

Pulling the latch on the seat belt open, I dashed
around the chair, and barely paused long enough to tell Chang he had the conn,
before I ran into the corridor and bounced off the opposite wall. The low
gravity made me clumsy, there were more bumps and scrapes before I reached the
escape pod where we kept Skippy. He was sitting right where I'd left him, of
course, being unable to move on his own. We kept Skippy there so that, if we
had to self-destruct the ship, he would have a chance to get away before the
nuke exploded. Hopefully some enemy ship would be curious enough to take the
escape pod aboard their ship. In addition to Skippy, the escape pod held the
communications node we'd taken from the Kristang research base, the comm node
was there as bait. Any ship scanning the escape pod would identify the comm
node as a valuable Elder device, even if they didn't know what Skippy truly
was. "Hi, Skippy," I said as I pulled him out of the crude receptacle
we'd built for him. Although Skippy could talk with me, and see me, anywhere on
the ship, I made a point to stop by the escape pod once a day to check on him.
he made jokes about a monkey smelling up the escape pod, but I think he
appreciated my effort. "What's the plan?" I asked as I tucked him
under one arm like a football and ran back down the corridor to the tram that
ran down the
Dutchman's
spine.

"The plan is," he explained as I stepped
into the tram and held on tightly, "you get me into the
Flower
and
set the navigation system and jump drive on a timer, then you get back
here."

"Wha-whoa." The tram took off at jackrabbit
speed, I didn't know it could move that fast. "Ow!" I lost my grip on
the handrail, and fell back to whack my head on the door frame, hard enough to
draw blood. "Crap, Skippy, warn me when you do something like that. You
want to get further away before I blow up the
Dutchman
?"

"No, dumdum, I'm trying to avoid you having to
blow up your ship at all. You monkeys are dumb as a stump, and you smell bad
but I've become fond of you, damn it, now that I've got you out here I feel
responsible for you, like a smelly stray dog you find on the side of a road.
You can't leave it there, and then you're stuck with it."

"How is you running away supposed to help us,
genius? Without you with us, we'll never get the jump drive recalibrated, and
that destroyer squadron will be on us again in a heartbeat."

"Oh yee of little faith, Joe, you should be
ashamed of yourself. I loaded a submind in the Thuranin computer to recalibrate
the jump drive and run the ship's systems, the submind is almost as dumb as
you, because I wasn't able to squeeze anything useful into the crappy Thuranin
memory banks. It'll be good enough for what you need. Joe, if this works, the
Thuranin will chase the
Flower
, and the
Flying
Dutchman
has at least a chance to escape." The tram lurched to a stop and the door
slid open. "Get in the elevator and hang on, it's going to be a fast
ride."

"How do you figure we can get away?"

"Simple Skippy magic. I'll program the
Flower's
autopilot to detach, fly away at maximum burn and perform a series of jumps.
You set the autopilot on a timer for me, then you get back aboard the
Dutchman
.
We'll jump at the same time, in different directions, and just before you jump
away, I'll distort spacetime to throw you much further away than your drive can
pull you with those degraded coils. The distortion will also make it more
difficult for the Thuranin to detect the other end of your jump point. You've
seen me distort spacetime before, what you haven't seen is that I can distort
the fabric of space much more severely if I'm not inside the distortion field,
so when I do it from outside the
Dutchman
, the effect will be magnified.
Also, I will modify the
Flower's
jump signature to match the
Dutchman,
and make my outbound jump point stay open longer than usual, the Thuranin will
likely detect that first, and hopefully follow me instead of you. Joe, I'm not
going to lie, the odds are against you escaping from the Thuranin without me,
that's still better than you blowing up the ship."

The elevator was slowing and it approached the
platform where the
Flower
rested, I assumed Skippy was already getting
the frigate warmed up for flight. "Any chance is better than zero chance.
What's going to happen to you?"

"I expect the Thuranin will trap the
Flower
in a damping field after a few jumps, and either they'll blow up the ship, or
it will be destroyed by trying to jump inside the field."

"That's no good, Skippy." He needed to work
on his planning. "You'll survive, sure, to, what, drift in space
forever?" The elevator stopped, the door opened and I stepped aboard the
Flower
.

"Unless the Thuranin take time to scan the debris
field and find me, and decide to take me aboard. It's not any worse than me
getting flung away in an escape pod, right before you nuke the
Dutchman
,
so although it sucks, there's really no additional downside for me."

I stopped walking. "Yeah there is. Your plan
sucks, Skippy." I turned around set him down on the floor of the elevator.
Although when the elevator moved, he was going to fall on his side and roll
around like a beer can, he would be safe.

"What are you doing, you dumb ape, we don't have
time for this!" Skippy shouted.

"What I'm doing is plan C. I will stay aboard the
Flower
and let the Thuranin chase me, you do the rest of the stuff you
said; distorting the wormhole, making the
Flower's
drive signature look
like the
Dutchman'
s, all that. You get my crew away from here." I
knew enough of the
Flower's
flight control systems to manage a short
flight with pre-programmed jumps, and a short flight was all it was going to
be.

"Plan C is a stupid plan! Here's how you
automatically know it's stupid; a monkey thought of it."

"Skippy," I took a deep breath to collect my
thoughts, we didn't have a lot of time. "I'm not going to let you drift in
space until the end of time, you've had enough loneliness for a thousand
lifetimes. We humans owe you, big time, more than we can ever repay. And, damn
it you little shithead, you're my, I can't believe I'm saying this, you're my
friend." I hit the button to send the elevator back down.

"Wait!" The elevator door froze halfway
closed. "Wait wait! Joe, you're going to do this, for me?"

"Somebody has to, Skippy, and I'm the one here
right now." I hit the button again and the door slid an inch more toward
closing. "Take care of my ship."

"Wait! Joe, I," his voice faded. "You
know my memories aren't complete. I
know
they're not complete. Maybe
they're not even real. But, I'm pretty sure that I never had a friend before.
Never thought my first real friend would be a freakin’ monkey," he
finished with a disgusted grumble. "No, you know what? To hell with this.
SCREW! THIS!” His voice was loud enough to hurt my ears. “Bring me back to the
Dutchman's
bridge, I'm going to find us a way out of this. Time for me to use this
ginormous damn brain I have. Joe, come on, move, I'm going silent for a bit.
Please trust me."

Whatever Skippy was doing in there, and in whatever
other spacetimes he occupied, the beer can was growing uncomfortably warm to
the touch, I had to shift him from one hand to the other as I carried him back
to the bridge

Everyone stared at me in shock. With a glance, I took
in what I needed to know of our status; the jump drive held only a twenty eight
percent charge, the process of calibrating the remaining jump drive coils was
only thirty one percent complete, but there were no other ships in detection
range.

"What happened?" Chang asked, while
unbuckling from the command chair.

"Skippy has a new plan. Right, Skippy?" I
set him in the receptacle we'd attached to the floor of the bridge, in a
cramped corner. "A better plan," I said as I buckled into the command
chair. "Skippy? Skippy? Come on, Skippy."

"I didn't say it was a better plan. It's a
different plan. It's too late now for my original plan, thanks to you,
Joe."

“What was Mr. Skippy’s original plan?” Chang demanded.
He was standing next to the command chair, someone else had taken his station
in the CIC.

“I was going to heroically sacrifice myself for you
lesser beings," Skippy explained. "Joe stopped me, because I would be
an incalculable loss to the galaxy.”

“Yeah, that’s why,” I snorted. “That, and the fact it
was a stupid plan.”

“It wasn’t stupid! You had a twelve percent chance to
escape!”

“Is that twelve, Skippy, or ‘meh’ twelve?”

“Eleven point five six four nine two, roughly. Close
enough. Ok, that may have been somewhat optimistic. But at least seven percent,
for sure.”

"Yeah, I figured that. Tell you your new genius
plan."

"That's the thing, Joe, I don't have a genius
plan. I searched for records of ships that had escaped from similar situations,
and there were none. Then I used my incredible brainpower to dream up a genius
plan. And I got nothing. Nothing! No matter how I approached the situation, no
matter how many variables I plugged in, I couldn't come up with any smart way
out of this. So, I realized what we need is a stupid plan. And I have a stupid
plan. Joe, even a monkey will think this plan is stupid. If this plan works,
the
Dutchman
can escape."

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“The
Dutchman
will be incinerated.”

“That’s not great.”

“Hey, if this plan fails, you monkeys will simply be
dead. I’ll be trapped in the core of a dying star for trillions and trillions
of years.”

“Oh, hey, bonus. Why didn’t you say that first? Sign
me up. What are the odds of this plan succeeding?”

“Meh, probably somewhere south of fifty-fifty, maybe?
I truly do not know. Nothing this stupid has ever been tried before in this
galaxy. It’s kind of exciting.”

“This stupid? Like, rednecks-on-TV stupid?” I asked.

"Nothing is as stupid as that, Joe, but for an AI
like me, this approaches hold-my-beer-watch-this stupid.”

I shook my head. “Skippy, you need to do a better job
selling your ideas.”

“Selling? Think about this, Joe, this could be your
one big chance to achieve Florida man status.”

“Florida?” I asked, puzzled, “I’m from Maine,
dumbass.”

“No,” he said with an exasperated sigh, “I mean the
classic Florida Man, like in the headlines. You know, ‘Florida man eaten by pet
alligator’, or “Florida man, drunk, crashes car into police station’, or
‘Florida man, naked, runs-”

“We get the idea, Skippy. Fine, what are our odds
without this plan?”