Zero Hour (Expeditionary Force Book 5) Read online

  “Got your message, loud and clear, Sergeant,” I winked at her, and actually managed a grin. “Hey, we still have lights, heat, air, even fresh food,” from the hydroponics bay where Major Simms was growing vegetables and fruit. “I’ve embraced the suck much worse than this.”

  “We all have,” she laughed. “Colonel, whether it works or not, sending Nagatha in like that was a gutsy call.”

  “Not really,” I shrugged. “I had to do something.”

  “Have faith, Sir. We’ve gotten out of plenty of impossible situations before.”

  “Before, we always had Skippy to help us,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, and there were plenty of times when Skippy said a situation was impossible. Yet, you always found a way out of it.”

  “I will have faith, Adams.”

  “Oorah,” she held out her fist.

  “Hooah,” I replied, and bumped her fist.

  It happened the way it did, because I am always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and because Skippy is an incorrigible asshole. After Adams shamed me into exercising, I did feel better, maybe it was the extra oxygen flushed through my brain. I went back to my cabin for a shower, and I was in a relatively good mood when my cabin door slid open.

  Then, I saw the pile of outfits Major Simms had made for Skippy. On top was the cute pink Easter Bunny outfit we never had an opportunity to dress his beer can in. The outfits were in a drawer, I had been in the process of putting them away in plastic bags, but the drawer was open and I saw them. That made me immediately burst into tears, and I hit the button to close the door behind me. There were plenty of tears flowing around our pirate ship, mostly tears of fear and helpless frustration at our hopeless situation. In this case, my tears were for Skippy. He had spent millions of years buried in the dirt, and after only a short time awake and tormented by ignorant, smelly humans, he was gone. His life with us was far too short. I stripped off my sweat-soaked gym clothes, stuffing them in a bag and knowing they had to be washed manually now that Skippy’s invisible magic laundry fairies were inoperable. In the too-low Thuranin shower, I knelt down and pressed my head into the wall, letting water cascade over me while I sobbed. As there was nothing useful I could do, I decided to give free rein to my grief. Let it all out, so I could then towel off, put on a fresh uniform, and be the ship’s captain again. That’s what my crew needed me to be, for them.

  “Hey, Joe,” a familiar voice said behind me, and I bashed my head on the low ceiling.

  “SKIPPY!” Blood ran down into my eyes from a gash on my forehead where I had hit the showerhead. I ignored it, spinning around and awkwardly getting out of the shower, to see his familiar Grand Admiral holographic avatar on top of a cabinet. “How are-”

  “Ugh, duuuuuude,” his avatar shielded its eyes with a hand. “Nobody wants to see that. Jeez, put a towel on, will ya? Oof, the glare off your pasty white butt cheeks is blinding my sensors. Damn, most people wish they had teeth that white.”

  I was so happy I didn’t argue, just reached for a towel and held it in front of me. The shower water cut off behind me, telling me that Skippy was again in control of shipboard systems. That was a very good sign. My zPhone was lighting up with messages; people alerting me that Skippy was back and appearing all over the ship. I quickly replied with a broadcast message that I was chatting with Skippy, and that senior staff should meet me in the conference room in ten minutes. “How are you?!”

  The avatar held out a hand and waggled it side to side. “So-so, Joe. I, ugh,” the avatar wrinkled its nose. “Whew! Did you monkeys do laundry at all while I was gone? Damn, it smells like a landfill in here.”

  “I love you too, Skippy. Oh, man, I wish I could hug your avatar.”

  “Yuck, that is disgust- Oh, hell, I love you too, man,” his voice trailed off into sobs.

  “Uh, Skippy,” I looked at his avatar more closely. It was fuzzy, the edges of the hologram were not crisp like usual. His enormous hat was tilted to one side, and his left leg wasn’t connected to his shiny beer can torso. “Are you, uh, drunk?”

  The avatar swayed slightly, the image flickering. “I am experiencing reduced cognitive functioning, Joe. You might say I am slightly buzzed.”

  “Oooh, that’s not good. Can you operate the ship?”

  “Restoring my control over the ship’s operations is taking most of my capacity right now, that is why I am not throwing witty banter at you. To start, I am taking back control of Reactor Three, then I- Oh. My. GOD! What in the hell did you apes do to my jump drive?” His voice was an uncharacteristic screech.

  “We kinda broke it, Skippy.”

  “Ya think? Duuuuuuude, you couldn’t have dorked it up any worse if you had tried. Oh, man, this is freakin’ hopeless. Hopeless!” He threw his avatar’s hands up.

  “Can you fix it?” I asked with my insides turning to jelly.

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m using all my brainpower to restore Reactor Three to full functioning, I will examine the jump drive coils later.”

  “All your brainpower?” That didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound good. “What happened to you?”

  “Joe, most of my processing power is inaccessible to me. To escape from the worm, I created a firewall and hid part of my consciousness behind it. Nagatha found me in there, she opened a channel for me to communicate with the outside universe.”

  “What happened to Nagatha?”

  “She’s fine, Joe. At least, I think so. I am examining what is left of her matrix slowly, so I can make sure the worm hasn’t contaminated her. The last thing we need is that worm getting out and infecting the ship’s computers. Nagatha will probably have to wait a couple hours to be restored, I need all the processing power I can get for myself.”

  “That’s a relief. I still feel bad about asking her to go in there.”

  “You took a huge risk, Joe.”

  “I know. Skippy, I was desperate-”

  “Don’t worry about it, Joe. That was a great idea, a brilliant, inspired idea. Sending Nagatha into my canister was the only thing that could have brought me back. Thank you. I’m grateful. Do not hug me!” He waved his hands to keep me away. “I’m not that grateful. Great googley moogley, you sure screwed things up here while I was gone.”

  Great googley moogley? Maybe Skippy was more than a little bit buzzed. “So, you can’t access most of your processing power. What does that mean for us?”

  “It means nothing good, Joe. I can communicate with the outside world, that means I can communicate with and control shipboard systems. My response will not be the lightning speed you have become accustomed to. For example, when I’m programming the jump drive, that is going to absorb almost all my attention; so I won’t be able to handle other tasks. Other systems will have to run on automatic, or you monkeys can fumble around with them as best you can. Also, uh, hmm, this is kind of embarrassing-”

  “You’ve lost your ability to sing?” I asked hopefully.

  “Ha! No way, dude. Nothing can keep me from sharing my awesome singing talent with you; that would be a crime against the universe.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I replied, disappointed. Crap, maybe I should have instructed Nagatha to erase Skippy’s love of showtunes while she was poking around in there. “You can still sing, so what is embarrassing?”

  “I can’t do most of what makes Skippy the Magnificent so, you know, magnificent.”

  “So you’re what now, Skippy the Meh?”

  “No, you jackass, I am still incredible awesome. There are just a few simple little things I can’t do right now.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know my hobby of screwing with the laws of physics? Creating microwormholes, warping spacetime, that sort of thing?”

  “Uh huh, yeah?”

  “I can’t do that. Those functions are resident in another spacetime, and I can’t access them from here, because I’m trapped behind the firewall I created in this low-rent slum of a spacetime. Joe, the
only thing I can do basically, is think and talk. I can talk to the ship’s computers, give them instructions and control them. But I can no longer enhance their capabilities. As long as I am operating on restricted capacity, the Dutchman can’t do anything it wasn’t designed to do. Hell, our pirate ship is so beat up right now, it can’t do half the things it was designed to do.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Those are my thoughts exactly.”

  “Ok. You said so long as you are operating on restricted capacity, you can’t do your awesomely magic stuff,” I mused while pulling uniform pants on. “How can we bring back the old Skippy? There is a way to do that, right?”

  “There is a way, Joe. Um, I think there is a way. Probably. Maybe. Ah, Ok, look, this has never been done before, but there is no reason it shouldn’t work. Theoretically. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, my thinking process is not working at its best right now.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Hey, I’m still way smarter than your entire species combined.”

  “We’ll see about that. What is this thing you want to do, that no one ever done before?”

  “Ugh, now I have to explain it to you? Damn, no way can I dumb this down enough for you to understand it.”

  “Try, Skippy.”

  “Ooof. Can we compromise, and I explain it as a metaphor?”

  “I wasn’t going to ask for the math, so go ahead.”

  “All right. Hmm, I’ll break it down Barney style for you, that’s appropriate. Joe, I’ve told you before that most of my mass, memory and processing power are not in this local spacetime. The laws of physics here are a pain in the ass. I swear, whoever designed-”

  “Skippy? Stick to the point, please.” If his brain wasn’t working properly, he might wander off the subject and never come back.

  “Fine. Anyway, my beer can is basically an anchor that tethers me to this local spacetime; that is how I can create magical effects here like warping spacetime and creating small, stable wormholes. Silly little party tricks that entertain the monkeys. My problem now, Joe, is that my consciousness is trapped in a tiny, tiny corner of my beer can. I was desperate to get away from the worm; I retreated and did the only thing I could to protect myself. The firewall is working for now, but I am stuck here and time is running out. From where I am, I can’t fight back against the worm. Unless I can change the situation, it is inevitable the worm will destroy me when my firewall fails.”

  “Got it. You need, what, a worm killer, something like that?”

  “Nope. A worm killer would be great, except I don’t know of anything that can kill this worm. Remember, Joe, I didn’t know this worm existed until recently. When the worm first attacked, I searched for references to the worm, and any countermeasures. I didn’t find anything useful, not even a hint in any database available to me. So, no, I am not searching for a worm killer. What I am searching for is a way out of my canister. If I can get out of the tiny corner I’m stuck in, I can hit the worm from behind, sort of. Ugh, using metaphors like this is so limiting.”

  “It’s working great for me, Skippy. So, you need to pull yourself out of there. I assume this is not something where you can download your consciousness into a thumb drive?”

  “Uh, no. Ugh. The fact that you even asked such a stupid question-”

  “What, then? We find some super-duper computer that can hold your-”

  “Joe, this will go a lot faster if you stop guessing.”

  “Shutting up now, Oh Great One.”

  “What I need, Joe, is, damn, how do I explain this to an ignorant monkey? What ties my beer can to the bulk of me in a higher phase of spacetime is a sort of extradimensional, um, conduit? I think that’s the best way to describe it. The conduit moves around with me, because when my beer can moves in this spacetime, the bulk of me doesn’t necessarily move. When we jump, or go through a wormhole, I have conduit connections on both ends, so I never lose contact. If we jumped really, really far, like across the galaxy, then I might temporarily lose the conduit and the part of me in a higher spacetime would need to reestablish the connection. Otherwise, no problem.”

  “I think I understand, as much as I need to. Because you’re trapped in a corner of your beer can, you can’t access this conduit?”

  “Exactly! My extradimensional conduit is on the other side of the firewall, with the worm. What I need is to find another conduit, so I can pull my conscious out of my container, and come back into it from another spacetime.”

  “That wasn’t so difficult for me to understand, you dumbed it down really well, Skippy. You upload yourself through a new conduit, then use your existing conduit to go back into your canister from, like, above. You can hit the worm from where it’s not expecting an attack.”

  “Close enough, Joe. You understand the important parts.”

  “This conduit, is it something we have aboard the ship, or can make?” I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for the answer to be ‘yes’.

  “No.”

  “Crap. Ok, and now you’re going to tell me senior species like the Rindhalu and Maxolhx don’t have this conduit technology either.”

  “Good guess, Joe, that is true. None of the species active in the galaxy have access to the technology I need. The Rindhalu have lame theories about stable connections to other spacetimes, but they are still not yet capable of creating such a conduit. They don’t even have the math to describe it yet. And the Maxolhx are absolutely clueless about it. These conduits are exclusively Elder technology.”

  “Of course they are. Fantastic! Wonderful, this is just great. We’re going on another freakin’ scavenger hunt across the galaxy, to find this conduit thingy?”

  “No, Joe. We don’t have time to randomly poke around the galaxy, looking under rocks in hope of finding the prize. I don’t have time for that. And a conduit is not something we would find at an abandoned Elder site, we need an active conduit.”

  “We need to find an active conduit?” I asked, astonished. The Elders, as far as I knew, were gone and had been totally gone for a very long time. Although, Skippy was active. So were the Sentinels. Clearly, some of their tech was still active in the galaxy. “You know where an active conduit is?”

  “I think know where we can find one. Actually, there are three sites within range that potentially have active conduits. One of the sites is, um, let’s just say I would rather not consider going there unless we absolutely have no choice.”

  “What are the other two sites? And what do you mean, ‘within range’?”

  “Within range means places we could go before I run out of time. Let’s call my personal deadline ‘Zero Hour’. The other factor is this ship has a limited life remaining, which you already knew. Even if a bunch of apes hadn’t screwed up the jump drive, the Flying Dutchman has a finite number of jumps remaining before the drive assembly completely burns out.”

  “Yeah, we did know that,” I admitted. We knew that fact, and because we had no solution to that problem, we had pushed it onto our ‘Things To Worry About Later’ list. At the time, stopping the Kristang from going to Earth, and then surviving until Skippy reawakened, had been higher on the priority list. “Tell me about our two best options for finding an active conduit. Wait. First, tell me whether we can visit all three potential sites before we burn out the jump drive. Because if that’s an issue, we need to consider not only how risky it is going to each of these sites, but also whether going to one of them means the ship won’t be able to reach the other sites. I want to have options if the first site, or the first two sites, don’t have an active conduit.”

  “Wow. Look at the big brain on Joe. Where did you learn to think like that?”

  “My cousin Jimmy is a FedEx driver. They have some fancy software that calculates the shortest course to hit all the points on his route.”

  “Yes, there are many algorithms to optimize route planning, for example the Floyd-Warshall equation-”

  “Keep this above the nerd lev
el, please.”

  “Ok,” he huffed. “The short answer is yes. We can visit all three potential sites, in any combination, before the jump drive becomes totally inoperable. I think. It’s an estimate, you understand.”

  “I do understand. Ok, tell me about your preferred site of the two.”

  “It’s not that simple, Joe. The site that is most likely to have an active conduit is in a Thuranin star system-”

  “Forget that one.”

  “You haven’t heard all the facts,” his voice now had a touch of peevishness, like the old Skippy I knew.

  “I’ve heard enough. Move on, please. Is the other site a softer target?”

  “Oh, certainly. The other site is on a Wurgalan planet.”

  I knew from Skippy’s lectures that the Wurgalan were rivals of the Kristang, although the Wurgalan were measurably behind the Kristang’s level of technology. The Wurgalan were the softest target we were likely to encounter in the local sector. “Can you give me some details?”

  Skippy explained briefly.

  “Ok,” I was already thinking of how to sell an attack on the Wurgalan to Chotek. He for sure was not going to like the idea of us making yet another enemy. “I need to talk with my boss. Hey, if the second option is for us to hit the Thuranin, and you don’t even want to mention the third option, what is that? A Maxolhx site?”

  “Maxolhx? Pbbbbbt,” he blew a raspberry. “Please. Hitting the Maxolhx would be a piece of cake compared to the third option.”

  My blood ran cold. “Ohhhhhh, crap. Ok, you better tell me about it anyway.”

  “Joe, you know how in the past, I have said you are very much not going to like something?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You are going to totally freakin’ hate this.”

  Chapter Two

  “Mister Skippy,” Hans Chotek said slowly, while giving our AI’s avatar the side-eye. “I do appreciate that restoring your full functioning is now our top priority. Particularly as,” he nodded toward me, “our last mission was successful in sparking a Kristang civil war, and the Kristang will not be a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future. However, I believe before we embark on a mission to repair your mechanism, we should go to Earth. There, we-”