Black Ops (Expeditionary Force, #4)

by Craig Alanson

“I wasn’t trying to pep you up. This is your problem. Joe, out here, those fancy silver eagles on your uniform really don’t mean shit. The Merry Band of Pirates is the most elite military force humanity has ever assembled, and they don’t follow you because UNEF Command says they have to. People like Major Smythe follow you because they have confidence in your ability; confidence gained from experience. The Special Operations people have seen you lead them to succeed against impossible odds, over and over and over. Joe,” he sighed, “much as it pains me to say this, I’ll do it. You are an outstanding commander; brave, determined and inventive. You have been kicking alien ass up and down the Orion Arm. If someone were offering odds of this single ship and crew against the entire galaxy, I would put my money on the Merry Band of Pirates.”

When it was the American team’s turn to show a movie, at first we picked old comedies like Independence Day, Battle: Los Angeles, War of the Worlds, etc. Oh, you don’t think those films are comedies? To the Merry Band of Pirates, any of those plucky-band-of-humans-defeat-alien-invasion-using-guts-and-rifles movies are freakin’ hilarious Hollywood bullshit.

“Ok, I did. In my defense, I am scared out of my mind.”

“You haven’t heard the scary part yet, Joe. The worm should have killed me, rendered me inert, whatever you want to call it. It locked up my conscious mind in a loop so I was not aware of anything, not even of time passing. I was helpless; it could have taken me apart and erased me, like it erased the AI that used to occupy that canister. The only reason I survived, Joe, was that I had sort of antibodies to fight the worm. At some point in my past, I must have encountered a worm like that before, although I probably had outside help to fight it back then. During that fight, long ago, I built antibodies to destroy that worm, and those antibodies have been waiting inside me all this time. My conscious memories have no record of that first incident, I didn’t even know they existed, but now I estimate these antibodies make up almost two and a half percent of my memory. That is a huge amount of my capacity. When this worm attacked me, my antibody subroutines protected me, firewalled off my consciousness, and attacked the worm.”

“Huh? What? Why would I- Joe, I am totally justified in disparaging your intelligence. What do you mean, how do I know I am an Elder AI? I have capabilities far beyond those of the Rindhalu or Maxolhx. My memories contain data only available to the Elder. Duh.” He wasn’t getting away that easily. “How do you know those are your memories?” “Oh, man, you are- Huh. Hmmm. The monkey may have a point there,” he added under his breath. “Shit. Now you’ve given me another thing to worry about.

Before going back to my office, I stopped by a supply cabinet and requisitioned a particular item, then went to visit Skippy in his escape pod mancave. “Hello, Skippy.” “Hi, Joe. Hey, what, what is that?” I pulled a foil package out of a pocket and tore it open; it was something I had gotten from the Supply cargo bay. “Is that a rubber?” He shouted. “In your case, Skippy, it’s a CAN-dom,” I said with a grin. “Oh, very funny, Joe. You’d better not- Hey!” He screamed as I stretched it over his lid. “Get that off of me!” “You scared people when you faked that air leak in Cargo Bay Six. That was a dick move, Skippy. You were being a dick, and this is what goes on a di-” “NOT FUNNY!” I stepped back. His new costume wasn’t as cute as some others, and I only put it in halfway, so the other half with the tip flopped down in front of him. “I don’t know,” I laughed so hard I almost blew a snot bubble on the deck. “It’s funny to me.” “Ooooh, you better get this off of me RIGHT NOW!” “If you want to be a dick, this is what you wear.”

“Oh, shit,” Skippy groaned. “Did I ruin that for you? I’m sorry, Joe, I didn’t mean to- hey, wait! You’re laughing. You jerk! You already knew about Santa!”

“I don’t blame you for attempting to manipulate me,” he stated simply. “If you do it in the future, I have a suggestion for you.” “What’s that, Sir?” “Don’t be so obvious about it.”

“Your thinking is totally the opposite of logical and linear, your thought processes bounce around randomly like a marble in a freakin’ blender. You ricochet from one ‘duuuuh’ to another until you, by some gosh-darned certified miracle, hit on a creative solution. Makes me totally hate the freakin’ universe. It is so unfair.” “Oh. Huh. So, what you’re saying is that I’m smarter than you. Thanks, Skippy.” “WHAT? I did not say you are smarter than me, you ignorant monkey. You should-” “Why can’t you think the way us humans do? If your brain is so ginormously awesome, why can’t you, like, reprogram yourself, or a submind or something, to think in a nonlinear fashion?” Nonlinear is a buzzword I remembered from a PowerPoint slide, I was quite proud of myself for digging that out my memory. “I can’t. That’s why. I just can’t. If I could, believe me, I would. It is totally humiliating to me, that you can do something I can’t.” “That didn’t answer my question, Skippy. Why can’t you reprogram yourself? Building a submind that, like, generates random thoughts, would not even be in the top million of amazing things you have done.”

Many of my capabilities, which I am still discovering, appear to be recent, or I have only recently been able to exercise control over these capabilities. Recent in my timeline, not in meatsack time. It is appearing more and more that I was designed for a specific function, and my creators wish me not to stray far from their intended purpose.”

“Joey, Joey, Joey.” The avatar shook its head. “We have a troop of ignorant monkeys and an absent-minded beer can against an entire galaxy of hostile aliens. Impossible doesn’t begin to describe this quest.”

“Thank you, Skippy.” “No need to thank me, Major Smythe. If you were scared, that was my fault. I should have considered how the information might be perceived. Although I will deny it if you tell anyone, I am rather fond of you backwards humans, particularly those like yourself who have reached the peak of your profession by hard work and dedication.”

The Zingers, if their tiny brains had been capable of talking to each other, probably would have said something like ‘Dude I am sooooo bored flying around this stupid water tower. I’m a missile, damn it, I want to KILL something’. Not being able to think on that level, the missiles quietly and mindlessly orbited the water tank, waiting eagerly for their moment of glory.

This is what I love about Joe's descriptions xD

“Skippy! Did you jump the gun?” “Oh, uh, yeah. Basically, a very nice Kristang was holding the door open for us, and I had to act before we lost the opportunity. Sorry there wasn’t time to inform you.” “A very nice Kristang?” Smythe was taken aback by that unlikely concept. “Uh huh, I would give him a fruit basket as a thank you, except he got splattered by a Mach three shock wave. I do feel bad about that, but, what the hell, right?

“I got a joke.” Jones announced after a minute. He knew keeping himself alert was important, until he could truly rest. “Two guys in an English pub, one says ‘From your accent I guess you are Irish’. Second guy says, ‘Yes, from Dublin’. ‘Me too!’ first guy says. ‘I was raised in Drimnagh, went to St. Mary’s school’. ‘Drimnagh? St. Mary’s?’ Second guy can’t believe it. ‘I graduated from St. Mary’s in 1982’. First guy slaps his forehead. ‘Faith and begorah. I graduated from St. Mary’s in 1982 also!’ Bartender says,” Jones paused for breath, “he says to himself ‘This is going to be a long night. The Murphy twins are drunk again’.”

“That a worm has been inside me the whole time, and is only now active. I mentioned the possibility that the worm is a safety mechanism created by the Elders, to protect the galaxy from AIs who go rogue. Maybe the Elders built a worm into my matrix. In that case, all Elder AIs have worms inside them.”

“Oh, several. The most dangerous is a sort of large armored crocodile, they can get to be over ten meters long. Hmmm. There’s one of them in the river near you now. Uh, hmm. It’s headed in your direction.” “Can you stop it?” “Uh, no, duh. How can I hack a crocodile? They have a brain the size of a walnut.”

“How are you, Major?” Reed called from the cockpit. “Let me think,” Smythe said as he breathed in air that had not been scrubbed by his suit’s filters. Even the whiff of stink coming from his suit didn’t make breathing unfiltered air any less sweet. “We parachuted into an alien city, dropped missiles off a roof, fell down an elevator shaft, played cop, stole a lorry, got flushed down a sewer and then chased up a tree by a monster. On Earth that would be remarkable, but for the Merry Band of Pirates,” he shrugged, “we call that ‘Tuesday’.”

“Sir,” Desai turned in the copilot seat to look at the Flying Dutchman’s current commanding officer. “Space combat is complicated for certain, but the problem out here is that everything we do is extraordinarily complicated. I don’t think Colonel Bishop and Skippy could make toast without a fourteen step plan that involves us warping spacetime, and hacking into alien computer systems.” Chang laughed. “And carving up asteroids, don’t forget about that. Maybe it is just the Merry Band of Pirates that makes everything horribly complicated,”

Colonel Chang, I hope you and your valiant crew do not take this as an insult; but the clumsy way in which the Dutchman maneuvered during the battle, and our poor weapons targeting convinced the cruiser that we must be a Kristang vessel.” In spite of the circumstances, Chang gave a snort of amusement. “Our backward level of development worked in our favor for once? I will not argue with that.”

“Sure, Joe. They already tried jiggling the handle, but that didn’t work,” his voice dripped with sarcasm. “So I downloaded a YouTube video of a guy named Skeeter who says he fixes Thuranin reactors in his barn. No, I can’t do that, you moron! How am I supposed to walk a gang of monkeys through fixing technology they don’t understand? I’ll transmit a data package that will tell the flight computer to complete a safe shutdown of Reactor Two. Now, if you’ll give your crumb catcher a rest for a minute, I’m trying to scan through data from the onboard sensors to assess the damage. Oh, in the message was a note from Colonel Chang, apologizing that he broke your ship.” “Tell him that I said he is the reason we can’t ever have nice things.

“Well, that depends. The Black Trees did just receive a message, in the form of a terawatt orbital maser barrage. Oh, and that is soooo thoughtful of them. The Fire Dragons are following up their initial heartwarming message with railguns and hyperspeed missiles. They care enough to send the very best.” “No fruit basket?” “This is not really a Hallmark moment, Joe,” Skippy chuckled. “Whoa! The Black Trees just retaliated, there is a whole lot of directed energy and hardware flying around up there. Better bring an umbrella if you go outside, Joe. It is raining railgun impactors.”

“Oh, for sure, Joe. It has been an action-packed smash, the feel-bad movie of the year! For the Kristang, I mean. It could use a bit of comic relief, but otherwise this is certain to be a hundred percent ‘Fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes.”

“Joe, your species has absolutely nothing going in your favor. You are primitive, your brains are tiny, the best of you would lose unarmed combat against a Ruhar teenager. Based on extensive conversations I’ve had with your species over the internet, you might possibly be THE most ignorant species ever to be considered sentient-” “Whoohoo!” I exulted. “We’re number one, baby!” “That is not something to boast about, Joey. Anyway, although your species does appear to have nothing, zero, zilch, zippy going for it-” “This is your idea of praise?” “Wait for it, waaaaait for it. Although you monkeys have every disadvantage, the Merry Band of Pirates has been remarkably successful out here, and it is not all due a magical talking beer can. Major Smythe’s teams parachuted into a heavily populated alien city, conducted a successful attack, and overcame serious obstacles to return without the Kristang having any idea humans were ever there. The Flying Dutchman ran into an unexpectedly tough opponent, and still accomplished the mission though a combination of determination and cleverness. You monkeys have been crushing it out here, Joe. And I’m proud to be part of this crew.” “Holy crap. You’re serious?” “Yeah, like I would ask to be considered an honorary ape if I wasn’t serious about it. Come on, Joe, I thought we were having a moment here.”

“I called you smelly and stupid, that’s not enough?” “Yet still you want to be one of us, on an honorary basis?” “Joe, it is inevitable that someday, the apex species of this galaxy are going to find out that a single pirate ship of hairless baboons has been flying around, making utter fools of them. When that happens, and the haughty Rindhalu and Maxolhx are tearing their, uh, hair equivalent out, I totally want to be part of it,” he chuckled with delight. “Oh, man, I would LOVE to see their arrogant faces, when they find out they got totally played by a troop of monkeys.” “You got it, Skippy.” I held out a fist and his avatar bumped it solemnly.

“Deal!” Skippy shouted before I could change my mind. “We’ll start with ‘Manimal’, that’s widely considered the gold standard of ‘80s crappiness. Then we’ll work our way up to ‘Alf’. Although, hmmm, ‘Alf’ is about a super-smart alien stuck living with a group of ignorant humans, that scenario is just not believable. Hey, if you piss me off, I’ll make you sit through every episode of ‘The Love Boat’. The director’s cut. With commentary.” “Oh, crap. Am I going to regret this?” “Joe, after you finish watching the first season of ‘Knight Rider’, you will be praying for death.”

“The worm is becoming a bit more of a problem.” “A bit?” Talking so quietly made me feel like a ventriloquist, although the dummy was me. “We are in the middle of a rescue mission, Skippy. This is very bad timing.” Someone called from behind me, I waved a hand for quiet. “I know and I’m sorry about that, Joe. I’m telling you because you need to know. Well, you keep telling me you need to know, although there’s nothing you can do about it, so this conversation is really a whole lot of blah, blah, blah.”

“I wish I could, Joe. I am in some amount of trouble, I can’t quantify it at present. The worm was in a dead-end and I was studying it, that’s where my focus was. While I was doing my party trick with the Kristang targeting systems, I wasn’t paying much attention to my subsidiary internal systems. That is when the worm struck; it was waiting for me to take my attention away from my internal functioning. What I had trapped was only a copy of the worm, a ghost. I was stupid and arrogant and now I’m paying the price. You may pay the price with me, I’m sorry about that. The real worm was hiding and studying me, to learn how I operate, to learn my weaknesses. I am vulnerable now.”

“We do have a Plan B to get back to the ship, Sir,” I assured him. “Sometimes I wonder why the Merry Band of Pirates ever bothers to create a Plan A,” he replied with unexpected humor. “Because that gives us a basis for a Plan B?”