War Dog Read online

  “Your logic is faultless. You also appear to have a degree of humility. This too is a positive.”

  “Humility?”

  The little grey otter did that nose thing again.

  “Perhaps I used the wrong word. You are, undoubtedly, one of the finest leaders in your Federation as witnessed by your personal command of the fleet with the largest number of ships in your solar system. Your aptitude scores were among the best in the history of your command academy. Both your peers and your instructors have consistently given you the highest ratings. I confirmed these facts prior to cloning you.

  “In light of this information, to use the phrase, ‘just a military man’ would indicate a certain degree of self-depreciation commonly referred to as humility… is it not?”

  “About that whole fleet thing,” I started to say before the last part of what the Archon said registered completely. I paused as my mind digested the implications.

  “Did I hear you right… you’ve made a copy of me?” I said bewildered. “Why in God’s green Earth would you do that? Where is this clone and what are you going to do with it?”

  “Commodore, you misunderstand. You are the copy… as is your spouse. We will be gone for an extended period of time and your disappearance would raise questions that would be better if they did not get asked”

  “And if Lori and I decide not to go with you? What then?”

  “I calculated a 98.942 percent chance that you would agree to go with me as our military advisor before I began the replication process.”

  “I see… you somehow calculated that there was only one chance in a hundred that I’d say no.” Let me state for the record, I hate being manipulated. This alien otter was pressing some buttons on my psyche that were best left un-pressed.

  “Technically one point zero-five-eight,” the otter corrected.

  I started to get really pissed off but then I realized the little bugger had me. As much as I hate being manipulated… I hated it more when the manipulator succeeded. There was no way I was backing out of this.

  There were three factors that made saying no just about impossible. First, this was a chance to go where no man had gone before. Second, there was some seriously neat tech here. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I wasn’t sure I could walk away from the genocide that was going on. I had always been the ‘anti-bully’ in school. It was just part of the way I was wired.

  Mitty twitched his nose and opened the previously sealed door he was standing next too. He had obviously determined I had accepted my fate. Did I mention the little bugger was pissing me off?

  ***

  The Gilboa, named in honor of the race that had sacrificed their last soul towards the defense of the Galactic Order, was a big ship. It dwarfed the combined mass of the entire Terran fleet. That said, it was a mess.

  It seemed the, as yet unidentified nefarious enemy, had taken umbrage to her mission to scout for races that could assist in the defense of the Galactic Order. The ship’s entire crew had been killed during the battle that had ensued.

  The ship’s AI, Mitty, had managed to activate the ship’s FTL drive at the last possible second. Sadly, critical components had failed just after emergence from an artificial Einstein-Rosen bridge. This presented us with a problem. How do you fix a ship this big without spare parts?

  Fortunately, I knew of a guy who ran the biggest starship boneyard in the Terran system. I also knew of some of the best retired engineers ever to walk the decks of a starship. The question was how to recruit them?

  I wasn’t a fan of the kidnap and clone approach used by the Archon AI. He and I argued for the better part of a day about it before I simply crossed my arms and refused to discuss the matter further. I learned a very valuable lesson. AI’s can get pissed off too. That said, Mitty finally relented. I was allowed to make direct contact and discuss the situation with several key individuals.

  Lori spent her time, while Mitty and I were having our little spat, checking out and reconfiguring the ship’s larger med bay. As expected, the Galactic Order’s medical tech was nothing to sneeze at. Lori’s discoveries ended up providing me some incentives for the team I was hoping to recruit.

  ***

  My first acquisition was an old codger named Whiskers McGraw. Whiskers was about as good an engineer as they ever made. He was flirting with the high side of ninety but between rejuv treatments and living in a low gravity environment so far away from the sun… he could have passed for a man twenty-years younger.

  Many times, when ships would come into the boneyard, they would be deader than a doornail. We’d tow them to where we needed them to be… if we had to. I always preferred to park them with at least minimally working reaction or VASMR drives because it made keeping them where they were supposed to be that much easier. Commander William McGraw (ret) was my go-to guy for getting most of these derelicts semi-operational.

  To my way of thinking, they broke the mold after they made him. He forgot, on a daily basis, more engineering stuff than most people learned in a lifetime. He could listen to a fusion core and tell you which induction points were most likely to fail next. If there was anybody alive who was going to get the Gilboa flying again at FTL speeds… it was Whiskers.

  Mitty had given me a three-hour block of instruction on how to use the Gilboa’s communication hardware. I put the training to good use as I reached out to my buddy. It was Friday night, so I knew Whiskers would be at the card table teaching the youngsters, as he liked to call us, how to lose money to an old engineer.

  “Whiskers, ya got your ears on buddy?”

  A few seconds later a familiar voice responded, “I got ya five by five. What’s up Commodore?”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t say over an open line. Any chance you’d be willing to look at a derelict and give it some of your tender loving care? It’s a bit of a special challenge.”

  “I’ll need another ten or fifteen minutes to finish learn’n these youngsters the meaning of humility, then I’m all yours.”

  “Funny you should mention ‘humility’… I have someone for you to meet that is a big fan of humility. Meet me at zone sixteen and I’ll show you what I’m interested in having you take a look at.”

  Chapter 3: Some Dogs have all the luck…

  “I gotta hand it to ya, Commodore. When you said, ‘special challenge’, alien hardware is not the first thing that came to mind. How’d you find this thing?”

  “It found me. I woke up on this thing three days ago. There’s an AI that runs the ship. It seems there is a war going on and they need our help. The other side is engaging in complete and absolute genocide… and not just of an isolated population center but of entire species.”

  Whiskers shook his head. “Sonny, what you’re saying done’a track with reality. I spoke with you, in person, not four hours ago. You was going on about how this was your anniversary and how you wished you could patch things up with the old lady. If yer mistaken about the one, how can I trust ya about the other?”

  Lori chose that moment to walk into the engineering compartment I had been showing the Commander.

  “Old lady?” She said with a smile on her face. Whiskers was practically an uncle to her. The engineer had worked closely with her father for almost her entire life.

  “Missy! Good gravy. Sonny brought you all the way out here and didn’t say a word to me. It’s enough to hurt a man’s feelings… it is.”

  “About that,” I said carefully. “Neither Lori nor I are actually here. Well we are here… but we are not actually ourselves. Well, we are ourselves but not the ‘ourselves’ you think we are.”

  “It’s confusing,” Lori added. “The easiest way to say it is…”

  “We’re clones,” I blurted out.

  Whiskers rubbed his chin. “Cloning is illegal.”

  “Tell that to the Archon,” I said. “It’s not like he asked our permission before he did it.”

  “So, the Dog I had lunch with…”

  “
…is the real Commodore Riker,” I confirmed. “He doesn’t even know he’s been cloned. The same is true for Lori.”

  Whiskers whistled. “Ya don’t say. And me… are ya planning to clone me too?”

  “Absolutely not! Mitty and I had quite an argument about the ethics of what he did to Lori and me. We have all the memories and feelings of our originals but no way to step back into our lives. I convinced him…”

  Lori snorted.

  “OK, I demanded that we recruit people the old-fashioned way. We ask them to join us.”

  “So, you’re asking me to join you?” Whiskers said with a bit of wonder in his voice.

  I nodded. “I’d very much like you to be part of this… whatever this is. As far as I can tell the pay is terrible and there will be aliens all over the place. What’d ya say?”

  Whiskers grinned from ear to ear. “Commodore, ya had me at ‘aliens’. I ain’t no spring chicken but if an old man can help ya… I can’t think of a better way to spend my last days.”

  Lori chuckled. “I might have a few surprises for you in the med-bay.”

  ***

  Six days later Whiskers had managed to recruit ten more old timers. Two were mathematicians, one was a cook. Another two were retired nurses and the rest were either engineers or operations officers. Not a one of them was under the age of eighty.

  That’s where Lori’s surprise in the med-bay was especially useful. It seemed the Galactic Order was much better at tissue rejuvenation then backwater places like the Sol system. Lori had the entire volunteer team on a treatment regimen that Mitty confirmed would have them back in their prime in less than a year. Already, Whiskers had a spring in his step that I hadn’t ever remembered seeing.

  Mitty gave me operational control of the ship. He functioned as my executive officer and technical advisor.

  I put Commander McGraw in charge of engineering and assigned the two other engineers, Sandy Heinz and the unfortunately named John a.k.a. ‘Jack’ Daniels to assist him. Everybody else was assigned to learn ships systems and to help prioritize repairs.

  Ten days into the repair process we ran into our first major glitch. The active shielding effectively cloaked the ship from Federation sensors. This allowed us to work undisturbed. We harvested materials from my boneyard which the Gilboa’s fabricators were able to use to build replacement components. The work was made doubly hard because most of the systems we were repairing were completely unfamiliar at even the most basic technical level. It was like trying to fix a lightbulb when you didn’t even know what electricity was.

  The glitch we ran into involved the active shielding. To fix one of the essential systems, we would have to shut it down for several hours. Normally, given the vastness of space, this would not be a problem but some overly ambitious Commodore… who shall remain unnamed… put a massive sensor net in place to detect errant asteroids that could potentially disrupt the boneyard. What can I say… I was bored and wanted to do more than just sit at a desk and ponder my fate.

  That sensor net would light up like a Christmas tree the moment we shut down our shields. The problem was ultimately solved by creating a distraction. We used small charge to blow up one of the Gnats in a parking orbit around Ceres. The resulting disruption send a dozen ships into motion. These in turn collided with a handful of other ships. The original Commodore Riker would have his hands full for a while. I felt bad about it because I took great pride in excelling at whatever job I was given… even if I hated it with every fiber of my being. Strangely I found myself in the position of hoping I could forgive myself at some future point.

  ***

  Later that same day, Whiskers came up to me in utter frustration. I had asked for a status update. The ship’s AI had been evasive when it came to giving me said estimate. That evasiveness took the form of cryptic statements regarding the amount of risk we would be willing to take. When I asked for clarification, the little grey otter shut up tighter than a sphincter during a proctology exam. Ergo the meeting with Commander McGraw.

  “Commodore, as far as I can tell, it’s going to take us darn near a couple of years to get this boat going. It’s not that the work is hard… it’s just none of my guys has any clue what we’re doing.”

  He waved his hand around the entire engineering department. “All this stuff is based on science we’ve barely begun to theorize about… much less master. It’s like asking a Roman Centurion to fix an internal combustion engine. He knows all about fire, combustibles and even to a limited degree… things that go bang… but would you hand him the key fob to your vintage 2055 Lamborghini?”

  “I understand all that,” I said. “Isn’t the Archon AI assisting you?”

  “Abs-sa-freaking-lutely sir. But imagine having to do a surgery with the guy holding the knife having to ask the only surgeon in the room to explain in detail the ins and outs of each and every step. There’s a good chance of the patient dying of old age on the table.”

  I sighed and walked around one of the partially disassembled engineering consoles. I picked up a piece of something that looked vaguely electronic. I had no clue what it did or where it went. I didn’t know if it was functional in its current state… hell, it might well be a tool and not part of the disassembled console at all. I put the thingy-ma-bob down.

  “So, we have a problem. What’s the solution?”

  Whiskers shook his head. “Damned if I know, Sir. Damned if I know.”

  “OK, do the best you can. I’m going to have a heart-to-virtual-heart with our little grey friend.”

  “Thank you, Sir. Me and my boys are going to do our best for ya… I just wanted you to know what we’re up against.”

  “Understood, Engineer. Carry on.”

  ***

  I had intended to speak with Mitty again, but Lori paged me to the med-bay. She sounded excited. I needed some good news, so I put off contacting the ship’s AI until I had a chance to talk with Lori.

  I had to admit, having her, even a clone of her, back in my life was the best thing that had happened to me in years. We were still living in separate quarters, but the old wounds were healing. Neither one of us had stopped loving the other and in my mind, defective though it is, that boded well for the future.

  The med-bay was up two decks from engineering. Whiskers had gotten the antigravity turbo shafts working three days ago so the trip to see my gal was a quick one.

  I walked into the bay and was greeted with the biggest, broadest smile I had seen since the day I had proposed to her. I looked around the room, but I didn’t see anything more unusual than normal.

  “What’s up Doc?”

  By way of answer, she walked over to me and planted the biggest and best kiss I had had in years straight on my lips. In such a situation, a man has only a limited number of options. I kissed her back. The kiss lasted for several minutes and at some point, completely of their own volition, my hands worked their way down to her rump… which I might add, was a very fine rump. I had always counted myself a very lucky man… until I wasn’t. Now it seemed like there might be hope for us yet.

  Lori leaned into the kiss a little harder and then reluctantly pulled away with a twinkle in her eye. “There will be time for that later soldier,” she said. “I have something to show you that will change everything.”

  I was still focused on the ‘time for that later’ thing so I missed what she did next, but a door that had been frozen shut opened. Inside the room were a bunch of beauty salon chairs, complete with those little hair dryer helmets that fit over your head.

  “OK…” I began. “So, you can get a permanent now,” I added with, what I’m sure, was a quizzical look on my face.

  Lori hit me lightly with the back of her hand.

  “The main crew of this ship were hairless and even the Archons had feathers. These aren’t hair dryers, and this isn’t some type of beauty salon.” Lori turned to face me. “Did you ever wonder how Mitty managed to transfer our memory engrams to our cloned bodies?”
<
br />   Now, I’m a reasonably bright guy… and in my defense, waking up on an alien battleship can be distracting… but no I had never pondered that question. It made sense though. Cloning just involved replicating tissue. Memories were not part of the process… so something more had to be involved.

  At that point, a cough behind me told me that our friendly neighborhood otter had holographically popped in for a visit.

  ***

  So, it turns out the Archons had access to some rather sophisticated engrammatic transfer equipment. They were essentially teaching machines that could transfer an entire personality down to the last hiccup or selected skills. In the process, the machines remapped select neural pathways… which was a fancy way of saying that not only did the machines impart knowledge, but they also augmented basic intelligence.

  This presented me with a problem. The reason Mephibosheth, a.k.a. Mitty, had kept this particular facility hidden was that it would force us to make a choice. If we chose to cross a line, there would be no going back. I understood the Archon’s reasoning and I found myself agreeing with it.

  Until we got more of the ship repaired and re-pressurized, the engine room was the largest open space we had. I called the crew together. It was time everybody knew what the score was.

  “OK, gang… pipe down for a few minutes. I want to thank each of you for the job you’ve been doing. I know it’s frustrating working on systems you don’t understand and often don’t even recognize.”

  There was a low grumble that traveled through the men and women in the room. Including Mitty, there were fourteen of us altogether.

  “This is what I want to talk to each of you about. We have an answer to the problem… but it will require a sacrifice from anyone that wants to take advantage of it.”