Failure Mode (Expeditionary Force Book 15) by Craig Alanson

Author:Craig Alanson [Alanson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-06T06:00:00+00:00

The conversation kind of went downhill from there. I was pissed, because he hadn’t let me finish explaining my idea before he insulted me. He was disgusted with me, or he pretended to be. Really, he was still defensive about his ginormous screw-up, and wanted to deflect attention away from the colossal mess he’d created.

“Are you ready to talk?” I asked, when I got to my office after a status meeting with Simms. She had asked about what we would do after we went through the wormhole, and I’d told her I was working out details with Skippy.

She knew that meant I had no freakin’ clue what to do next.

“That depends,” his avatar had his arms crossed and nose in the air. “Are you ready to not be an idiot?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

“Huh?” Clearly, he hadn’t expected me to say that.

“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, we could ask your old allies to respond. If anyone does, we arrange a meeting, but we set up a decoy. Anyone who shoots at the decoy is not your friend.”

“Oh.”

“You like that idea?”

“Why didn’t you mention that the first time?”

“I tried to, but some jackass was too busy telling me how stupid I am. I know there are problems with the concept; multiple units could arrive at the rendezvous site, and for sure not all of them will be friendly.”

“Hmm, I think we could manage that.”

“How?”

“I can set up a private communication channel in the Collective network.”

“A private channel? Uh, why can’t you ping each one of your old allies over a private channel now? Sorry, that is probably a stupid question.”

“The old channels we used back during the war have long expired. Establishing a new private channel requires me to send a request to create a link, and the receiver to accept. Assuming the Collective still has that feature,” he muttered to himself. “I could set up a separate channel for each unit that replies, then I will give each of them different coordinates for a rendezvous, right?”

“Skippy, that actually is a great idea.”

“The bad guys will of course share info about the rendezvous points they know about, so they will arrive in a group to hit us. But each of my true allies will keep the rendezvous time and location a secret, and arrive alone.”

“Uh, unless the bad guys send in one ship to pretend to be an ally.”

“Shit. Way to rain on my parade, Joe.”

“That’s better than a nuke on your parade.”

“I guess so. Damn it, I thought I had this all figured out.”

“Hey buddy, it’s a good idea. We just have to tweak the plan a bit, that’s all.”

“Tweak it? How?”

“We need to learn the true intentions of any ship that arrives alone, right?”

“I can’t read minds, Joe.”

“You won’t have to. The decoy plan won’t work.”

“A decoy was your idea, numbskull.”

“Yes, and now I realize the plan has a flaw, so I’m revising it. If you propose a plan, and later

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