SpecOps (Expeditionary Force Book 2) by Craig Alanson Page B

combots.
None of your original merry band of pirates, who mostly had higher IQ scores
than you, had those ideas. Joe, you may not be particularly smart in a
conventional sense, but you apparently have a talent that is more useful in
your current role; you are clever ."
    "Space suits."
    "Darn it, you had to remind me. Yes, I hate to
say it, but that is a good example."
    I was damned proud of myself. As a senior officer, I
may be grossly inadequate for my responsibilities, according to the United
States Army. As an infantry soldier, I had, in my humble opinion, good common
sense, including the ability to ask obvious questions that everyone else was
missing. Believe me, patrolling the Nigerian jungle in full battle rattle, on
ill-defined missions, had caused me to ask a whole lot of common sense
questions. "Thank you, Skippy. You can program us a course for the closest
site?"
    "Already loaded into the nav system."
    "Of course it is. Great, I'll tell the
pilots." And everyone. No one had looking forward to a lonely, dull
fourteen month voyage to the second site.
     
    Sitting in the command chair on the bridge, I was
waiting for the jump engines to recharge. We had changed course to check out
the closest of the sites where Skippy thought we might find an Elder facility
that wasn’t known to the Thuranin or Jeraptha. I didn’t have much to do, and my
mind wandered. "Skippy, something has been puzzling me."
    He made an exaggerated sigh. "Darn it, I knew
this was going to happen sooner or later. All right, fine. Joey, when a Mommy
and a Daddy love each other very much-"
    "I know about the birds and the bees,
Skippy!" Damn it! I should have known better than to try asking Skippy a
serious question while other people were around. In the CIC, I could see people
smirking, and one of the pilot's shoulders were shaking as he laughed. At me.
    "Boy, that is a relief. The last thing I want to
explain is monkey mating rituals. You're puzzled. Is this about shoe tying
again? I think you'd be best to stick to Velcro until-"
    "You know why I need shoes? Because I can walk!
Let's see you do that, beer can."
    "Whoa. That's the best you've got? Pretty lame,
there, Joey."
    "I'm trying to be serious here, Skippy."
    Another sigh. "Fair enough. You do understand how
difficult it is for me to take anything you monkeys say seriously, right? What
is your question? If it's not outrageously stupid, I will consider wasting my
time on you."
    "We lowly, unworthy monkeys would greatly
appreciate it. My question is about stealth technology. I've heard you say this
ship has a stealth field. And I've seen you detect other ships soon after we
jump into an area. Don't those ships also have stealth? And how does a stealth
field work? We have stealth jets on Earth."
    "Wow. Man, there isn't enough aspirin in the
galaxy to fix the headache I'm going to get while trying to explain this to
you. Fine. Listen hard, Mister Bigstupidhead, you might learn something. No,
you do not have stealth jets on Earth. You have laughably crude pieces of metal
that try to bounce radar waves in a different direction, instead of back to the
radar receiver. Or you have coatings painted on your jets that try to absorb
radar waves. That coating don't work so well when it's wet or dirty, by the
way. And good luck to your Navy, trying to maintain delicate stealth coatings
on aircraft in a corrosive salt spray environment. No, you do not have stealth technology.
Your species has glanced the basic mechanics of stealth technology; you haven't
been able to make it work yet."
    "Fine. What's the difference?"
    "A stealth field bends light waves around a ship.
When a stealth field is working optimally, light flows right around an object
as if it wasn't there. If a ship using stealth is between you and a star, all
you will see is light from the star, the stealthed ship won't cast a
shadow."
    "Cool. Is that why sometimes Ruhar or Kristang
aircraft have a fuzzy outline, they're hard to see?"
    "Yes,