“Hahahahahahahahahahaha!” Skippy laughed maniacally, and changed his surface so he was now a Coors Light silver bullet can. “Heighdee-ho, everyone! I am Skippy the omnipotent. Hahahahha! Oh, man, you should have seen your face, Colonel Joe. That was priceless.”

I took a couple deep breaths, staring at Adams, who was still trying to decide whether to choke me. “For all his intelligence, Skippy is a hundred percent asshole.”

“True, true.” Skippy admitted. “Is this better?” He reverted to featureless chrome.

Chang fairly growled. “Who the fuck is Skippy?”

“You got some ‘splainin’ to do.” Adams said without a trace of humor.

I noticed neither of them added ‘sir’.

I took a deep breath. “This is Skippy, his code name is Hacker,” I pointed to his shiny self. “What looks like a beer can here is an artificial intelligence-“

“A very small manifestation of me in local spacetime-“ Skippy interrupted.

“Skippy, will you shut up a minute? An AI that was built by the beings we know as the Elders or the First Ones, whatever they’re called. The super civilization who inhabited the galaxy before the Rindhalu, the beings who built the wormholes. They left their physical existence a long time ago, and they left behind the Sentinels. And they left this AI, who is millions of years old.  An immensely powerful AI, he released the controls on this Dodo, he disabled the Ruhars’ weapons, he is right now masking us from the hamsters’ sensors and transmitting the proper IFF codes to the Kristang. He is how we are going to board and capture a Kristang ship, do the same thing to a Thuranin star carrier, and then we’re going to disable the wormhole near Earth, so neither the Ruhar nor the Kristang can have access to our home any more.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Simms breathed in disbelief.

“Yeah, that was my reaction when I was locked up in a warehouse by the Ruhar, and a beer can on a dusty shelf started talking to me.”

Adams wasn’t convinced. “Sir, I’m trying to wrap my head around this. We’re trusting our future, and the fate of humanity, to a talking beer can?”

“When you put it that way-“

“A super smart, nay, impossibly, inconceivably smart, talking beer can!” Skippy protested.