"Wrong? That was awesome! Damn! I almost converted that planet into a minor star. I wish we had better sensor coverage."

"Wrong means, something happened that you didn't plan." I explained slowly. How could it be that I needed to explain anything, to a super-intelligent ancient machine?

"Oh, sure, if you're going to be picky about it." Skippy said dismissively. "Next time, I'll jump an enemy ship deeper towards the planet's core. But that's no fun, we won't be able to see anything. It would just look like the clouds burped or something lame like that."

"Sir?' Desai asked, without taking her eyes off the controls. "Should I keep accelerating? We're moving at fifteen thousand kph away from the planet already."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, you can cut thrust." There was no sense wasting power. Especially since we didn't have a destination in mind yet. "Skippy, are we clear? The Kristang ships are all destroyed, and they didn't get any drones away?"

"We are clear, Colonel Joe. This took them completely by surprise, and I confused their computers so they couldn't react anyway. They are now a loose cloud of atoms. The cargo pod with the Thuranin got swallowed up and vaporized by the explosion, they're gone also."

I looked through the glass at Chang and Simms, and gave them a thumbs up. They both nodded. "What's next, Skippy? Now that we have gotten rid of unwanted guests. We're headed to raid the asteroid base, yes?" I should have felt something after destroying the Kristang and Thuranin, but I didn't. No triumph, no guilt, no satisfaction, nothing. Those ships were just objects, I wasn't thinking of the sentient beings who had been aboard. This was very different from firefights in the Nigerian bush, or fighting hamsters on Paradise. Maybe I'd feel something later, after some rack time. Right then, I did not care, as long as the Kristang and Thuranin were no longer a threat.

"Yes. We wait while our jump engines recharge. I have plotted a long jump so we need a full charge, that will take up to two hours."

"Desai, you up for using the next couple hours learning to fly this crate?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Great. Skippy, plot some points for her to navigate to, or whatever you're supposed to do for pilot training. We’re going out to transit through a wormhole next, right? That wormhole is about eight lightyears from Paradise, based on guesses I heard from our G-2. That's our Intel people, at the division level."

"I've memorized all your military acronyms, Colonel Joe."

"Oh, uh, of course you have, sorry about that." Why did I bother explaining anything, to a being who knew everything that was in any sort of data storage device humanity had brought to Paradise? Plus every bit of data the Kristang and Ruhar had about humans. He knew far more about humanity that any human did. Whether he understood it, in context, was another question. "To travel eight lightyears takes about sixteen days on a Thuranin star carrier like this. Unless, uh, there are different types of star carriers? I don't know which ship we travelled on."