“For your education in tactics of space combat, if the Kristang are at Earth in force, it’s better to jump right into orbit than to jump in a couple AUs out. Even I can’t conceal the gamma ray burst when we emerge from a jump, we’d have to wait there and run long-range sensor scans, and the Kristang at Earth would be alerted to our arrival. Jumping right into their laps will allow us to catch them off guard, and maybe pump a couple missiles up their asses before they can react. Then we can jump away, if we need to.”

“Space combat sounds complicated.” I thought back to when I’d listened to the Chicken pilot talk about air combat after our first war game, on Camp Alpha.

“Uh huh. Then there’s the Skippy factor.”

Part of me wanted to avoid taking the bait. “The Skippy factor?”

“You know, my incredible awesomeness.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Not convinced? Specifically, I am referring to my ability to remotely take control of Kristang systems, using the Thuranin nanovirus embedded in their systems. To do that, I need to be within about a lightsecond of the enemy ship.”

“A lightsecond? That’s, uh-” Light travels, uh, hmm, I was trying to picture myself in a classroom-

“Let me put you out of your misery before you sprain your brain, monkey boy. A light second is roughly the distance from the Earth to your moon.”

“Oh.” I thought a moment. “I thought ships shouldn’t jump in that close to a planet?”

“Most ships can’t, the gravity well of a planet distorts the jump field at entry to make jump navigation unpredictable, and the field distortion can damage jump engines, even tear a ship apart. A ship with me controlling the jump engines compensates for the field distortion. Thus, the Skippy factor.”

“Impressive.” I had to admit.

“What? No snarky joke?”

“No, you may be an arrogant asshole, but your awesomeness is legit.”

“It ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

“Yeah, I heard that. Hey, is that why you jumped us in so close to that gas giant planet?”

There was an ever so short hesitation. “That may have been too close. I hadn’t finished tuning up this ship’s crappy jump engines. Won’t happen again. Hey, uh, good talk. You need to get some shut-eye, we can talk more later, huh?”

I laid back down on the bed, trying to conceal a smile. The monkey had made the AI uncomfortable. I needed to remember that.