The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (12 page)

“How so?”

“They’re accelerating more quickly than our estimates allow for—about thirty percent faster.”

I looked at his work and read the numbers. “That’s a lot of power. They must have upgraded their engines. I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Neither can I, sir,” Newcome said.

“Good work,” I told him, clapping him on the shoulder. “I knew I brought you along for something.”

He winced, probably because I was accidentally crushing his shoulder, but he appeared appreciative of the praise.

“Jasmine, tap in the new estimates.”

“Those numbers aren’t confirmed yet, Colonel,” she said.

“I don’t care. I’m not taking any more chances.”

She did as I asked, and very soon a much grimmer picture developed. Originally, it had looked as if we’d be faced with missile barrages chasing us all the way back to the station. But now, it was clear we weren’t going to make it. The enemy ships would catch up with us before we made it back to the safety of the Eden system.

“We’ll be under their guns within twenty-four hours,” I said. “Are these numbers firming up? I need accurate projections, people.”

I looked sternly over at the table full of nerds in the corner of the room. They were responsible for getting these things right. They worked feverishly for perhaps thirty seconds more, then transmitted their results to my table.

The images shifted on the primary screen. A red arrow representing the Macro ships now intersected our green oval in nineteen hours.

“What the hell…?” I asked. “Why did it change again?”

“The enemy ships are coming on even faster now,” Jasmine said. “Their rate of acceleration is increasing, not staying steady. That’s why I must have missed the estimates in the first place. We can’t beat them, Colonel.”

“New engines,” I said thoughtfully. “Something that allows them to accelerate with an odd curve. Maybe the new engines take time to warm up? They pretty much crawled through the ring. Maybe they start cold and have to be stoked to full power.”

“I hardly think it matters, sir,” Newcome said. “The point is, they will catch us. We’ll have to turn and do battle.”

I glanced at him. “These details
do
matter. Very much so. Jasmine, what do we have in the way of reinforcements back in the Eden System?”

“Not much, sir. Less than a dozen ships, all small except for a single old carrier that we use to watch the Blues.”

I nodded. “All right. I assume these latest projections are holding up and don’t need further tampering?”

“They are, sir. We have nineteen hours.”

“I want my senior staffers to meet me in the conference room. We’ll discuss our options.”

I left the bridge, and a few minutes later Jasmine and Newcome showed up in my office. Behind them a third individual clattered into view. It was none other than Marvin himself. He was still nursing his broken camera and displaying it prominently as if he imagined someone might offer him sympathy. None of us did. The old ‘abused robot’ routine wasn’t flying with anyone today.

“Your robot appears to have followed us, Colonel,” said Newcome stiffly. “I was under the impression this was for senior officers only.”

I snorted. “He’s right, Marvin. Have you given yourself a new rank?”

“No, Colonel Riggs. But I have interesting opinions to share regarding this command decision.”

“Okay then, pull up a chair—or rather remove one.”

When Marvin came to a conference table, it was generally necessary to remove a chair to make a place for him to crouch around it with the rest of us.

“I’ve brought you here because we have some unpleasant choices to make,” I said to the three of them.

“Unpleasant?” asked Marvin.

He had a lot of cameras on me. Whenever the topic of discussion involved his existence, Marvin became very focused indeed.

“That’s right. One option is to turn and fight right now. The advantage to such a move is that, if more reinforcements are coming up behind this wave of Macros, we can destroy these ships before they’re reinforced.”

“That doesn’t seem realistic, Colonel,” Jasmine said. “We can’t kill all their ships. How does it help us if they outnumber us twenty to one or only ten to one?”

“I’m getting a negative vibe from you, Captain,” I said, giving her a slight frown. “Anyone else?”

Marvin’s foreclaw rose up.

“Sir, I have a suggestion or two.”

“Go ahead.”

“The enemy fleet is going to destroy us. That’s unquestionable. But many of our personnel might escape this fate and reach Welter Station if we act quickly.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I’m all ears, Marvin.”

“We could abandon most of the ships. By transferring every engine to a single large vessel—the carrier would be the most natural choice—we could load up our personnel and accelerate at a greater pace than the enemy.”

“Intriguing…” I said, “But you mentioned that ‘many’ of us would get away. Who would not make it?”

“I’ve done the calculations. We have a group of transports traveling with us carrying Centaurs, am I correct?”

I was beginning to frown. “Yes, new recruits from their homeworld.”

“Fortunately, they’ve had basic training and have undergone my treatment to make them functional in space. I’m proposing that—”

“Hold on, Marvin!” I said, lifting a hand. “Are you saying we should leave them behind? That we should let the Macros destroy them in their ships while they lag behind us? That we steal their engines and leave them adrift?”

“No, sir, that would be a terrible waste.”

“I’m glad to hear we agree on that point.”

“No, Colonel,” he continued. “I’m not proposing to squander a vital resource. What I suggest is that we deploy the Centaur troops, all of them. They can ride their personal conveyances into the hulls of the enemy ships and do terrific damage by detonating nuclear charges—”

I was out of my chair.

“Shut up right there, robot!” I shouted. “You’ve got a lot of guts to suggest these fresh recruits commit mass suicide in order to salvage your brainbox. Let’s not forget that you were the one to fire off this experiment prematurely.”

“That was an accident, sir.”

“So you say. If you’d held back until we reached the ring, we’d have been in position to stop the enemy as they entered. Instead, we’re faced with this grim situation.”

“I fail to see how I’m to blame. The entire process was experimental. In these situations, unexpected phenomena very typically—”

“Well, get the idea of leaving the Centaurs behind to screen our retreat out of your neural chains. I’m not going to order the Centaurs to make a suicidal charge at the enemy ships while we run for cover. That’s final.”

“In that case, I’m out of ideas.”

“I’ve got one,” Newcome said. “What about the gravity device Marvin’s been working on—could it be weaponized?”

We all looked at Marvin. He seemed surprised.

“An intriguing proposal. The system is essentially a gravitational force manipulator on the order of the one built inside
Phobos
. In fact, I first got the idea for the system from the
Phobos
unit. Unfortunately, the site has been abandoned, and there is no one there to make the necessary changes to the systems.”

“Hmm,” I said, tapping on the screen in front of me. “We’re not that far from the probe’s launch point. We could be there in a few hours.”

“We can’t divert our course or slow down,” Newcome pointed out. “They’ll catch us even faster if we do.”

“No,” I said, tapping my chin. “But Marvin has given me an idea. We could launch a small ship with extra engines very quickly. With enough power, it could reach the device within a matter of hours.”

“But Colonel,” Marvin said, “who could possibly be convinced to go on such a dangerous, highly technical mission?”

All of us turned and stared at him in unison.

“Oh,” he said in surprise. “I should have expected this response after your earlier tirade.”

“Well?” I asked gruffly. “Will you do it, Marvin?”

Jasmine reached out a hand and put it on his nearest tentacle. He studied the hand with a single camera, rather than her face.

“Marvin? Please?” she asked. “We’d all appreciate it. You would be a hero again.”

“I’ve found that the title of ‘hero’ is a fleeting honor amongst humans. But I will do it. Just thinking about the challenge is stimulating my circuitry.”

I’d been pretty sure that Marvin would take the job. That’s why I’d asked him instead of ordering him to do it. In some ways, he was a coward, but in other instances he was insanely brave. The key was to put some kind of technical challenge into the mix to intrigue him. If you did that, you could get him to do almost anything.

Marvin and I had a very long history of manipulating one another and involving one another in our schemes. This time, I seemed to have had the last laugh.

Or at least, I hoped so.

-12-

Our missiles met with the enemy’s first barrage in open space. They destroyed one another in a cascade of ghostly fire. In the airless void between planets
, nuclear explosions are odd, glimmering affairs. There’s no mushroom cloud, no fireball. Each release of energy resembles a cold-looking puff of light and energy as if tiny stars are being born, then winking out a fraction of a second later. As our missiles struck theirs, hundreds of infant stars were born and quickly died away as we watched.

“Some of their birds got through,” Jasmine said. “Seventy-four of them. I’m surprised they haven’t released another wave.”

“They plan to get in close before hitting us again,” I told her. “Why waste good missiles when they know their main guns can shred us soon enough? They’ll save their ammo for the killing strikes.”

I realized my shoulders were hunched, and that I must have looked defeated. I made an effort to straighten up. I knew the staffers were watching me. I had to look firmly in command and confident. Slumping over the command table at a bad moment wasn’t acceptable. Looking cool when I didn’t feel like it was one of the hardest parts of my job.

“Give me an update on Marvin,” I said to Jasmine.

“He’s not responding to any transmissions. He can hear us, but he’s running with radio silence at his end.”

“What about a ring-to-ring transmission system? Surely, he took one with him. The enemy can’t listen in on that.”

“He did, but the Macro ships are jamming all the rings now. We’re left with radio. If he transmits, he’ll give away his position.”

I nodded in understanding. There was no way Marvin was going to answer us while scooting away on a small, vulnerable target under enemy guns. I couldn’t blame him for that.

“All right then. How long until the Macros get into range?”

“Eleven hours and forty-nine—”

“Colonel,” Admiral Newcome spoke up beside me. He sounded as if he couldn’t stand by quietly any longer.

“What is it, Newcome?”

“We should launch another attack
now
. Give our missiles time to get up to high velocity and slam into them. We can at least make a good accounting of ourselves before they catch us.”

“We don’t have a lot of hardware left. I’d rather hold onto it until we get in closer.”

Newcome nodded curtly and stepped away from me. I could tell he didn’t like my answer at all, but he wasn’t going to say so. As an ex-Imperial officer, he was used to being shut down by superiors. In a way, I wished more of my regular staffers had his respect for the chain of command. We Star Force types were still less than one hundred percent professional. We were more like some kind of revolutionary outfit full of personalities and shouting.

I could now see why dictators since time immemorial—whether they were called kings, presidents or emperors—had often executed their noisiest subordinates. The thought occurred to me with regularity these days and each time it took an effort to push it away. Stress, high stakes and total power were a heady combination. Newcome seemed to appreciate this. He never pushed his luck.

Hours crawled by. Sometimes, having a finite amount of time to wait seemed to make events happen more slowly. This was one of those times. But at last, there was news to report when the enemy was no more than three hours behind us.

“Sir,” Jasmine said, “we have new contacts.”

I frowned at the screens. I was looking for a fresh wave of missiles or new Macros at the ring, but I was looking in the wrong direction and for the wrong colored contacts. The new images were friendlies, and I finally spotted them blinking in green at the Eden ring.

“Who’s that?”

“Remember the carrier force we left to supervise the Blues? They’ve come to our aid.”

“Hmm,” I said, uncertain as to how I should respond to this. I’d never ordered the carrier to come to the Thor System. “Open a channel to the commander.”

“Done.”

“Is this Captain…?” I asked, but I couldn’t recall the fellow’s name. I looked at Jasmine and snapped my fingers.

“Captain Grass,” she said quietly, putting her hand over her microphone.

Grass
?
I froze for a second, then winced in recollection. This was the single large ship in our fleet that was commanded by a non-human. Like most Centaurs, he had a name only his own people could relate to. Almost all of them were named after the sky, or grass, rivers, honor, fur, etc. This wasn’t as strange in their native language as it was to us. They had over a hundred names for grass, each of which connoted some delicate variance, such as the way it rippled when wind ran over a field. When their names went through our translation systems, they all came out as “Grass” no matter what other nuances there might be for them.

The bigger problem, besides the name, was the fact that the commander was a Centaur. I’d had a lot of trouble with Centaur officers as ground troops. Now, I had an untested alien captain coming to my rescue in command of a major ship.

I’d put him in command of the ship as a diplomatic gesture. It had seemed rude to everyone that the Centaurs were included in our alliance, and were integrated into our ranks, but weren’t given commanding roles. To show we weren’t prejudiced—when, of course, we really were—I’d placed Captain Grass in command of the biggest ship in the quietest system in the Empire. And then, I’d promptly forgotten about him.

“Captain Grass,” I said, putting on a welcoming tone. “This is Colonel Kyle Riggs.”

“I stand ready to charge, Colonel!” came the reply.

I paused with my mouth open for a full second. “Charge? Charge where?”

“Toward the enemy on your flank! The enemy is right behind you, sir!”

I heaved a sigh. Centaurs weren’t subtle warriors. Most of what we called “tactics”, they saw as dishonorable trickery. Honor, to them, was a straight out charge into the teeth of the enemy. By dint of superior numbers and ferocity, the best would win. They understood the concept of being beaten and driven into submission, but only after a bloody defeat. To them, my retreat in the face of the enemy without a fight was baffling.

“I haven’t given the order to charge yet,” I said.

There was a moment of delay, probably due to confusion on the part of Captain Grass.

“Are your engines operating properly, Colonel?” he asked finally. “I see that they are…you’re under power… I can only imagine that your sensors are out of operation. I will render assistance transmitting the coordinates of their fleet to your systems. You’re headed in the wrong direction, sir!”

This was exactly why I’d never promoted any other Centaur officers to the rank of captain. I’d done so in Captain Grass’ case, assuming he’d remain stationed in the Eden System indefinitely, to fight the Blues if they dared to reappear, or to blunt the attack of a new fleet of Macros. His ship was old and unimportant, so if he blew it up, it didn’t really matter.

But today was different. I had to win this fight, if only to stay breathing. And here was Captain Grass, doing exactly what I’d imagined he would do when faced by a real live enemy: revving himself up to charge against overwhelming odds. He naturally expected me to join the charge with him, hell-bent on death and glory. The only problem was I didn’t want to kill myself just to look tough in his eyes.

How does one explain tactical actions to a being that barely comprehends them? I opted for my usual approach: I’d give him stern orders, and then do whatever I needed to do. I decided to play on his defensive instincts as part of the home guard. In Centaur herds, when a war band took to the fields they always left behind a few rams to protect the young in springtime.

“Captain Grass, you will stay at your position guarding the ring to Eden. The machines know nothing of honor. Do not let them slip past you and slaughter our young as they frolic under an open sky!”

“Don’t worry, Colonel! We will paint the skies with our blood as if it were grass. We will never allow the machines to sneak past us like burrowing creatures in the night. If the honor of the river were between the two of us, Colonel, I would drink with you in this moment!”

The exact meaning of his words was lost on me, but he seemed happy so I went with the spirit of things.

“Right!” I shouted enthusiastically. “Hold your ground as if it were the highest hill under the blazing sun! Riggs out.”

I made slashing motions to Jasmine, who quickly disconnected the channel. Even as she did so, the Centaur began a new windy speech about honor and rivers. Captain Grass seemed to be big on rivers.

“Are they holding at the ring as they said they would?” I asked.

She tapped up a closer image, and I could see the carrier task force was slowing and retreating back toward the ring.

“They’re taking up their position as ordered,” she said.

“They were about to charge, weren’t they? Without orders, as usual.”

“To them, orders are subservient to honor,” she said.

“Yeah, great,” I said. “Where’s Marvin now?”

“He’s in orbit around the white star. He’s been there for a couple of hours. We have no emission readings from the sun station. I don’t know what he’s doing. For all we know, he’s hiding in there.”

I frowned, eyeing the screens and the holotank. There was no information there, but I had a hunch.

“No,” I said. “He’s a sneaky robot. He’s up to something. If we’re lucky, it will be something helpful.”

After the Centaurs had settled down, we only had the enemy to watch. The contacts crawled after us on the screens. Each was a tiny triangle of red light trailed by a gently fading contrail that glimmered away to nothing. There were a lot of red triangles converging upon our position—far too many of them.

When there was less than an hour to go something good finally happened.

“Sir?” Jasmine asked suddenly. “I think—I think one of the enemy ships has suffered a malfunction.”

My eyes glazed over from staring at the creeping doom for so long.

There had been things to do, of course. I’d ordered additional anti-missile turrets to be installed all over our fantails. The enemy missiles were only a few minutes behind us. I wasn’t too worried about them as there were only seventy-four of them left, and they were coming in pretty slowly in relative speed. They’d been cruising for hours, and we’d been accelerating trying to outrun them. I was confident our ship-based anti-missile systems would take them all out.

What worried me were the enemy main gun turrets. They were going to be in range an hour from now, and we didn’t have any effective defense against them.

Jasmine’s comment woke me up, however, and I eyed the screens closely. There were so many hundreds of triangles it took me a moment to figure out what she was trying to show me. Jasmine had helpfully popped a pulsing circle around the spot.

As I watched, the contact’s movement slowed, falling behind the rest.

“Maybe that new engine of theirs can run out of gas,” I said excitedly. “Let’s keep an eye on—where’d it go?”

What had been a slowing triangle now became an arc of
fading light. It vanished from my screen.

“It’s gone, sir,” Jasmine said. “It just isn’t there anymore, according to our sensors. I have several probes out there relaying data to us from multiple angles. I’m certain that ship just disappeared.”

I began to grin. “Put Marvin’s position up on the screens,” I said.

“Marvin’s position?”

“The sun factory near Loki. Put it up.”

She tapped away, and after a few seconds a new contact appeared. It was green and circular, and it was right where I thought it was.

“Another ship has been destroyed just now…I think,” Jasmine said.

I watched as a second red triangle winked out.

“What’s going on, Colonel?” Newcome asked me. He’d come over from the defensive operations team to join us at the command table.

“Marvin is what’s going on,” I said with confidence. “See his position relative to the Macros? They’re too far away and going too fast at this point to turn on him. He knows they can’t change course now. They’ve been pursuing us for too long.”

“I don’t understand, sir,” Newcome said, frowning at the screen. “Are you saying your robot is destroying their ships?”

“Yes, of course. He’s held his fire until this moment, probably for hours, waiting until they were too far past him to turn around and take him out. Now he’s zapping them, taking them out one at a time.”

Before I’d finished explaining it, another ship vanished.

“I see!” Newcome said, his big blue eyes brightening. “This is excellent news.”

Newcome began poring over the data intensely. I had to like him for one thing: the man understood numbers. He knew that rates of fire, ranges and relative velocities often meant the difference between life and death in any space battle. He had a calculator up on the screen and was tapping at the numbers and connecting a small program to various changing data points by swiping and moving them.

“He’s knocking them out very fast,” Newcome said. “That first salvo must have been a near miss. The first ship struck was hit in the engine region. After that, every strike has been amidships, destroying the target. He’s taking out a ship every forty-nine seconds, by my estimates.”