The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (25 page)

“Crews and marines,” I said. “This is Colonel Kyle Riggs. I’m here to tell you that you are all officially part of Riggs’ Pigs now, which is whatever outfit I happen to be attached to in action. As many in my units have learned in the past, being one of the Pigs isn’t always fun. But we have a mission, and it can be done. I’ve been in the atmosphere of gas giants more than once. Gas giants are worse than this landing, let me tell you. Sure, we’ll have even higher levels of gravity to deal with—along with plenty of radiation—but we won’t have that thick, horrid atmosphere: Thousands of miles of nauseous gasses—I hate gas giants. They put such great pressure on the hull that…well, never mind about that now.”

I realized I was supposed to be encouraging them, not freaking them out further with my old war stories. I changed the direction of my speech appropriately.

“Here’s some advice from a veteran: Don’t stand up too fast. Keep your head low, and keep it even with your heart if you’re feeling dizzy. Try not to fall down, either. It hurts a lot under heavy Gs. Most of you only have flight suits, and you might have difficulty getting around. I suggest you arrange your surroundings so you can do your work without having to move much.”

All over the ship, the crew put this advice to good use. They all had permission to command the ship to reshape around them. They could mold the consoles causing them to sprout from the ceiling, for example, where they could see them while reclining, instead of requiring them to stand over and look down on a flat surface. They could redesign their environments so it best suited them. We’d long ago gone with an editable design system for our ships, as it allowed crews to adjust to a wide variety of situations. We figured we could never come up with enough presets ahead of time to take every contingency into account.

The effect on the crews over the next several minutes was quite positive. They felt like they were doing something. Everyone likes to up their odds of survival and improve their working conditions to their liking. Occupying a terrified mind was the best way to keep it from panicking, in my experience.

I switched off the general channel then and spoke to my small number of marines as a group. There were only eight stationed on each ship, twenty-four altogether. It seemed an entirely inadequate number to me.

“Marines!” I shouted.

They “oorahed” me, and I smiled.

“This is our chance to shine! We’re going to kick these metal insects off this dead sun the old-fashioned way, with a marine boot in their collective behinds!”

They cheered again, and I waited until they’d settled down.

“I’m sure your team leaders have you suited-up in full armor. Make sure you’re fully juiced and carrying your best generators. I’m expecting to have to run the exoskeletons nonstop once we land.”

I was assured by every noncom that they were geared and ready to go. I knew that already, but I wanted them to hear my voice instead of the creak and groan of the metal shells around them.

I opened my mouth to say something further about the marine spirit when a blinking light went off overhead. Like everyone, I was lying down now, beginning to really feel the Gs.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Nomura, who was next to me and tapping with her hands on controls at her sides. Directly overhead was a screen displaying status reports. I hadn’t bothered to reconfigure my operating station, being more concerned with my own battle
suit and my speeches.

“Hull breach,” she said calmly.

“Can we shrink the ship down flatter? Did we lose anyone?”

She turned her head with a visible effort and looked at me.

“The hull breach was on our sister ship, the
Trieste
,” she said. “The ship was lost, Colonel.”

I froze for a second, then nodded.

“Carry on,” I said. “Make sure it doesn’t happen to the rest.”

I turned back to the screens. I could see what she was talking about displayed there now. The
Trieste
was displayed as a red wireframe, meaning it was dead. There was nothing left and no survivors.

I never finished my speech with the marines. Since a third of them had died in the middle of it, I just didn’t have the heart to keep blowing sunshine around inside their helmets.

-28-

The cruiser
Trieste
had collapsed like a sub that sinks too deep into the ocean. It had been designed for stress and pressures on the hull, but numbers on a blueprint and real-world conditions are two different things as any engineer will tell you. After that, we crushed our ceilings down further, and it felt like I was in a movie theater with seats and walls that kept shrinking. The ceiling screen was now inches from my faceplate. When I turned my head, Nomura was flat on her back looking uncomfortable. The ceiling was almost touching her chest, and I realized the ship had made special allowances for me alone. I had a battle suit on and required much more space than the other humans. They were all but entombed around me.

To their credit, no one was verbally complaining. There were a few panting moments and a few sobs, but not one of them blubbered constantly or showed other signs of outright panic.

“Ten miles to go,” Nomura said. “We’re slowing down now. Thrusters are at full power, and we’ve only lost one engine on the starboard side.”

“Excellent. It’s almost over.”

Less than a minute later, I thought the ship had lost power. There was a shudder and a jarring sensation then the singing sound of the engines died down.

“We’ve landed, Colonel,” Nomura said. “You can begin your mission—and please sir, do try to hurry.”

Grunting, I reached up with my right gauntlet to touch the ceiling—but nothing happened.

I tried again, putting more force into it. I heard my arm whine and it shook fractionally. Then I had my arm up. Could it really be
that
heavy? It felt as if I was lifting a five-hundred pound weight.

I realized with something of a shock that I was probably moving much more weight than that. Only the ex
oskeleton suit inside my battle suit allowed me to move at all.

I ordered the ship to respond to my touch, and to build me an airlock. I realized now that I should have moved down to the sally port with the rest of the marines before we’d landed. The ship had a built-in way to exit the troop pods. I wasn’t able to get there via corridors any longer. I’d have to get out and crawl over the hull itself.

Movement for the crew around me involved painful crawling. I saw them doing it, and they looked like kids with their big brothers sitting on their spines taking a cruel ride.

Molding a new airlock out of sluggish nanites, the ship eventually managed to ease me out of its hull without decompressing the entire thing. I climbed out and stood on top of the ship, swaying.

I’ve been on the Moon before—hell, I’ve been on several moons. But this place was more desolate than any landscape I’d ever set eyes upon. For one thing it was dark, almost pitch-black. If it hadn’t been for local starlight, I wouldn’t have been able to see anything without my suit’s infrared settings.

But it wasn’t just rocky, dusty and bleak. It was scorched-looking. I suspected this wasn’t entirely due to our recent barrage of nukes, although that hadn’t improved things much. This place had been subjected to temperatures unlike anything I’d ever met up with in person. It was a burnt-out husk.

After looking around for a few seconds, I felt dizzy. I leaned forward, dipping my head until it was even with my heart. I felt it race in my chest. I wasn’t used to this yet, I told myself. I’d have to take it easy at first until I adjusted.

When I could walk again, I labored my way over the ship, clanging and thumping. To the crewmen trapped inside, it must have sounded like I was beating the hull with sledgehammers.

I found the sally port in the aft section. The ship looked so strange to me once I was down on my feet in front of it. The whole thing had been flattened dramatically. A cruiser of this class was usually about as tall as it was wide but longer and drawn in a cylindrical shape.
Andoria
wasn’t anything like that today. It had flattened itself down to a third its normal height and widened out fractionally. It was about the same length as before.

I slammed my fist on the sally port. I’d expected to meet the marines here, gathering their kits and standing in their armor outside. Instead, I was met with a closed hatch.

Finally, a squealing sound came through my gauntlets. I knew they were trying to get out. I helped, and the hatch swung open. Exterior ports weren’t usually fields of nanites. They were solid surfaces. The hatch hung open, and I looked inside.

I was in for a shock.

“What are you doing, marines? This isn’t nap time!”

They were in there lying on the benches. Only one of them was in a sitting position. He was near the hatch, and I suspected he’d been the one to open it. He had a noncom’s green lights on his suit.

“I’m sorry sir,” he said, sounding like he was out of breath. “We can’t move much. I think Taylor passed out.”

I looked around the interior, frowning. I sucked in a breath and was about to bellow at them—but I paused. They weren’t like me, and I had to remember that. I’d been rebuilt by Marvin’s devilish brews of trained Microbes. I’d been given seven baths in his stinking mud puddles, and as a result, I was stronger than anyone I’d ever met.

“All right,” I said. “None of you can stand, is that right?”

“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“It’s okay. Give me the bomb.”

The specialist looked at me in surprise. “Sir? You aren’t going alone, are you?”

“Nah,” I said. “There’s probably a few in the other ship that can come with me.”

At that, the specialist made a mighty effort. He was a muscular man. I could see that through his faceplate. His neck looked as thick as his skull.

He managed to stand briefly. I was proud of him and dared to hope I wouldn’t have to walk on this mission alone.

But it wasn’t to be. He listed toward the starboard side of the ship and then overcompensated with a lurching heave to the left. I reached out to catch him but wasn’t fast enough. He went down on his ass, and I could tell he hit hard. The gravity was so great that once you started falling, you went down as if you’d been hit with a club.

“Stay down!” I shouted.

For a second, he didn’t answer, and I thought he might have been knocked unconscious. But then he spoke.

“I got dizzy,” he said. “I lost it. I feel like I was hit by a truck.”

“That’s ten-Gs plus a little gravy you’re struggling against,” I told him.

“I—my HUD says I cracked my spine, Colonel. Sorry.”

“No problem. It will heal. Just take it easy.”

“How is it that you can walk and talk, Colonel?” he asked me.

I loomed over him smiling into his faceplate.

“I cheat,” I said.

Then I took the bomb and left him. I didn’t bother checking on the second group of marines in the other ship. It was hopeless, and I didn’t have any more time to waste.

The bomb was in a square case, and it bumped against my knees as I walked. This unbalancing effect almost scrubbed the entire mission. I had a hard time walking with it. Each step, I found myself staggering and swaying like a drunk. At last, I figured out a way to carry it. I had a nanite cable from the ship detach itself and wrap around my neck and shoulders. Using this expedient, I placed the bomb on my back. It rode on top of my generator, and I prayed the housing could take the weight.

I set off at a steady, laborious pace. My suit heaved and groaned. I had to use anti-grav repellers just to stay upright when I went over rough terrain. I couldn’t afford to overuse them, however. The power consumption was alarming enough as it was. I had only hours to go before I ran out of juice entirely.

The dome wasn’t far off, but it felt like miles. The gravity was so extreme, my body felt as if I was sagging, folding into myself. My muscles hung from my bones as if they wanted to fall off like overripe fruit. Each breath required a focused effort, and every step was an individual exercise. At first, I had to take breaks. Every ten to twenty steps, I had to stop and put my hands on my knees putting my head level with my heart. This let me think more clearly.

Internally, my body made adjustments after ten minutes or so passed. Maybe it was the work of the nanites or the microbes—I wasn’t really sure. But I could walk almost normally, albeit in slow-motion.

I figured that my body, with the armor, had to weigh around ten thousand pounds. Without the exoskeleton inside my suit, I would be helpless. As it was, the suit groaned and creaked. The power meter was going down with alarming speed, as well. Normally, these suits could keep you going for two or three days if you didn’t fire the laser much. But with the tremendous new load of weight, I doubted it was going to last more than two or three hours.

Deciding my armor was too heavy, I shed the outer plates. The exoskeleton
beneath was exposed, an interior layer of red and black materials that crawled with nanites. I felt like I could breathe again.

I considered going back and gathering my marines, having them shed their battle armor as I’d done, but I passed on the idea. There was no guarantee they could function under the
heavy Gs even without armor, and if that was the case I was just wasting time.

More importantly, without
our armor we weren’t really going to able to fight. My mission now was one of getting in and out as fast as possible. Hopefully, this could be done without being detected and overrun by enemy machines. Bringing more men to carry the bomb would only take more time and increase the odds of being found and slaughtered.

The exoskeleton was more protective than a simple
nanocloth suit, but much lighter than full armor plating, with my burden eased I pressed ahead as fast as I could travel.

I reached the dome in time and marched slowly inside. The experience of passing through the dome wall wasn’t unfamiliar to me. It was strangely quiet and blank inside the shell-like field itself, like walking through a velvety snowstorm at night. I could only hear my labored breathing, the hissing and clicking of my suit, and a few alarms beeping because we were now out of contact with the ship and the directional sensors weren’t operating.

I trudged steadily, blinded by the energy field. I counted steps and became concerned after I’d taken ten and still hadn’t reached the quiet interior of the dome. Was I lost? Was the interior filled with yet
more
force fields?

Not knowing the answers, I pushed away the questions and kept going. I’d reasoned that since the dome covered a larger area it must also be thicker, and I’d been right. When I’d gone three times as far as I’d ever had to go to cross a Macro dome, I reached the interior at last.

I stepped into a quiet, inner world. It was enclosed above by a perfectly smooth surface like milky glass. Inside, the dim landscape stretched away in an arc in front of me. Miles of land were enclosed.

The horrid gravity was the sole constant of my existence as I kept walking. I wanted to rest, but I knew I didn’t have much time. About a half-mile in, I found an obstacle. It was a vertical wall that curved away in both directions.

I frowned. Why would the Macros build a wall inside here? Then, I thought I knew the genius of it. On a normal world, a wall meant nothing to a Star Force marine in his full kit. I could fly over it, climb it or burn my way through it, but not here in this high-gravity environment. Here, I would have to use too much power to damage the wall, and I weighed too much to climb or fly over it.

Given no choice, I began walking around the wall. It curved, just as the dome did. The surface of it looked strange to me as if I’d seen this mottled dark stone before. Not knowing why, I kept going.

I knew this might be the end of my mission. If the wall went all the way around, I guessed I could set off the bomb on the outside of it, but I wanted to be sure I got the factories. If it had an entrance, it might be guarded by enemy machines, and they were sure to discover me at the gates. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t seen the machines yet, and I hadn’t been detected. They hadn’t covered this zone outside their wall because they didn’t need to.

When I finally reached the end of the wall, I was struck by a new mystery. The end wasn’t smooth or natural-looking. It was a crumbling, broken ruin. Even more surprising for something the Macros had built, it just stopped, and the land was open afterward for as far as my eyes could see.

I walked around this broken endpoint of the wall and examined the curved interior. It appeared to mirror the surface I’d seen from the outside.

That material…it still looked familiar to me. I stared at the wall frowning and dared to flip on my suit-lights and run the beams over it.

I shook myself and pressed onward. I was sure I’d be discovered soon. Now wasn’t the time to become distracted. I promised myself I’d send an exploration team down here later if we won this battle—if we didn’t, the answers to these riddles didn’t matter anyway.

When I’d reached what I thought might be the center of the area enclosed by the semi-circular wall, I found the Macro factories. There wasn’t just one but several of them. I counted eight in sight. They were hulking shapes that built everything the Macros produced. These factories were their mothers, their hive queens.

I looked, but didn’t see any Macro workers around. I wondered briefly what was feeding the factories and what they were producing. But I soon realized I didn’t care. The workers were busy elsewhere, and while they were away, I was going to destroy their queens.