The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (15 page)

-
16-

Our task force glided through the ring and into friendly space. I called a timeout on the bridge, releasing the staffers who’d been on duty for back-to-back shifts. Everyone sighed in relief. There was still plenty to do, of course. The hull had to be patched, and the wounded had to be tended to, but the immediate danger was over.

I let
the sleepless, ticking nanites tend to the small stuff. While they cleaned up the mess the battle had left in its wake, I headed toward my quarters lost in thought.

I eyed the bunk I shared with Jasmine but walked around it and went to the single window instead. The window in my quarters was a real one. This old Imperial ship still had vestiges of the past, and this was one of the ones I liked. Despite the inefficiency in terms of lost heat and imperfect viewing, nothing could fully replace the human eye staring through a pane of glass.

I knew that my engineering people would scoff at that sentiment. Often, a high-resolution screen gave a better idea of what was outside a ship, but a real window provided me with a certain grounded feeling. It was an unplanned, unaltered view of the universe.

I tapped the panel below the small, angular window, and the blast shield outside slid away. The glass was a little frosty with condensation, but I could see space with my own eyes. To the left was Eden, a cheery yellow star. It looked distant and small from our position out near the battle station, but I was still happy to see it. Close at hand was Welter Station in all its bristling glory. In many ways, I still considered the station to be my finest defensive achievement. Even if all four hundred Macro ships had made it through the nearby ring and entered local space here, I felt confident that the station’s guns would have destroyed them all.

Below us, slipping away almost as quickly as the station, was Hel, a cold, unforgiving rock. It was the twenty-first planet in the star system and the farthest from the yellow sun.

As always, I felt better just knowing I was in the Eden System. These days it felt like home to me—maybe even more than Earth itself
did.

In my mind, I immediately took that thought back. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Earth, it was that I loved the
old
Earth, the world I’d grown up on. That Earth seemed like a distant memory now. I missed my farm and the quiet countryside. I ached for blue skies and fresh winds. No voices had been buzzing in my helmet or kissing-up to me in the old days—with the possible exception of a few desperate students who’d missed their final exams.

Today, I was no longer a regular guy living his life. When I was on Earth, I felt weighed down with vast responsibilities.

“What are you thinking about?” Jasmine asked.

I turned and looked down. She had appeared at my side and now stood watching my face. She had entered the room so quietly, I hadn’t even known she was there.

“I’m having a rare philosophical episode,” I said.

She looked worried for a moment, furrowing her brow. “That doesn’t sound like you. Were you hit on the head or something?”

I laughed out loud, and she smiled. I wasn’t even sure whether or not she was serious, but it didn’t matter.

“It looks like this adventure is over,” she said, still watching me.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “We sent in the probe, and it didn’t work. But it did trigger a Macro attack. Everything is pretty much the way it was before we came out here.”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. We have a fix on a point in space. There’s something out there, something hiding in a deep void, less than a light year from Earth. We can’t rest with the machines sitting so close.”

Her face darkened, and she stepped around my body until she was in front of me, between my chest and the frosty window.

“You said Marvin had made a mistake,” she said. “And that they couldn’t be out there.”

I shrugged. “I say a lot of things. I didn’t want people to be distracted. I wanted everyone to focus on the battle.”

“You lied?”

“Sort of. It does seem hard to believe the Macros could be in the middle of nowhere without a star system—but it makes a certain kind of sense, too, doesn’t it? They’ve been quiet for so long. What have they been doing?”

“Building ships and improving their technology so they could beat us the next time.”

I nodded. “Yes, that, and something else, too.”

“What?”

“I think they’ve been watching us, staring at us with their cold, electronic eyes. They’ve been sitting out there in the dark, studying us and trying to figure out how to beat us. That’s why their ships were faster this time. Their assault-missiles were full of countermeasures. Even their marines were different. They’ve upgraded them with much better forward armor. They would have won today if Marvin hadn’t trumped them with his gravity weapon.”

Jasmine seemed not to like any of this talk. She had her head against my chest now. That was unusual for her. She rarely seemed to need comforting of any kind. I touched her hair lightly and rested my hand on her back. I didn’t hug her. Sometimes when I hugged a girl it knocked the wind out of her. I didn’t want to take the chance.

“I thought it was over,” she said, almost accusingly.

“I’m sorry if I misled you, but we can’t let our guard down. Even if Marvin is wrong, we have to act as if the intel is good. We can’t afford to do nothing. What’s the problem, anyway?”

“I don’t want you to do what you’re going to do next,” she said.

“What am I going to do?”

“Go out there. Lead a fleet to destroy them in the dark between the stars.”

I looked down at Jasmine. Her hair was black—so black that the stars outside created a white reflective sheen on the top of her head.

“You know me too well,” I said.

She didn’t answer because we both knew she’d guessed my thoughts. I had been pondering my next move, and she was right: I was going to have to build a fleet and fly out there. If the Macros were sitting in the sky watching us like owls watching mice in the dark, we had to remove them. I had to find their nest and destroy them all.

“Send someone else,” she said suddenly. “Send Miklos, or Newcome. They can spend a year chasing shadows in the void.”

“I just might do that,” I said.

She looked up at me, studying my face. Then she frowned. “You’re lying. I know why Sandra kicked you so often. You’re a good liar, but eventually people catch on.”

This sort of talk wasn’t like Jasmine. I frowned and tried to focus on her. She wasn’t usually this emotional and possessive.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

She turned away, facing the stars. She looked out the window while I watched her.

“I didn’t want to tell you this way, but I guess I have to.”

“Tell me what?”

“I’m going to have a baby—your baby.”

I was taking in a breath when she said this, and my lungs froze-up. I couldn’t suck in any more air, nor could I release what I had. I wanted to cough—or maybe gag—but I didn’t. I just froze.

Jasmine turned around slowly to face me. I tried to change the shocked look on my face, I swear I did. I tried to rip my cheek muscles upward, forcing a smile. But it wasn’t working fast enough.

She studied me, her eyes flicking over my features.

She put her hand to her face and spun quickly back to the window. I knew I’d blown it.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“You’re clearly not pleased by this news.”

I put a hand on her shoulder, but she squirmed away.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Listen,” I said as gently as I could, “you just took me by surprise. It’s not like we’re married and trying to get you pregnant.”

“You try all the time.”

I allowed myself a quick eye-roll behind her back.

“Yeah, yeah…I know I’m involved here. But there is such a thing as contraceptives. Were they not working, or…?”

“That’s all you want to ask about? I say I’m pregnant, and you want to talk about birth control?”

“Whoa! Let’s not even go there. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just surprised.”

“We were living together on Earth,” she said. “The war seemed like it was over. I stopped taking the pill a while ago, and I—I shouldn’t have done that. Not without asking.”

I knew I had every right to be mad. I knew Jasmine had pulled a fast one. But, as I was getting over the initial shock, I could see how this might not be so bad. It wasn’t like I was poor or anything. Technically, I was Earth’s ruling party of one. I could have all the kids I wanted. What the hell difference did it make?

“You’re angry with me,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

“You know what?” I said suddenly. “I’m finally getting my head around this. I think this is going to work out. I had kids once, you know. I loved them, but they didn’t survive the first day the machines came to Earth. Hell, if I’m ever going to rebuild a family, I might as well get started.”

She turned around and looked at me, with tears on her cheeks. “Really?”

“Yeah…sure, why not?”

“You aren’t just saying that? You aren’t going to have me shot or spaced or something?”

For the first time, I felt angry. “I’m not Crow. Why do people worry about things like that around me?”

“Because you have the power to do them if you want to. Not even the police could save me. No courts can convict you of anything. You’re like some kind of pharaoh.”

I laughed. “Hardly. I’m Colonel Kyle Riggs, and I don’t intend to change.

Jasmine’s eyes were studying me again. She wiped away her tears and uncrossed her arms. “I’m really sorry for springing this on you. It was—it’s not like me. I don’t know why I did it.”

“How old are you?” I asked innocently.

“Thirty-three,” she said. “Why?”

“No reason,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile. I managed to do it right this time without even a hint of worry in my eyes. She’d never had children, and her body knew her time was running out, even if she didn’t. I forced myself into my most understanding mood.

We hugged and kissed and eventually made love. For some reason, being pregnant seemed to light a fire in Jasmine. It was good, and afterward we talked quietly in the dark, making plans.

I didn’t ask her to marry me. Should I have? I’m not sure. I’d been with her for months. We were a good thing together. But marriage…? Yeah, maybe someday. It could go that way. But I wasn’t about to just jump into that in an emotional moment. I had to think it over. It had to be my idea.

I knew in my heart she wouldn’t hesitate to say yes. Not for a second. But she didn’t even bring it up. Maybe she didn’t want to push her luck after getting a pass on the whole pregnancy thing.

As we cruised through space toward Earth, ships passed us going the other way. I’d ordered the fleet to come out here to the border systems in case the Macros had a few more surprises coming. Fleet wasn’t going to be caught with their collective pants down again. We’d wait for them at the ring, and if they poked out a nose we’d cut it off. If they came through in force, the fleet had orders to withdraw to the next ring, the one that led to Eden.

There, with Welter Station at their backs, they’d make their stand. It was the best position we had. We would stop them there or die out as a species. It was that simple, really.

It occurred to me that I should have set up for this before performing Marvin’s experiment, but we’d all been lulled. Nothing had come from the Macros for so long, we’d become complacent about the danger.

I’d heard that monkeys, if left in the vicinity with a stuffed tiger or crocodile, would at first scream and run. But soon, when it did nothing, they’d come back and taunt it. Getting braver with each passing hour, they would eventually attack it, urinate on it and even make it into a favorite bench to sit upon.

That was how I’d handled the Macros. They’d lain still for so long, they’d become a joke. But just as in the case of the monkeys, I knew that if life suddenly came back to those eyes and those jaws snapped shut on my tail, I was dead meat.

Why do we love to taunt deadly predators when they appear to be helpless? I don’t know. It’s just in us, I guess.

-17-

Marvin caught up with our fleet before we reached Earth, but he didn’t say much to me before we reached home. I thought maybe he was ducking low for some reason. I knew that he’d been pretty sneaky in his handling of the Macro ships. He probably could have started firing earlier, but he’d wanted to make sure they were past his position. He’d attempted to cover his own butt first—then worried about saving ours.

Marvin himself was a valuable asset. I had to admit, I would risk our fleet to make sure he survived a battle. I’d often thought privately that in the harsh calculus of war, Marvin was worth an entire fleet—maybe even an allied world. Losing him might mean we’d lose this war in the end, at some future point when we needed a technical miracle and there wasn’t one to be had.

So I didn’t order him to explain himself. I didn’t remove his tentacles, or even yell at him. I
ignored him, when possible, and spoke to him politely when I needed to.

After a while, he became braver and began attending staff meetings again. He soon became engaged in our discussions.

We were planning our next move, and the decisions weren’t easy ones. Jasmine, Newcome, Marvin and I were the top people in the room, and that was enough. Some commanders liked windy meetings with dozens of people presenting their views and experts who could be consulted if called upon. I preferred smaller groups—no more than five or six—and everyone could say whatever they wanted. When real decisions had to be made, I wanted diverse views—even if I didn’t listen to them in the end.

We were in orbit over Earth, and I knew my people were anxious to get off the ship and back down to their comfortable offices, but I had no intention of allowing that. The last time I’d spent any amount of time in my office, someone had blown it up. I felt relatively safe and in charge while sitting up in space.

Newcome was full of ideas today. He wanted to build a giant fleet, of course. He was as bad as Miklos on that topic. Neither of them would ever see enough ships in Earth’s skies.

“There isn’t any choice, really,” he concluded, using exactly the same words he’d used to begin his speech. “We have to build ships. More ships than we’d ever expected to build. All other activity must stop.”

I frowned briefly. “All other activity? You mean we shouldn’t build up our ground forces or our defensive batteries on the Moon?”

“A few side projects might be worthy of consideration, but with very few exceptions, I think we must build nothing but ships. All our economic activity—certainly, all our Nano-factory output—must go into the fleet.”

“That seems a little extreme,” Jasmine said. “We don’t even know if they’re really coming yet.”

“How do you feel about another test?” I asked Newcome. “Another run out to the Thor System to fire off one more probe? Shouldn’t we double-check Marvin’s results?”

For the first time in ten minutes or more, Marvin shifted one of his cameras to me. He’d been watching Admiral Newcome when the old blowhard had started his pitch, but when it became long-winded and dull, his attention had drifted. Surprisingly, the newest object of Marvin’s scrutiny was Jasmine. He had as many as seven cameras watching her, and a few more floating around under the table. I’d checked.

Could he
know
she was pregnant? He wasn’t a dog who could supposedly sniff out such things. She wasn’t showing yet, either. It was only her second month in the first trimester—or was it the third month?

“Did you get that, Colonel?” Newcome asked.

I sucked in a breath and looked away from Marvin’s roving cameras. I turned back to Newcome, who must have asked me a question. Everyone was staring at me expectantly.

“That’s a good point, Admiral,” I said forcefully. “An
excellent
point.”

He frowned. “What exactly do you mean—”

“I
mean
,” I said loudly, “that if the enemy is out there festering and building up, and if we can’t get to them through the ring, we’ll have to fly to their lair directly and root them out. That does mean we’ll have to build a lot of ships.”

Newcome beamed.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “we can’t afford to do that.”

His face fell.

“Why not?”

Miklos cleared his throat. I looked at him and nodded.

“Because we can’t take the risk,” Miklos said.

“What risk?” asked Newcome.

Miklos frowned. “I would like to follow your plan, Admiral, really I would. But let us consider the possibilities. The enemy might be out of ships. In that case, if we hit them right now we should win. But we can’t. Everything we’ve sent through the last ring in the chain has been destroyed.”

“I’m not talking about going through that trapped ring. I’m talking about flying out there—”

“Correct,” Miklos said. “Let me finish, please. You’re advocating a flight to their reported position in open space. But consider this: it will take at least six months to get there. Even if we launched today, the enemy would have time to rebuild, and they’d see us coming as well. Worse, we’re not entirely sure where the enemy is. There is a cluster of dark planets and chunks of ice in that region, and they could be on any one of them. We’d have to go out there and search around for them. They would see us coming, and our advantage would be lost.”

“I agree,” said Jasmine.

I glanced at her, as did Marvin. She looked smug. It took me a second to figure out why—then it hit me. If the monster fleet didn’t get built and sent into the dark, I couldn’t be on it and gone for months. I released a small sigh.

“What do you suggest, then?” Newcome asked. He frowned and looked bitter. I knew that he’d been counting on a big budget boost to play navy with. He liked building ships much more than he liked using them to attack—attacking had a way of blowing up ships, which decreased their number rather suddenly.

Everyone looked at me to see if I was about to say something, but I waved them on.

“Keep going, Miklos,” I said. “Lay it out for us.”

“As I was saying, we can’t take the chance. If we built and launched such a fleet, and the enemy has been watching us, they could simply choose the perfect moment to use the ring and attack us. Our fleet, heading into space directly, would be out of position and unable to return in time to defend Earth before they got here.”

Newcome sat back in defeat. “So, you’re suggesting we just build up and wait for their next attack? We can’t win that way.”

I leaned forward. “Newcome, you’re right about that. I want to thank you all for your insight and input. But I’ve become convinced that we only have one course of action: We have to break through the ring and take them out. We have to do it soon, before they have time to rebuild the fleet we destroyed.”

“We could have just stayed out there in the Thor System if we were going to have to fly back,” Jasmine said.

I glanced at her. Her mood had deflated again. I knew it was because we were talking about immediate, dangerous action. Was her judgment being clouded by her physical state? It was hard to tell with Jasmine. She played her cards tightly, even when her emotions were running high.

Marvin’s cameras were all over Jasmine and me. I knew he was watching us closely. He knew something was up. It was irritating.

“Marvin?” I asked. “Do you have something to add?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “I think I’ve been remiss. I’ve left an element out of this discussion that I didn’t realize until this meeting might be crucial.”

I frowned at him. “What are you talking about? What element?”

But I realized what he was going to say as soon as I’d asked him. He was going to bring up Jasmine’s pregnancy. No one else knew. Not even her doctors. Well, the nanites knew. They were the only doctors we really needed anymore, anyway.

Marvin was about to bring this up, I felt certain. He’d been looking at Jasmine oddly the entire meeting, even though she’d barely spoken. I felt a hot rush of embarrassment. Marvin was like a kid sometimes. He often said embarrassing things in public, airing the family laundry.

I tried to think of a way to head him off, but everyone was expecting his report now. How could I tell him to shut up without looking crazy?

“Prior to this meeting,” Marvin said, “I’d believed the recent enemy activity was obvious and that was what this meeting was going to be about. Now, I realize I’m in the position of having to enlighten everyone present.”

He’d lost me again. I now had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t think it was the baby—not this time. I felt a surge of irritation. How was I going to tell the world I was about to have a bastard child with one of my subordinate officers? It would have every news-vid drone humming worldwide. I wouldn’t be able to take a piss without causing a media sensation.

“Out with it, Marvin,” I said. “What strategic element are we missing?”

“Why, the comets, of course.”

“Comets? What comets?”

“They’re really just chunks of ice at this point. No trails yet, they’re too far out, but they’re coming in fast, and our telescopes picked them up two days ago. They’ll pass the orbit of Tyche in about a month.”

I frowned fiercely at him. “Put up a display or something.”

As if he’d prepared for this all day—and perhaps he had—he displayed a diagram on the table under our elbows. The surface we were all leaning on lit up, dropping its faux wood façade and turning into a starry background. At one end of the table was the Sun, under Newcome’s arms. He lifted them as if he might be burned by the glaring star.

Then Earth appeared, outlined and limed in green. That was about where Newcome’s coffee cup was resting. At the opposite end of the scene, several feet away, appeared a set of seven shadowy objects. They were dim but slightly brighter than the tabletop. Looking like shadowy stones, they spun slowly on their axes. I watched them twinkle with cold light. They were very close to Jasmine, who touched them and made spreading motions.

We zoomed in sickeningly. The image became distorted, and the objects transformed into spiky balls of dark ice.

“At this distance, the imagery is an approximation,” Marvin said smoothly. “Also, I’ve warped the scale somewhat to get everything onto this surface.”

“But you’re sure they’re out there?”

“Yes. Check any astronomical online log. They are the focus of intense interest in the community. Surely, you all peruse such sites with regularity?”

There were blank looks all around.

“Marvin, these aren’t ships,” I said. “Why do you think they’re a danger?”

“Two reasons—the second of which only came up today. First, it is very odd to have seven comets coming in from the Oort Cloud to the inner planets of this star system in such close proximity. It’s almost as if they’re flying in formation.”

“Yes,” said Jasmine, “but it could still be a natural phenomenon.”

“Certainly. That was my theory until I noticed this. I will now time-shift the objects back two days and project their paths.”

The image shifted. The objects did as well.

“They changed course…” Jasmine said.

“A slight correction. I think they will perform another such correction closer in, before impact.”

“Impact with Earth, you mean?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

We watched as he fiddled with the screen controls. I was stunned. The evidence was clear: the Macros were throwing chunks of ice at us—planet-killers.

I felt my heart begin to speed up as alarm spread through my body. How could we have missed something like this? How long would we have been in the dark if Marvin hadn’t spoken up today? The thought was chilling.

“Once I saw these inbound objects,” Marvin said, “it became very clear to me why the Macros sent so few ships through the Thor ring to attack us. If you subtract the length of time it took these comets to reach this position from their starting point, I would say they were launched approximately four months ago. Calculating the normal Macro rate of production for two months, the fleet we encountered in the Thor System would closely match the fleet they should have been able to build up in the intervening time.”

I glared at him, full of shock and anger. I didn’t like what I was hearing. None of us did.

“You’re saying that there’s a fleet involved here as well?” I demanded. “In addition to the comets?”

“Why yes, isn’t that clear?”

“But where are the ships, Marvin?” Jasmine asked. “Are they too far out and dark to see?”

“Probably. I expect them to be hiding behind the comets, undetectable, until they get closer.”

“How do you know they have ships out there at all?” demanded Newcome.

Marvin craned his cameras toward Newcome. “I employed a series of logical deductions. They sent only a few ships through the Thor ring to attack us, despite having had a very long period in which to build them. Where are the missing ships? Also, what is the source of thrust that is driving these comets? I would say the answer is clear: the ships are behind the comets and providing propulsion.”

I nodded. I found his logic inescapable. I looked around the table at a circle of long faces. Everyone else was thinking the same thing: There
had
to be a fleet out there behind the comets. It made too much sense.