The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (23 page)

-25-

The data pouring in from the probes painted a strange picture. The image of the system on the far side of this ring was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. We couldn’t see the whole system as we’d sent the probes in and out so quickly, giving us just a glimpse.

There were planets—but no sun.
As a result, the planets were only drifting, frozen hulks, icy blocks of stone and minerals in more or less spherical shapes. In addition, a few of these forlorn worlds had been broken up into asteroid belts due to some past calamity.

“We didn’t leave the probes over there for long, but they picked up a fair amount of data,” Jasmine said. “We can be certain there isn’t
a normal star system on the far side of this ring. There’s only wreckage with a lot of ionization and debris.”

Newcome stared at the images that swam into being on our screens with alarm. “Could Marvin’s bomb have been so powerful that it destroyed a star system?” he asked.

The thought had occurred to me. I was just as alarmed as Newcome was, but I laughed off his suggestion.

“We can’t have put out a
star!
” I said. “No, I think this is the dark place that was always on the far side of this ring. This is a dead system of planets with a dead star in the center. Is there any strong gravitational force that could have been the star? Maybe there was one that went nova long ago and left a dwarf core behind?”

They tapped and analyzed. I could tell my nerds were baffled.

“Maybe,” Jasmine said at last. “There is a gravitational force. It is something bigger than Jupiter but much smaller than a viable sun. It is too small by half to exert the gravitational pull to cause fusion in the core. In other words, it’s too small to ignite and become a star.”

“Place it,” I said, looking at the shadowy contacts. “Then light it up on the boards as if it
was a sun.”

After she did so, everything became clear. The gravity well we’d detected was indeed at the center of this grouping of cold planetoids.
At the center of the blacked-out system was a large object that didn’t give off heat. It had to be a burned-out star.

“Just as I thought,” I said. “It was a sun once, but now it’s burned out, or blown up, or whatever.”

“Is it possible it’s a neutron star?” Newcome asked.

Jasmine shook her head. “Insufficient mass.”

“Looks like we’ve discovered something new,” I said. “Whatever we call it, there are still planets circling around this dead star, providing something for the Macros to mine. They aren’t afraid of the dark.”

“Such a lonely place,” Jasmine said, staring at it. “The chemical signatures I’m reading indicate the star once burned, but this is a dead system. It will be like walking through a graveyard to travel through it.”

“What about defenses?” I demanded. “What do the Macros have?”

“The probes didn’t report anything dangerous. There was a lot of debris around the ring with high metallic content but nothing that poses more than a navigational hazard.”

“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “High metallic content you say? I bet they had a trap set up. Maybe something like the laser firing-squad Crow set up on the Sol ring but more intense. The trap had been destroying our probes for years, but now Marvin’s bomb took it out.”

I grabbed hold of my com-link and opened the general command channel. Instantly, I was put in contact with every commander in the fleet.

“All ahead full!” I shouted. “Execute Invasion Plan Alpha immediately.”

I closed the channel. Newcome and Jasmine looked alarmed.

“Sir?” Newcome said, speaking up first. “Don’t you think we should send in another set of probes? If they took a little longer to look around, say ten or twenty minutes this time—”

“No,” I said. “Let’s cross into their system before the enemy can get on their feet and mount an effective defense. The door is open, and I’m not going to let them slam it closed again.”

Everyone scrambled to obey my orders. The ring couldn’t handle the entire fleet at once, of course. Fighters swarmed in, followed by a long line of cruisers. After that, if disaster didn’t strike the initial invaders, the carriers, transports and support ships would join them on the far side.

We watched our fleet surge forward and thin out into a column of ships. The first entered and vanished. I felt my guts churn. Heading into the unknown was always the hardest part of a space battle for me. I preferred to be in the thick of it with an enemy in my sights. Our battleship was still on the wrong side of the ring and would remain so for quite some time while waiting its turn to wriggle through into enemy territory.

I felt helpless and uncertain, cut off from a growing portion of my fleet. If things were going badly, I wouldn’t be able to fix anything.

“Newcome,” I said, “you have command of this side of the invasion force. I’m taking a pinnace to the
Andoria
. I’m going through right now.”

The
Andoria
was a cruiser of our latest type. It was big, sleek and deadly. It was also about to slip through the ring. If I transferred to that ship, I’d be in the system a full hour before the carrier would finally wallow through.

I almost made it to the airlock when Jasmine caught up with me.

“Wow,” I said, laughing, “you sure move fast for a pregnant lady.”

“Shh!” she shushed me, putting a finger to my lips and frowning. “That’s a secret! And besides, I’m a nanotized, barely-pregnant lady.”

I went for a good-bye kiss, but she dodged me.

“Why are you doing this, Kyle?”

“I can’t stand waiting. The whole battle could play out on the far side of this ring while I’m sitting in the caboose. I should never have declared my flagship as one of the last in the line.”

She looked down and glowered at my chest.

“What?” I asked. But I knew the answer before she spoke.

“I don’t want you to go. That system looks creepy—dead. It’s a graveyard.”

“Yeah, so? Stars go nova all the time.”

She shook her head. “Not like that. It looks strange. I’ve seen astronomical imagery of a thousand systems. There should be a dust cloud if there was a stellar explosion, and a lot of radiation, too. We aren’t reading any of that.”

“What do you think it is, then?”

“It is a dead system, yes, but what if it experienced a new kind of calamity: something that sheared most of the mass of their sun away? Or what if the trap you spoke of, the weapons system that’s been destroying our probes, is far stranger than we understand it to be?”

I laughed and hugged her. “That’s crazy. Stop worrying. I know you’re feeling paranoid right now, that’s normal in your condition. Don’t worry, I won’t die or vanish. I’m going to be fine. Now, get back up to the bridge and command your ship. Newcome needs you.”

I kissed the top of her head and entered the airlock. She didn’t go up to the bridge, however. She pressed up against the tiny circular window and stared into the airlock, watching me. I did my best to smile and wave and pretend I was as happy and carefree as the proverbial clam.

But I wasn’t. Even as I rode over to
Andoria
, I felt the same sort of disquiet Jasmine was obviously feeling. I had to wonder if I’d just said goodbye to her for the last time.

It was this newly discovered system. It
was
alien, in an entirely new way. A school of dead planets circling an equally dead larger carcass in the center, a mass that had to have once been a shining star. Strange.

Had those worlds been alive with people living on them at one time? Perhaps biotic species we’d never meet? Were they erased from time and history as thoroughly as it was possible to be?

That idea was upsetting me. I knew the others were thinking about it, too. We weren’t just feeling mid-mission combat jitters. We were encountering the unknown, and like humans throughout time, we didn’t like it.

The captain of
Andoria
was surprised to see me, to put it mildly. But she made no complaints and gave me no attitude.

Captain Nomura was one of my better captains, a stern type who ran her ship tightly. She wasn’t tall, but she had broad shoulders and breasts that jutted out from her uniform like apples because she held herself so rigidly. Her black hair had been trimmed almost as short as a jarhead. Her face was attractive despite a complete lack of makeup.

Nomura led me personally up to the bridge. To my credit, I managed not to study her trim figure too closely. People were watching.

“Colonel on the Bridge!” shouted a marine at the hatch.

A dozen people snapped salutes to me. I wasn’t accustomed to this, especially not when we were in a combat zone. Maybe the captain had ordered them to snap to attention when I boarded. Whatever the case, I saluted in return and moved directly to the command table.

Everyone on the bridge acted like they had a broomstick for a spine, and there wasn’t a smile to be had when they greeted me. I did my best not to notice. I allowed captains to run their ships the way they wanted within Star Force regs. It was a tradition that dated back to our formation as an organization.

“Captain Nomura,” I said, addressing the zealous commander. “Is your ship in good condition?”

“It’s in flawless operating condition, sir,” she said.

Her response was a little intense, and I didn’t know her that well, so I simply nodded. I might have chuckled at anyone else. I’d heard she didn’t have much of a sense of humor, and I could see the rumors were correct. The woman rarely even blinked her large, dark eyes.

“When do we go through the ring?” I asked.

She glanced at her table. I saw her eyes fix on a timer that had been placed in one corner.

“We have less than two minutes to go, Colonel. May I say it’s an honor to serve in your presence. I hope my crew doesn’t disappoint you.”

“Uh, I’m sure they’ll do fine.”

No one else said a word. I figured they didn’t dare to, that talking unnecessarily on this bridge wasn’t allowed.

In the back of my mind, I was beginning to feel a little sorry for her crew, but I didn’t say anything. The ring loomed closer on the screens, and I braced myself. Sure, all the reports said this was going to be like a walk in the park…but I never fully trusted probes and scouts. Sometimes an enemy held back their surprises until the cat was fully ensconced in the bag. I was still worried this was one of those times.

-26-

We crossed into the dead system without incident. I found it strange to be in a region of space where there was no sun. I’d never been out in the empty void of velvet darkness that makes up most of the universe. There was
nothing
out here other than the few floating chunks of burnt flotsam: Ex-planets without day, existing in perpetual night. Their icy crusts of frozen methane were richly pocketed with minerals, we could detect that, but we still hadn’t found our enemy.

I commandeered
Andoria’s
command table. Captain Nomura’s face was a mask of stone. I couldn’t tell if she was pissed about my sudden arrival or not—but then, I didn’t really care.

“I understand this ring isn’t being jammed,” I said. “Link me up with central command.”

Nomura worked the table like a master. I was impressed. She was almost as fast and effective as Jasmine.

One of the reasons I’d chosen to go through the ring on
Andoria
was because it had a ring-communications system aboard. Most of our ships weren’t capable of inter-system com-links.

The channel to
Potemkin
opened. In one corner of the screen, I now saw Jasmine’s face. She was running her own table on her own ship. Newcome was at her side.

“We haven’t encountered the enemy yet, Captain Sarin,” I reported.

“We’ve received the same report from several sources so far,” she replied. “No contact made. But we do have a fix on the new system’s navigational position, sir.”

I looked at her, and I could tell there was concern in her eyes. They were big, and dark, like the eyes of someone who knows the worst is true.

“Give it to me,” I said. “Where are we?”

“Can I remotely link to your table?”

“Nomura?” I asked.

She tapped rapidly. Her fingers were a blur, but she never said a word.
The words
connection made
appeared on my table.

“I think we’re synched now, Captain Sarin,” I said. “Show me something.”

My screen shifted under my hands. It now showed a regional star map. Seen top-down from a point of view hanging above the Milky Way, a yellow box appeared far out on the disk of the galaxy. It zoomed in with sickening speed.

“It looks like you’re taking me to local space,” I said.

“Yes. It appears Marvin was correct.”

I nodded, unsurprised.

“We’re at the predicted origin point of the Macro fleet heading to Earth. See this line?”

A red line appeared with an arrowhead at one end. It looked like a spearhead aimed at Earth.

“That’s the path of the Macro invasion fleet that’s flying along with their comets. We weren’t sure how far they’d come, but it turns out they launched from this system, which is actually quite close to us in relative terms. This dead system is less than a light year from Earth.”

“I’m surprised our astronomers never spotted this collection of dead rocks.”

“We have tracked a few of the larger ones in the past, but these planetoids are so far out, so black and cold, we never knew they were here.”

I looked over her data. Really, it wasn’t hard to verify. Just looking at the local constellations and the neighboring stars would have been enough for any navigator. Orion still looked like Orion and the Big Dipper was clear in the sky. We were very close to home.

“If this is their base, where are their factories?” I asked in frustration. “There’s nothing here. Nothing we can see, anyway. Every planet we’ve scanned shows no movement, no factories, no crawling miners. I don’t get it.”

“They’ve hidden before,” Newcome interjected, his face appearing on screen next to Jasmine’s.

Jasmine and I both frowned on our separate ends of the connection.

“I know, I know,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t part of Star Force back then. I didn’t fight the Macros in your early campaigns, but I’ve read all of your logs. I know your reports inside and out, Colonel.”

It was my turn to look startled. I hadn’t realized anyone had bothered. Of course, I had become famous over time…some would say infamous. Somebody must have cared what I was doing over the years.

“All right,” I said, trying not to sound flattered, “what do my reports tell you about this situation?”

“They’re hiding somewhere, just the way they did under their domes at the bottom of the sea on Earth, or as they did when they camped on the middle-zone Eden worlds. They’re building up under their protective domes. We have to find their factories and root them out.”

I nodded thoughtfully and turned to the map again. There were a lot of hiding places out here. We’d already discovered no less than sixty-three bodies as large as the Moon or larger. Any of them could house a hidden base as Newcome suggested. Or they all might.

“Look for rings, too,” I said. “I know we haven’t found any yet, but they should be here. I don’t think this is the end of the line. The ancient aliens the Blues spoke of linked more than seven systems as I understand it. I’ve been told as many as two hundred systems were linked by their interstellar highway. There have to be more rings.”

“We’re under a time constraint, Colonel,” Jasmine pointed out. “No more than a month’s time.”

“I’m well aware of that, Captain, but I disagree with you on the timing. We have less than two weeks to clean this up. After that, I want to return to Earth and set up our defenses for the final battle.”

“Where do we start?” asked Jasmine, staring at the floating contacts representing moons and planets. On the screen, there were red circles surrounding each body. Most were so dark that, without that circle, you wouldn’t even notice them.

The red circles all rotated around the central large circle, which apparently had once been the system’s star. Around many of the middle-sized rocks were smaller ones—former moons. A few others drifted far out in large, swinging orbits. These were asteroids and comets.

“So damned many of them…” I said. “We’ll have to split up the fleet.”

Newcome made a choking sound.

“Do you have something to add, Admiral?” I asked. I tapped at the portion of the console that currently showed Jasmine’s face as she worked on the table remotely. Tapping at the image caused a camera to edge to her right, showing Newcome’s red face and white puffs of hair.

“Nothing, sir,” he said, looking into the camera nervously.

I stared at him sternly for a moment during which time he avoided my eye.

“For the record,” I said, “I don’t like splitting up any more than you do. But we can’t just go en masse to each rock in this burnt out system and hope to find something. It would take a year or more to visit them all. We have to get this over with, even if the lucky force that finds the enemy might have a hard time of it.”

“Very well, sir.”

I returned the camera to its home position, where it focused on Jasmine.

“Jasmine, what if we set up a task force around each carrier? We have fifteen carriers out here. Would fifteen search groups get through all the planets, moons and rocks out here in a reasonable amount of time?”

I was guesstimating on my own that the answer was “no”. But Jasmine did a much more thorough job. She brought up a script and ran the numbers. Pathing through the system over and over with a variety of solutions, she sent an expanding set of imaginary fleets jumping from world to world in a linked series of green lines.

We eyed the displayed results together dubiously.

“I don’t think we could do it with only fifteen search groups, Colonel,” she said. “See? By the time the Macro fleet reached Earth, we’ll have only visited three quarters of the ninety-odd contacts we’ve found so far.”

“Ninety? What happened to sixty-three?”

She tapped, and an indicator appeared to her upper left that tracked the red. There did seem to be more contacts all the time. Every minute or so, our sensors detected another dark rock out there floating around.

“Are you getting that data now, sir?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, trying not to let my disappointment come out in my voice. I think I failed. “How much time did you allot for searching each rock?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Oh. I didn’t. The estimates you see account for flight times only.”

I shook my head. I’d been thinking about ordering fast searches, but this simply wasn’t going to work.

“Smaller task forces then,” I said.

“Sir!” Newcome interrupted.

The software focused on his face.

“Talk to me, Admiral.”

“We can’t expose the carriers. Splitting our forces into fifteen squadrons is questionable, but breaking the carrier groups down and supplying them with only a few escorts each…it’s not wise, sir.”

“Objection noted, Admiral,” I said. “How about this: we’ll put three cruisers into each group. We’ll leave the carriers, transports and support vessels back at the ring.”

Newcome made an odd sound.

“Did I step on your foot, Admiral?”

“No, sir—I don’t think that’s possible.”

I grinned. He and I were thousands of miles apart, and I wasn’t sure if his response was meant to be funny, but I still found it amusing.

“Don’t worry so much, man. Look on the bright side: you’ll get your own command out of this. Jasmine will stay with the carrier, and you’ll take your three cruisers for a joy ride.
Bon voyage
.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” he said weakly.

“Is that enough search parties for you, Jasmine?” I asked.

She reran her program. Dozens of green lines leapt out, spreading like a tree from our position across the dead system.

She nodded. “That will do it. We’ll have over a hundred search groups. Provided we don’t find ourselves surprised by an organized force, we should be able to cover the entire system within ten days.”

I nodded. “Good. If we do run into an organized force, we’ll have achieved our objective anyway. Your paths are coming in now. It looks like we’ll have time to spare. Group up the ships, and select the most experienced captain in each group as the task force commander. Give everyone a list of planets to hit. I want this show on the road within an hour after we get the last ship into the system.”

“Sir?” Newcome asked. “Would it be possible to withdraw our carriers and transports entirely? Do they really need to be on this side of the ring?”

“Yeah, they do. If the enemy does spring a trap on us, you watch, they’ll jam that ring first thing. Then we’ll be separated from one another and out of contact. I don’t want to give them that kind of advantage.”

“Very good, sir.”

I knew he didn’t think it was “very good”. In fact, he hated everything about my plan. But that was just too damned bad. We were going to search this system in record time, find the Macros that had to be hiding here somewhere, flush them out and destroy them. I hadn’t come all the way out here just to turn around and run home.

Marvin contacted me a few minutes later. I knew he wanted to come along for the ride to explore a new system, but I had different plans.

“Marvin, I have a new assignment for you,” I told him.

“I will not disappoint you, Colonel Riggs,” he said eagerly. “I’ve heard about these search groups, and I’d welcome the chance to perform as a one-robot team.”

I felt a bit bad as he’d contributed so much to the success of our mission so far, and in some ways he deserved the chance to stay and explore, but I couldn’t afford to indulge his curiosity now. We were playing a deadly game with the Macros, and every day counted.

“I’m sending you back to Earth,” I said, trying to make it sound like a good thing. “And I’m sending Hoon with you. You can drop him off on Eden-6. Admiral Newcome was right when he said we couldn’t take a civilian into a war zone.

“Why are you doing this, Colonel?”

“Worried you’ll miss something?” I asked. “Don’t be. It looks to me like there’s not much to investigate out here.”

“On the contrary, Colonel—”

“Marvin,” I said. “I need you back home. Earth needs you. We have to build up advanced weaponry to protect the homeworld. I’m asking you to do this as a friend. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, Colonel Riggs. I understand.”

I took in a deep breath and relaxed.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll see you when we get back. After the Macro fleet reaches Earth, and we defeat them, you can come out here and inspect every rock if you want to.”

“I see. Have a good trip, Colonel.”

And that was that. I watched as he rigged up a small transport vessel and exited the system going back toward Earth. I was pleased that things had gone my way so easily, and I began organizing the search of this inhospitable collection of rocks.

* * *

A week of fruitless searching passed. By the end of it, every day had become painful to me. I was as frustrated as the search crews.

As a side benefit however, I became more familiar with Nomura. She wasn’t quite the cold fish I’d thought her to be. She could even crack a joke now and then—but only if the rest of her crew wasn’t listening.