The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (11 page)

“It is already decelerating,” Marvin said, craning cameras to observe our screens. “It was programmed to do so. Your coordinates are inaccurate.”

I frowned. “Why didn’t you correct them?”

A few cameras observed me and then drifted away. “Is that meant as sarcasm too, Colonel Riggs?”

My frown deepened. I thought hard. When dealing with Marvin, you had to stay on your toes. He was devious and always thinking ahead. Considering recent events, I thought I had the gist of it.

“I get it,” I said. “If we knew just where it was, it would be easier for us to abort it or destroy it—right?”

Cameras panned over me briefly, but I received no reply. This was Marvin’s equivalent of a shrug.

Newcome, watching this exchange, was aghast. He came over and attempted to pull me aside. I let him, although I was distracted.

“This robot—it has plans, sir. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. I worked for Crow, remember? I know a schemer when I see one—human or not.”

“Thanks for the newsflash, Newcome,” I said. “But I’m not in the dark about that. Marvin is always scheming. The trick is to figure out his plan before it’s too late. In this case, I think we’ve failed. This test is a launch. Lord only knows what will happen next.”

The probe flew on. Periodically, its displayed location and speed were corrected by Marvin. We couldn’t see it anymore. We had a fix on its trail and its supposed path, but we didn’t have hard data yet. It was too far ahead for that.

The probe was slowing down as it approached the ring, and I’d decided not to try to stop it. We were only an hour or so behind it after all. What could go wrong?

Marvin and Jasmine worked to rig-up a counter. Every time it updated, a pulsing tone sang in the background. It was an annoying sound—like the old moon missions used to have but quieter and more frequent.
Beep, beep, beep.

I knew that if I had to listen to that sound all day I’d go nuts.

But I didn’t have to, because suddenly it stopped...

Our probe had gone through the ring.

-11-

I’m not quite sure what we’d been expecting, but we were all gritting our teeth and squeezing our eyes almost shut the moment the probe plunged through the ring into the unknown. It vanished off our sensors and…nothing happened.

I heard a few sighs of relief. People’s bodies were relaxing, unwinding their tense muscles. I knew they were thinking it had all been a bust. There was no ultimate ka-boom at the end of this grand experiment. No calamity had struck us. The probe was lost, and we were safe. A happy ending.

But I wasn’t relaxing just yet. Instead, I watched Marvin.

Jasmine dared to catch my eye and give me a small smile. Maybe she was like the rest of them and thought the worst was over. But then, I indicated Marvin with a nod of my head, and she looked at him. Her smile, as small as it had been, faded away to nothing.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, leaning forward and frowning.

“He’s locked up. Remember the time we sent instructions to the ring on Yale? He looked like that then—like he was caught in some kind of endless loop.”

Marvin’s pose was an odd one even for him. His tentacles were poised in mid-air, and his cameras were frozen. Not a single lens was zooming in. One tentacle tip that hovered over the command table twitched. Up-down, up-down. It looked like he was tapping a finger to a fast, staccato beat.

“Sir,” Newcome said, approaching me. “There’s nothing coming back from the probe. We had a wire on it, but there’s no input at all.”

I glanced at him. He looked as relieved as the rest of them. I turned back and continued watching Marvin.

“What’s wrong with your robot?” Newcome asked.

“He’s getting something—or trying to. Don’t mess with him. This test cost the crust of an entire world. I’m not planning on running it twice.”

Everyone fell quiet, and we all stared at Marvin curiously. About ninety seconds later, he came to life again.

“Mission accomplished,” he said. His cameras roved, seeing our scrutiny. “You’ve all changed positions. Is something wrong?”

“You were frozen-up,” I told him. “Processing heavy input, I’d guess.”

“Yes…my chronometer is correcting itself. One-hundred and seventy-one seconds have passed. Odd, I didn’t even feel it. I put myself into a hard loop. I don’t usually do that as it’s dangerous.”

“Never mind the details now. What happened? You said the mission was accomplished.”

“Yes, I’ve pinpointed the direction of the ring’s exit point—or, at least, the position where the probe emerged. But I’m not one hundred percent certain as to the distance relative to our location. You see, I wasn’t able to triangulate with only a single receiver. The signal was very brief so there was no time to apply a parallax test. I was only able to get a directional fix, and I’m not certain as to the range.”

“But there is a system in that direction, right? A target?”

“No, and I find that troubling. There are only roving planetoids out there, no stars at all. Not unless the signal comes from quite far off. The uncertainty lies in the distance to the target, you see. Behind a cluster of planetoids, which is admittedly the likely source, there are other possible targets.”

I nodded. “Sounds like the direction leads toward the galactic center. Lots of target systems that way.”

“Incorrect assumption. The path leads out of the Milky Way galaxy entirely.”

I frowned. “Display it, Marvin. I’m not getting what you’re trying to say.”

Marvin moved to the command table and touched a set of virtual controls. The image he summoned appeared on the globular holotank above the table.

A depiction of our entire galaxy stretched across the tank. The galaxy was a spinning disk with three spiral arms. The center was like a hubcab and dense with stars. Far out along the rim of the galaxy a tiny green line shot upward. The line was no thicker than the thinnest of filaments, and it stretched even longer inside the holotank as I watched.

I examined the direction and zoomed in with my fingers. “But you said there were other possible systems behind the one you located. There’s nothing out there.”

“Untrue. There are two entire galaxies in the background that could conceivably be the source of the signal.”

“Other
galaxies
?” Sarin asked. “At what range? Ten million light years? That’s too far.”

“Within our frame of reference, it would seem to be,” Marvin said stubbornly, “but not theoretically. Just because we’ve only encountered rings that have led to relatively nearby destinations does not prove—”

“Marvin,” I interrupted him. “Why are you arguing about this? Are you trying to cover up a failure? Is this some kind of false lead?”

“Well, there is a sure way to discover the truth of that accusation, Colonel Riggs. In fact, you’ve brought the conversation around to the point I was trying get to. I thank you.”

“Hmm,” I said, eyeing him warily. “What do you want?”

“I propose a second test. We’ll move the receiver this time, allowing triangulation. We’ll know exactly where the signal originated.”

I huffed and almost laughed aloud. “So that’s it? You want to rip up a second world and fire another probe into enemy territory? Well, that isn’t going to happen.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Because your test looks like a colossal failure. You didn’t pinpoint a star system. Instead you got a random beam out into space. In fact, if I read this correctly, that vector goes right past the Solar System. It almost bisects the point in space we know as ‘Earth’.”

“A simplistic view, Colonel. The point is approximately
thirty thousand AU outside the Solar System. That’s more than half a light year.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t buy it. The signal goes nowhere, and the test was a dud. Face it, Marvin, the probe didn’t survive long enough to get a clear fix. That’s all. It could have happened to anyone.”

Marvin edged closer to me. His cameras swung wide, getting my profile. “If that is the case, a second probe would prove your theory.”

“No way. I’m beginning to think I was crazy to let you do this test in the first place. Each time we wriggle a ship through that ring, no matter how small, we run the risk of waking up the Macros. They’re well-documented to have defensive software, which triggers on the basis of proximity, overriding their other programming. I’m not going to run the chance a second time—especially if it means wrecking another habitable moon.”

“We’ve sent several probes through before without causing a response.”

“True, but I’m not interested in pushing our luck any further.”

I called a break then, ordering my command staff to stand down. I told them the test had been a bust over Marvin’s protests. An hour later, I was in the canteen downing my first beer of the day.

I had just opened up my second and poured it into an icy mug when my helmet began beeping. I glanced at it and put my headset on reluctantly.

“Riggs here.”

“Sir? You have to get up here. We have contacts.”

I stood up with a grunt, stretched and trotted up the passageway. When I got to the bridge, I saw the command table had lit up. A red warning beacon had appeared, and machines were beeping all around us.

“Is this what I think it is?” I asked, looking at the screens.

“Hold on—yes, sir, confirmed,” Jasmine said. “We have contacts. They’re coming through the ring now.”

We all stared in shock. Even Marvin, who snaked onto the deck a minute or so later, seemed surprised. After absorbing the data, he turned away from the screens and focused his cameras on the rest of us. I knew he was taking an emotional reading—analyzing our faces and body language.

I reached out and smashed down the camera that drifted near my left shoulder. “Did you get that, Marvin? Did you read my emotional state, there? How do you think I’m feeling right now? Take your best shot at analysis!”

“I would surmise that you are in a state of anger, Colonel.”

“Damn straight, I am.”

Enemy ships kept coming through. As Marvin’s test had gone off prematurely, we weren’t in position to meet them with immediate force.

“Why the hell—why are they reacting
this
time? We’ve sent probes through before, and they’ve destroyed them without moving.”

As we all watched, more red contacts slipped through the ring in front of us. It was hard to believe it was happening. We were still about an hour out from the ring.

“What are we up to?” I asked. “About fifty cruisers?”

“Seventy-eight, sir,” Jasmine reported. “They’re hitting our minefield now. They’ve lost twenty-nine ships, but they’re still coming.”

Marvin stayed quiet for once in his existence. He reeled in his damaged limb. The smashed camera at the end bumped and scraped on the floor over my boots.

“What did you make me
do
, robot?” I asked him.

“The attack upon my person was unwarranted but predictable. It is my understanding, however, that it is unethical to blame the victim in assault situations.”

I blinked at him for a second before I realized he was upset about his broken camera. “No, you crazy machine. I’m talking about triggering a Macro attack. How did I let you talk me into risking it?”

“There are several psychological theories I’ve been working on in that regard. I would say the most likely cause is straightforward: boredom.”

I pressed my lips together in anger. I hated it most of all when he was right. I
had
been bored, and I’d come out here to do something cool. As a result, I’d taken risks. I’d poked the stick into the hornets’ nest—and surprise, surprise—we were about to be stung.

They kept pouring in through the ring, and we made emergency preparations for battle. I scrambled my fighters and launched a barrage of missiles—but not all of them. I wanted to see what I was facing before committing us to battle.

They kept flowing out of the ring like a hose on full blast. Over the next half-hour, we planned and war-gamed. We had only a single carrier and about sixty support ships. It wasn’t enough. When the enemy force managed to punch through our minefield, their numbers had reached four hundred cruisers despite their losses. It was too late to stop them. They were already here.

I ordered us to reverse course and run for the ring that led to Eden. Maybe that was the moment they’d been waiting for. As soon as we reversed course, they unloaded.

“Colonel Riggs, we have new contacts…missiles, sir. That’s confirmed. About eight hundred of them.”

I nodded. “The enemy is firing now that they sense we’re trying to break off.”

A cloud of missiles appeared in a broad swath of space. Each enemy ship had fired two.

“All right,” I said. “Change the programming on our missiles. Order them to intercept that cloud and lay down a staggered impact pattern. If we can get to the enemy barrage before they spread out very far, we should halt this wave.”

Newcome looked at me. “Maybe we should try to strike with what we’ve launched. Our missiles are moving faster, they should get through and destroy a lot of ships.”

“Uncharacteristically brave of you, Admiral,” I said. “I approve, but I must overrule your suicidal suggestion.”

“Why is it…?” his question died as Jasmine reconfigured the map, showing the probable outcome of his idea. He nodded. “I see. We can’t stop eight hundred missiles. They’ll get through and damage the task force badly.”

“I’m predicting a thirty-eight percent loss from this initial barrage alone—that’s if they don’t throw everything at our carrier to knock it out.”

“That would be their wisest move,” I said. “Our fighters can dodge missiles, but they can’t fly forever out here without a base. They’d all be out of action before the rest of us reached the Eden ring. Speaking of which, have you alerted Welter Station, Captain Sarin?”

“Naturally, sir. They know what’s coming.”

“Good work,” I said, and turned a musing eye back toward the screens.

Around me, most of the staffers were in a near-panic. They were relaying instructions, organizing formations and gaming out scenarios. Mathematical projections were made for a dozen possible actions we could take, just in case I asked.

But I was in a more contemplative state of mind. As the top commander, it was my job to keep my eye on the bigger picture.

“They seem to have stopped coming through,” I said aloud. “Four hundred ships… Actually, I’m surprised they have so few. I would have thought they’d had enough time to build more. We’ve given them over a year to prepare for this day.”

I turned back to Captain Sarin, who was bringing all our data together. “We’ve projected their acceleration curve based on known Macro flight capabilities. They won’t be able to catch us.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll withdraw in good order to the Eden ring. With Welter Station at our back, we should be able to—”

“Sir,” interrupted Admiral Newcome. He’d been playing with his tablet and a smaller console to the side. “I think we have a problem.”

I turned to him, frowning. “What problem?”

“The enemy acceleration curves, sir—they don’t match our projections.”