The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (19 page)

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The flight out from Earth wasn’t like previous sorties into the blue. Star Force wasn’t heading into harm’s way to save some sorry aliens on another planet this time. We weren’t heading out to do battle in the traditional sense, either. Our mission was to
exterminate
an old enemy. To destroy their nests, villages, factories—whatever you want to call them—before they could do the same to us.

It occurred to me, as I stood on the bridge of my flagship, that both the combatants might just kill one another off in this struggle.

For the Macros, their factories were like their queen-mothers, they were the machines that gave birth to all the others. What if we did manage to find those factories and destroy them all? What if in turn they killed our planets and populations? We’d both die out after that, mortally wounded and unable to recover…

I shook my head, squared my shoulders and harshly drove those thoughts from my mind. If I was sure of one thing, it was that the enemy wasn’t entertaining any sappy musings while staring at these same stars. They were coldly calculating their best moves in order to win. No deeper thoughts would ever cross their circuitry.

While we left the Solar System, crossed the Alpha Centauri System and eventually reached Helios, I spent most of my time marshaling my forces. We had quite a fleet. The core of it consisted of fifteen carriers, fully loaded with over a hundred fighters each. Protecting them were several hundred battleships, cruisers and a host of smaller craft.

We all glided through space together. Behind the main fleet were no less than forty transports—newer, armored and fast-moving ships. They weren’t like our old transports, which were knock-offs of Macro designs that had resembled cans of tennis balls. These newer ships were built to not only house troops but also to deploy them in battle. One of our more effective techniques included the launching of marines as small independent fighters. We had about thirty thousand marines
: a mix of Centaurs and humans. For once, the humans outnumbered the Centaur troops ten to one. I found them easier to manage. The marines were both my ground forces and my last-ditch space force. If it came right down to it, I’d deploy them outside their ships to destroy the enemy in close quarters.

After I felt I had our formations, supplies, organizational structure and basic tactical plans worked out, I headed to Marvin’s module to see how he was doing. Mostly, I wanted to know if he’d solved the problem of getting past the impenetrable ring.

One trick all commanders learn over time is to delegate responsibility. I’d had trouble doing this early on and had micro-managed everything. Being the de-facto emperor of Earth had forced me to learn how to step back and let others do their jobs. Realizing I couldn’t be everywhere at once, I’d ordered Marvin to come up with a way to breach the ring. I’d given him every resource I could and stepped back. It’d been more than a week since we’d planned the mission so I figured it was time to check in and evaluate his progress.

All smiles and innocence, I traveled down the echoing passageways to the stern of the vessel. There, in a hump-like module we’d added to the spine of the battleship, was Marvin’s laboratory.

The door melted open at the touch of my glove – one of the advantages of being the commander of the entire fleet. This door was bigger than most on the ship, a circular affair, some fifteen feet in diameter.

As it opened, it changed color from silver to a tin-yellow then disintegrated into a metallic mist. I stepped inside and had a look around.

It only took a few seconds for my smile to be replaced by a frown. Sometimes, the old adage about ignorance being bliss was all too true.

I don’t know what I’d expected to find in Marvin’s lair. Maybe a facsimile of one of the rings or a shiny chrome gizmo—something cool-looking and high-tech, I guess. Instead, I found the all too familiar-looking and rather grungy sac of shivering liquids. The sac was huge and long, looking like the intestinal tract of a prehistoric behemoth. Windows had been cut into the tank of organic soup at several key locations to allow observation of the contents.

I didn’t need to peep inside those windows to know what I’d see. He had microbes in there—probably the intelligent kind.

Glaring around the chamber, which was festooned with various other pieces of equipment, I saw little else that looked useful. I clanked to the center of the room, looking around for Marvin himself. I heard, rather than saw, the telltale rattle of uncoiling tentacles behind the organic tank. Marvin was often given away by his tentacles. He seemed to be unaware of their activity when he wasn’t using them, much as a man might tap his foot or twitch nervously. Marvin’s tentacles rasped and clicked constantly when they weren’t doing anything else—especially if he was nervous.

“I see you back there, robot,” I said sternly.

“Nice of you to drop by, Colonel Riggs.”

He rose up as I watched, climbing the hull of the ship behind the organic tank until he was poised above it on the ceiling, like a spider hovering over its struggling kill. “In the future, however, it might be more polite to announce the timing of your visits.”

“So you could clean up the contraband, huh? That’s not going to happen. A commander has access to every corner of his flagship at all times.”

“That’s not strictly true, sir. Star Force protocol stipulates that a male officer is not permitted to walk in on a female crewmember at an inappropriate—”

“All right, I’ve heard enough. What the hell are you doing in here? You aren’t supposed to grow a colony of Microbes. Explain yourself.”

There was a pause during which Marvin threw his cameras wide, trying to get a reading on my mood.

“Are you feeling well, Colonel?”

“No, I’m feeling pissed off,” I told him. “Now answer my question.”

“You specified during our briefing that I’d be given a laboratory facility and allowed to do whatever scientific work was required in order to accomplish my mission: Namely, the breaching of the impregnable ring.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Shall I play the recording, sir?”

I fumed. “No. I might have said words to that effect, but that didn’t countermand everything else I’d ever forbidden you to do.”

“I think we’ve had this argument before, Colonel.”

I frowned, thinking about it. We had, and he’d won in the end. But I wasn’t through giving him a hard time yet.

“What are you doing to these poor microscopic bastards in the tank?”

“There is no cruelty involved,” he said. “I’ve discovered a procedure that allows me to euthanize small portions of the population in such a way that they experience a brief period of extreme joy before succumbing. In this way—”

“You’re killing them
again
? Experimenting on them? For what purpose?”

“There are two purposes. The first is to use natural selection to create a more serious-minded population. I’ve discovered that, when I give the Microbes work to, do fewer than one in eleven actually participates in my project. I find that rate of obedience unacceptable, and I’m therefore seeking to improve it.”

I moved to the tank and looked inside. There were big, slow bubbles, drifting clusters of what looked like see-through algae and a few cloudy lights at the top and bottom. Microbe colonies resembled dirty water, for the most part, and it was difficult to get worked up about anyone abusing them. After all, didn’t humans test products on mammals that were far closer to a human in nature? Didn’t we put chlorine in our swimming pools to wipe out trillions of bugs like these?

Despite those arguments, I’d always felt an urge to protect them because they were sentient.

“Marvin, I want you to stop euthanizing them.”

“But they’re part of my project—to break the unbreakable.”

I looked at him, and he studied me in return.

“You’re bullshitting me,” I said.

“Not so.”

“How, exactly, does killing off pleasure-seeking Microbes help you break through into Macro space?”

I knew, of course, that I shouldn’t even ask the question. To do so was to fall into whatever trap Marvin had assembled for me. But I did it anyway because I was curious, and desperate. Marvin
had
to get us through that ring to the Macro bases beyond. If I really thought torturing Microbes would get us there, I’d probably let him kill the entire genus, God help me.

Marvin detached himself from the ceiling and slithered down closer to the tank. He wrapped some of his tentacles around it almost lovingly. I thought I saw the cloudy waters swirl slightly in response. Did they know he was out there in dangerous proximity?

“Colonel Riggs, do you have any pointless pastimes that help you think, relax and which serve to stimulate your cortex?”

I blinked at the question. “Um, I suppose. I play pool sometimes.”

“Yes. You also drink alcohol and frequently seek sexual encounters.”

“What has that got to do with—?”

“Everything,” he said. He gave the tank a gentle squeeze with a loop of his longest metallic tentacle. “Manipulating this tank relaxes my mind. By defocusing my thoughts, I’m able to put my subconscious mind to work. That often gives me critical ideas that help me solve complex problems.”

I squinted at him. “So you’re telling me you have a subconscious mind?”

“I have co-processors that operate independently of my primary processor. You have the same system, the only difference is yours are organic in nature and rather haphazardly organized.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I think I’m getting what you’re saying. Torturing these little guys and training them to do tricks is fun for you, the way caring for a fish tank or a cat might please a human. Right?”

“Correct. Your analogies are uncharacteristically appropriate.”

“All right,” I said, “you can keep your pets for now. But try not to kill them off all the time, okay Marvin? It’s disturbing to humans.”

“Permission confirmed and documented,” Marvin said.

I knew my voice had been recorded forever. I doubt anyone possessed more damning evidence of every wrongful thing I’d approved than Marvin did.

“You still haven’t told me if you’ve solved the problem yet.”

“I believe that I have,” he said.

I stared at him for a shocked moment. “You
what
? You’ve solved it? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I solved it before we left, actually. The answer was quite simple. I’m surprised you didn’t come up with it yourself.”

In an instant, I understood the situation. He’d given me a song and dance about torturing Microbes for relaxation and to help him think. I’d given permission, in order to complete a critical project. With permission secured, he’d revealed his work was done. No doubt he’d now request a reward for finishing ahead of schedule.

As these thoughts surged through me, I felt myself getting angry all over again. Marvin was good at that. He could work you up, calm you down, then do it all over again in the space of a single conversation.

“Just tell me what the hell the answer is,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“I’m detecting a rise in your blood-pressure, Colonel Riggs. Is that response an indication of joy and excitement?”

“Something like that.”

“As I said, the answer is very simple. We’re going to build a bomb. A very powerful bomb of a kind we’ve never built before. We’ll send it through the ring and detonate it the instant it passes through the ring. Whatever system is destroying our probes on the far side will be destroyed when the bomb detonates.”

“Hmm,” I said, fairly unimpressed. “That sounds fine, but there were only spare nanoseconds between the crossover and the destruction of the last probe. How will the device detect when it has passed through?”

“You’ve placed your finger upon the crux of the problem. That tiny, but significant, detail has kept me from completing my solution.”

I felt myself frowning harder, the corners of my mouth tugging downward with irresistible force.

“You don’t have anything, do you? This is all a ruse to get me to let you keep tormenting your pets. I’m not falling for it, Marvin. I want details. What kind of bomb are you talking about? You said something very powerful. A nuke, right? What is so exciting about a fusion bomb?”

“I didn’t specify fusion as the energy source of the explosion. In fact, fusion can’t be used. The reaction would be too slow. Several millionths of a second are required for a fusion reaction to be generated. First, the fission weapon charges must go off, which depend on slow chemical compression effects of their own. Those forces in turn generate enough compression upon the core to cause a fusion effect, which—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know enough about it to know it can’t beat a computer. How are you going to make it faster?”

“By not using a fission or fusion reaction. The reaction has to be faster than that—something that is almost instantaneous.”

“What?”

“Are you familiar with gravitational implosions, Colonel? When matter is suddenly compressed into a collapsed form, it releases a great deal of energy. The best thing about it is the lack of a necessity for rare elements. Any type of matter can be compressed and turned into something equivalent to a fusion bomb.”