The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (20 page)

I shrugged. “I’ve read up on the theory.”

“The science is far beyond the theoretical. Small amounts of collapsed matter were first created artificially at the CERN laboratories in 2015 during dark matter experiments. Since then, it has been produced many times—but always on a small scale and only for brief periods of time.”

“What makes you think you can do better? What makes you think that you can make enough for a weapon?”

Marvin’s tentacles whipped and curled with self-satisfaction. Apparently, I’d asked him a question he wanted to answer. Knowing this galled me, but only slightly.

“Now we get to the crux of the issue. How does one construct such a device, and how does one weaponize it? I have those answers. As you may recall, I recently manufactured collapsed materials—stardust, I think you called it, even though the name is inaccurate. The matter in question was not collapsed by a star.”

I made an exasperated sound. “We call it stardust because it’s like stardust. I know it didn’t come from a star—at least, not recently.”

“Very well, I will categorize it as one your many pointless generalizations. In any case, the stardust I’ve generated and the process I used to create it can be applied to separate collapsed matter from normal matter—rather like the way centrifuges separate radioactive materials from impurities, if I may be allowed to indulge in my own stretched analogy.”

“Okay, okay. You’ll use your gravity device and collapsed material to make something that can be imploded upon command. Then, you’ll send it through the ring when you have it ready, and because the reaction is faster than other known reactions, the bomb could theoretically go off before it’s destroyed by the enemy’s defensive systems.”

“I believe that’s what I said.”

I sighed. “All right, I get the essence of your plan. But let’s consider the challenge of detecting the exact instant in which your device goes through the ring. It has to know when it’s time to detonate. How can a sensor figure that out perfectly? Let me think… Can you time it?”

“I assume you’re asking if I can set up a device connected to the object, which will cause it to detonate the moment it
should
be on the far side of the ring?”

“Right, would that work?” I asked.

“No. I’ve tested the theory on the way out here as this ship passed through the rings. Each time we pass through a given ring, there is a slight, unpredictable variation in the process. The moment we’re transported from one ring to the next is not the same each time. I haven’t managed to determine how to control the rings or to anticipate the moment they will transport a body moving through them.

One instant, a ship is in the local system, and the next it’s been transferred to the target system. Unfortunately, the moment isn’t always the
same length of time. There can be as much as a quarter-second variance.”

“That much, eh?” I said, beginning to pace.

I could see Marvin’s problem. I was also less angry now as I understood he
had
been working on this problem, rather than ignoring it or playing around with his fish tank.

I stopped at the biggest window that showed the interior of the tank. I stared inside seeing the warm, yellowy lights at the bottom. Did they keep the Microbes warm, or was I looking at a source of torment for them, perhaps something Marvin had glossed over?

It didn’t matter to me right then because I thought I had the answer.

I spun around to face Marvin again, pointing a finger up at him. He shrank away slightly, as if he thought I might be accusing him of something.

“I’ve got it,” I said. “Or, at least I think I do. You can’t use sensors—active or passive. By the time the data comes in, it will be too late. There wouldn’t even be time to process it. And you can’t get away with timing the point of departure, either. It’s too random. But there is another way.”

Marvin loomed closer, excited. “I’m interested in what you have to tell me, Colonel.”

I looked at the tank. “I will, if you agree not to kill any more of them, Marvin. Do we have a deal?”

“Absolutely. I can almost certainly guarantee their safety in the light of a breakthrough. Part of my pattern of behavior is due to frustration. You are about to relieve me of that state—I hope.”

I opened my mouth and almost gave him a lecture. I almost told him it wasn’t right to take one’s frustration out on living creatures. But I closed it again. Didn’t I enjoy banging my fist down onto smart metal surfaces when I lost my temper? I’m sure the nanites didn’t enjoy cleaning up my messes. Individual nanites probably didn’t always survive the experience, either. To Marvin, microscopic entities were all the same, whether mechanical or biological in nature.

“How about this,” I said. “Let’s try a dead-man’s switch. We’ll transmit a steady signal to the probe as it passes through the ring. The moment it goes to the other side, the signal will naturally be cut off. All your device has to do is detect that it isn’t getting that tone—and it detonates. The defensive systems, whatever they are, will be destroyed.”

Marvin thought about it.

“A dead
-man’s switch,” he mused. “I’m unfamiliar with that colloquial expression. I’m accessing search data…ah, I understand. The relaxation of the corpse sets off the device because it ceases to apply continuous pressure to a contact. That is a good analogy, Colonel.”

“Well? Do you think it will work?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I could build a device that would detect the broken signal and trigger the device quickly enough for our purposes.”

For the very first time since I’d entered his lair and begun looking around, I smiled.

-22-

The fleet crossed into the Eden System. I was glad to see that Captain Grass was back at his post, scaring the Blues with his outdated carrier.

Grass greeted me as I entered the system, and I turned down the audio until it was barely audible. Every now and then, he paused, and I made an appreciative comment. He seemed to like this and blew nice words about honor and the grand battles his people had fought alongside mine. He’d been talking about this for nearly a half-hour. I treated myself to a beer while he did so.

I was in a magnanimous mood. Marvin finally had a complete, feasible plan. Sure, it might not work, but at least we had something to work with. We’d try it, then send through a normal probe. If it didn’t come back, we’d failed. But if it did…I’d take my fleet through, and there would be hell to pay inside the Macro home system.

Jasmine came into my office and frowned at me. My boots were on my desk, and I knew that annoyed her even though the nanites took care of the dirt that sprinkled from them. There wasn’t much dirt on a spaceship anyway unless you landed to walk around on a planetary body, which we hadn’t done since leaving Earth.

I put my hand up and touched the mute button. Captain Grass was still going, but I didn’t cut him off. I wanted to let him get it all out of his system.

“What’s up, love?” I asked her.

She pointed to my com-link. “Are you still talking to that Captain?”

“Yeah. I planned to give him a full hour, but I’m getting bored now.”

“A full hour? What’s he saying?”

“Honestly, I have no idea anymore.”

Her eyes slid to the beer in my other hand. She nodded. “Well, you have another call. Something urgent is coming in from Eden-6.”

“Urgent? Who is it?”

“Professor Hoon.”

I frowned for a second, then recalled the name and winced. “Not that lobster we left on the water planet? What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But since you’ve given Captain Grass over thirty minutes, don’t you think you owe it to Hoon to at least find out?”

I sighed. Being the leader of a galactic alliance, or empire, or whatever it was I was running, wasn’t always a good thing. People were desperate to talk to you every day about something—and they were almost always a pain in the ass.

I begged off with Grass finally, having heard more than enough about the winds on lakeshores that had first ruffled his fur as a kid, or whatever he was telling me now. He sounded a little disappointed, but less so when I told him truthfully I had another urgent call coming in.

With trepidation, I switched over to Hoon’s channel. He was a Crustacean, a race of intellectual lobsters that we’d first encountered in the Thor System. When we initially met up with them, they’d fought alongside the Macros against us. Like many races, they’d been subjugated and served the machines.

I tried not to judge them too harshly for this. I’d sold our souls to the alien robots myself, once upon a time. But they hadn’t signed on to our rebellion too quickly. They fought us tenaciously at first. Then they’d given us platitudes and tried to be neutral. Only when they’d realized the machines weren’t going to allow their species to survive did they join us.

It had been a disaster. Trillions had died on the three lovely worlds they inhabited. Their scattered survivors had been transported to Eden-6, the native world of the Microbes, where they’d begun a new life on that planet of endless tropical seas.

“Hey, Professor Hoon!” I said, going with enthusiasm from the outset. “Great to hear from you. I understand your people are doing very well on your new home planet, and I want to congratulate you on your successful migration.”

Hoon’s translated voice was odd, and it burbled slightly when he spoke. “I find your attitude self-serving, Colonel Riggs.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just trying to be friendly. I’m always happy to take a social call from a friend. Now, what can I do for you?”

“You can return our true homeworlds to us.”

I squinched my eyes. “That’s going to be a little difficult. As you know, they’ve been irradiated and are now uninhabitable.”

“We are quite aware of that. We are also aware of your unauthorized removal of the crust of one of our worlds.”

I winced. So that was it. Someone had let the cat out of the bag on that point. I knew they were big on the sanctity of graves and birthplaces. I could only imagine how they felt about the steam-rolling of a billion hectares of their land whether it was irradiated or not.

“Your attitude has changed since the last time we met, Professor,” I said. The last time we’d spoken, he’d been servile, treating me as a conqueror.

“We’ve learned much about you personally, your species, your history and your culture over the last year. We now understand that your depredations were not clever and elaborate plots. The truth is an even greater humiliation. We’ve discovered that you, in particular, are nothing more than a lucky incompetent: An accidental prodigy, who somehow drifted to the top of your species’ social stratum during a time of unprecedented crises.”

His words were true enough to cause me pain. Under normal circumstances, I would have told him off and cut the channel. But, somehow, I found I couldn’t. This fellow, among all the annoying aliens I’d ever encountered, had some good reasons to chew me out. I felt compelled to listen to him.

“It was not enough that you oversaw the destruction of our species and all three of our homeworlds. In addition, you saw fit to remove a sizable portion of the mass of one of them for your own odd purposes. I can’t believe that—”

I got a bright idea about then, and I went with it.

“Professor!” I interrupted. “I understand your grievances, but I have some good news. I’d like to make you an offer.”

“An offer?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’d like to give you command of a Star Force ship. You might be aware of a certain Captain Grass who operates a carrier in this system. If you were given a command of a comparable nature, I’m sure you would—”

“Your suggestion is laced with insults.”

I frowned. “How so?”

“To compare me to the befurred fools that live on several of the planets in this system is beyond the pale, Colonel. We aren’t ignorant rutting savages that have barely risen above the status of hunter-gatherer tribes. Why would we be—”

“Participation in a joint military has no appeal for you?”

“When we rebuild our military, it will be wholly independent.”

We’ll see about that
, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it aloud. Let the crawdad have his dreams.

“I understand,” I said. “What can I do for you, then?”

Professor Hoon fell silent for several long seconds. I got the impression he was conferring with others. I hoped he didn’t ask me for something I couldn’t give, like another planet or a fleet of ships they could own and operate independently.

“Access,” he said. “I would like the status of an observer aboard your ship, Colonel.”

I made a face that I normally reserved for suddenly-encountered foul odors.

“What exactly do you mean?” I asked him.

“Let me come aboard your ship to observe you personally. I’ll avoid interference with your duties. I simply would like to be aware of fateful decisions you might make in the future.”

I mulled it over. I didn’t think for a moment he would “avoid interference”, at least not if I was about to scrape the topsoil down to the bedrock on another of his dead worlds.

“All right. I’ll send a small ship to pick you up. You can accompany me to your former home system. I’d like to show you what we’re doing out there—and why we’re doing it.”

“You seek to vindicate yourself?” he asked incredulously. “Very well. I accept your challenge. Send your minions to pick up my person. But keep in mind that we’re watching you, Colonel. We know now of your severe intellectual and judgmental limitations. We can no longer be fooled with simple distractions.”

“It will be a pleasure to have you aboard, Professor,” I said with all the false politeness I could muster.

He then proceeded to grumble a bit about the presumably substandard quality of his accommodations, even though he hadn’t seen them yet.

“I assure you, sir,” I said. “You’ll get a prime cabin with an aquatic ecosystem built in.”

After he’d finally signed off, I alerted my crew concerning the impending visitation.

Admiral Newcome objected with vehemence. “But sir, we can’t entertain a civilian at this time. We’re heading into a war zone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I’m hoping that after the experience is over, Hoon will appreciate just what it is we do for him and all the other biotic species in this part of the galaxy.”

“I’ve listened to him speak, sir,” Newcome said. “I would count that as a faint hope.”

It took two days for Hoon to arrive. I didn’t swing by his planet or slow down. I just had a fighter land, pick him up then accelerate after us at max burn to catch up. By the time we reached Welter Station, he’d finally reached my ship.

“Hoon!” I shouted, arms outstretched in greeting.

Hoon was a lobster and probably the least huggable-looking guy I’d ever laid eyes on, but I did my best to greet him as an old friend.

At my side were my command people: Jasmine, Marvin, Gaines and Admiral Newcome. Jasmine was tapping at her wrist tablet. The rest looked on with frowns or bemusement.

Hoon froze as he got off the fighter and eyed me with stalks that were enclosed in a liquid-pumping suit. Crustaceans had spacesuits that were somewhat different than ours as they were an aquatic species. Water is much heavier than air so they had to wear tight, formfitting suits with circulating liquids only around their gills and various membranes that had to stay wet to function properly. The rest of the suit was wet inside, I was told, but more like a thick latex skin than one of our suits that didn’t normally hug our skin so tightly. Ours were more like bags full of air.

“So soon you challenge me?” Hoon asked. “I had not expected this. Will the combat be between you and me alone, or do you require three back-up fighters, as well? I’m not sure if I should be honored that you fear me so greatly.”

I faltered, frowned, and lowered my arms. My com-link was blinking, and I tapped open a private channel from Jasmine.

“Lower your arms, Kyle!” she said. “That’s how Crustaceans challenge one another to a fight: they hold their claws upraised!”

My arms dropped fully to my sides immediately. I began to smile, but thought the better of it. Hoon was wildly suspicious, and anything I did might be misinterpreted.

“Sorry!” I said. “Humans often challenge one another as a way of greeting. When they’re comrades, it means nothing but respect between warriors.”

“You claim to be ignorant of the implications of your own actions?”

“No,” I said, becoming annoyed despite my firm vows not to. “I’m trying to explain cultural variations of behavior that might be misinterpreted. I’m sorry if your people are too provincial to comprehend that other cultures might behave differently than your species’ culture does.”

“Apology accepted. Let us proceed to the bridge. I will begin my inspection there.”

I paused, not sure how to take this guy. I was already quite certain I never should have let him come aboard.