The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (22 page)

“There’s something else,” she said. “Marvin’s been trying to reach you. He keeps talking about testing a dead man—something like that.”

I frowned at her for a moment then rushed for the main passageway. We had a null gravity field active in the passage to make freight easier to transport, and I had to use the handles lining the walls. I propelled myself down the spine of the ship, hand over hand.

“Marvin?” I shouted into my com-link when he finally responded to my channel requests. “Don’t do anything until I get down to the lab.”

“Do anything?” Marvin said. “I’ve been working steadily to achieve my command-approved goals. These new instructions are nonsensical.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t launch anything until I get there. I want to see what you’re planning.”

“Oh, are you referencing the test? The bomb is already underway. I wouldn’t worry about it, Colonel. Although it is fully functional, the test device is quite small in size compared to the one—”

“Where did you send it, Marvin? Where’s the bomb headed?”

“Fortunately, we’re passing near an appropriate testing site now. Harvard is quite close and as the world has already been devastated by—”

“No, no, no! Don’t bomb Harvard! Don’t you have any compassion? We have Professor Hoon aboard.”

“Compassion? Is Hoon visiting Harvard? I’m not quite sure I understand—”

“Just turn off the test. I want it stopped now!”

“But Colonel—”

“No arguments. Just send the kill signal this instant.”

“Done.”

I sighed in relief, and soon after I reached Marvin’s lab module. I touched the membrane of nanites and stepped inside as they retreated away. Marvin loomed on the ceiling again, and he seemed quite cheery.

“Can we retrieve your test bomb?” I asked him.

“Certainly not. The conversion of mass to energy is nearly one hundred percent when a gravity device detonates. I thought I’d made that point clear when—”

“Marvin,” I said, stalking forward. “Are you saying the bomb already went off?”

“Detonation occurred an estimated forty seconds ago.”

“What about the kill-signal? Didn’t you send it?”

“Of course.”

I stared at him for a second before I realized what he meant.

“You sent the signal, but it was too late. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. We are now about a light-minute from the target. The signal could not catch the device. I sent the signal as ordered, but there was never enough time to stop the bomb.”

I sighed and sat on a pump. The pump vibrated my suit. I saw tubes leading from it to the massive, shivering, sweating tank of Microbes that hung from the back wall of the lab.

“Marvin, don’t send any more bombs anywhere without asking my permission?”

“I feel compelled to point out that, in this case, I already had your implicit approval due to your previous orders.”

“I know that. Just don’t bomb anything else without checking with me, will you?”

“Absolutely, Colonel. Now, I must ask that you allow me to leave the ship. I need to go to the sun factory orbiting the star Loki and manufacture a new, much larger bomb.”

“Permission granted. Just don’t blow anything up or launch anything until I give you explicit instructions to do so.”

“Protocol updated.”

I left him then and headed back up the passageway. I moved much more slowly this time, wondering if Hoon knew yet that we’d dropped an experimental bomb on his torn-up ex-planet. If he did, I knew he’d take it as an insult, a final stick-in-the-eye, and probably relate it to our earlier discussion.

I was left with an inescapable conclusion: robots made terrible diplomats.

-24-

Professor Hoon never learned about the bomb. He hadn’t been on the bridge at the time, and he didn’t have a lot of close friends among my crewmen. No one had made the special effort it would take to inform him. Probably no one wanted to hear another of his windy complaints any more than I did.

We cruised warily up to the last ring in the Thor System. It was strange eyeing a ring without knowing where it went. On several previous occasions, I’d explored rings like this one. Sometimes, it was a dangerous experience.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Jasmine suddenly.

I turned in surprise. We were on the bridge, but I’d moved away from the command tables and stood gazing out into the endless night we call space. I hadn’t heard her approach.

But my surprise was due to more than her quiet movement. It was due to the fact that she’d followed me at all. She was watching me closely, I realized. She was becoming more possessive and watchful of my behavior. I was immediately reminded of Sandra who’d been jealous and possessive to a fault.

Jasmine wasn’t like that. She was still low-key in her approach to life. She didn’t make a show and rarely raised her voice, but she was definitely paying closer attention to my actions.

I smiled at her and reached out a hand. I touched her stomach, and she let me. She smiled shyly back up at me.

“Sometimes I think it feels different,” she said, “but I’m not really sure. Not yet.”

I nodded. “It will take another month. Then you’ll notice the difference.”

She seemed pleased, but then her face dropped. “I was late to my shift this morning. Did you notice?”

I froze for a second, searching for the right answer. I hadn’t noticed a thing. I decided to go with my gut on this one.

“Oh sure, I was wondering about that. You’re never late. Not even a minute late.”

She smiled.

Bingo
, I thought. I’d chosen wisely.

“I didn’t know what was wrong,” she said. “After you left our quarters, I felt sick. Then I realized what it must be, and I felt better.”

My face was a blank, and I almost blew it, but then I understood.

“Morning sickness? Already?”

She nodded.

I felt a bit nervous then. I don’t know what it is, but often when a male is faced with the physical results of his actions, he feels like he’s been caught doing something bad. It’s kind of like the feeling you get when you see a cop car with whirling lights in your rearview mirror, and you realize that yes, you
were
speeding—seriously speeding.

I forced a wider smile. “That’s what’s supposed to happen,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I know. I wish my family were closer, though.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “I tried to leave you behind.”

“This won’t interfere with my duties,” she said quickly. “It’s a small thing. Really, I was surprised I felt the effect at all. I thought the nanites were supposed to remove all the toxins from our bodies.”

“Well, I don’t think a hormone surge counts as a toxin.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “You should take your hand off me now, Kyle. People are starting to notice we’re stargazing and whispering over here.”

I slowly let my hand drop and took a sweeping look around. Sure enough, people turned away avoiding my eyes. The staffers had been staring at us, especially the women. The rumors must fly thickly whenever I left this deck. In this case, the rumors were right.

We headed back for the command circle, but before we reached the main table the com-link was blinking. Jasmine took over from a commander who’d been manning her station and read the data.

“Incoming message from Marvin, sir,” she said.

I nodded and tapped open the channel.

“Good news I hope, Marvin?”

“I believe it is, Colonel,” he said. “I’m ready to launch the weapon.”

I frowned. “What? How can that be? You only just got there.”

“That is correct, Colonel. The weapon was easy to assemble from the leftover materials I’d not used during the previous experiment.”

I frowned at the boards, staring at the white-hot sphere that represented Loki in 3d. Marvin was out there, and he was lying.

“That’s impossible, Marvin,” I said. “You couldn’t have built the bomb from scratch that fast. Not unless…” I felt a moment of perfect clarity come over me. The answer was obvious. I would have had to have been a fool not to know it. “You already built the bomb, didn’t you Marvin? The last time you were out there.”

“That’s a large assumption on your part, Colonel.”

“No,” I said. “No, it isn’t. You needed an unbelievable amount of mass to build that probe. I should have known that something else was going on. Now, I finally know the truth.”

“You sound upset, Colonel. Perhaps this would be a good time to drink an alcoholic beverage.”

I glowered at the screen and realized my voice had been rising steadily. I was almost into the shouting-zone already. Around me, the staffers had fallen silent. They could only follow half the conversation, but that was probably good enough to figure out what was going on. They were listening in, but I didn’t care.

With an effort, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and continued speaking to my crazy robot.

“Marvin, why did you build a huge gravity bomb the first time we came out here?”

“For the precise purpose we intend to use it now, Colonel. I calculated a seventy-one percent chance that you would order another test after our probe got through successfully. The second time, you’d want to send something bigger than a probe. I thought that a bomb would take care of the enemy’s defensive measures, so I built one in advance. The Macros attacked, and we defeated them—but you didn’t order the next step. It took you far longer to reach the conclusion I’d reached before the initial probe was launched. Happily, we are well-prepared for the current situation, and you aided in solving the problem of near-instantaneous detonation.”

I rubbed my forehead. I suddenly had a headache.

“You can’t just do things like that. You stripped more mass from the moon than was absolutely necessary. That caused a diplomatic breach with the Crustaceans, not to mention being disrespectful of the dead.”

“I’m surprised at your poor attitude, Colonel. Usually, superiors praise subordinates who think ahead and make the correct call.”

“But you
didn’t
make the correct call! We left here and didn’t come back for weeks.”

“Clearly, I made the correct assumptions, even if I was a little ahead of schedule. We’re now ready to proceed without further delay. I understand it’s customary to reward subordinates for anticipating orders long before they’re given.”

“Well, you’re not going to receive any special rewards from me today. You tore an extra chunk from a planet without authorization for a project you hadn’t even received approval for yet.”

“Anticipating future requirements is a desirable trait in any underling, isn’t it, Colonel?”

“Stop fishing for compliments. You’re not getting any out of me for this.”

There was a pause in the conversation. I think Marvin was pouting.

“Very well,” he said at last. “I feel confident that you’ll come to understand my efficiency in this matter and respond more appropriately soon.”

When Hell freezes over, robot,
I thought to myself, but didn’t say it. I was irritated with him. It wasn’t just for him doing extra fun projects like building gravity bombs without permission. It was for predicting my next move so accurately, so far in advance. I didn’t like to be predictable—especially not to Marvin.

“So, moving on,” I said. “When can you release the weapon?”

“Immediately. I took the liberty of building a second missile platform for a second probe, should one be required. A backup, if you will. By lucky happenstance, the missile platform is an exact fit for the bomb and can deliver the device to the ring shortly after you give the order.”

I tapped at the screen. I couldn’t get a new contact up that looked right so I told Jasmine what I wanted, and she added an item to the system.

“There’s a bomb? Our sensors don’t show anything.”

“Yeah, well, he’s probably hidden it somewhere.”

“I don’t understand, sir. How could he have assembled it so quickly?”

“He’s magic,” I said irritably. I opened Marvin’s channel again and took a deep breath.

“Launch your weapon, Marvin. You’ve got the detonator ready with the continuous signal and all?”

“Are you referring to the dead-man’s switch? If so, it has been prepared and attached. I constructed it after our previous conversation.”

“Of course you did. Fire when ready. The fleet is arranged to react to any Macro response.”

“The bomb is away, Colonel.”

Almost immediately, a contact appeared. Jasmine drew a circle around it with her finger and tapped at it, assigning it a yellow color. An appropriate color, I thought, neither friend nor foe, but a neutral entity.

It occurred to me as the weapon sailed in our direction with alarming speed that Marvin had a golden opportunity in his tentacles should he decide to take it. The bomb would pass right through our fleet. If it was truly as powerful as he’d said it was, he could detonate it early just by “accidentally” cutting out the signal when it was in our midst.

Sure, I trusted Marvin. He’d saved Earth’s bacon on many occasions. But it was unnerving to have a non-human—a sentient machine, no less—with his circuitry on the trigger. If we lost this fleet, there would be no time to build another before Earth was hit by the Macros.

“Newcome,” I said. “Rearrange our ships into a safer configuration. I think we should be a bit farther out from the ring, and we should encircle it at a more oblique angle.”

Newcome frowned, then looked down at the yellow contact which followed an arcing line through the middle of our ships. His puffy white eyebrows shot up when he figured out what I was talking about.

“Immediately, sir,” he said. “And—good thinking.”

He rushed off to the navigational table and began relaying orders to place the ships at a safe distance. By the time Marvin’s bomb passed through the middle of us, it looked as if a school of fish had been scared off by a thrown rock.

The entire process took hours. When it was finally done, the bomb went through the ring, and the signal was cut off in that precise instant. I can safely say that we were holding our collective breath.

“Marvin is calling again,” Jasmine said.

I tapped the channel open. I was watching the ring closely, not sure what to expect. So far, nothing had happened.

“Even if your approval is a little late at this point, I’m still looking forward to it,” Marvin said.

“What?”

“Have you forgotten our previous conversation, Colonel Riggs?”

“No, I haven’t. But I don’t see anything to get excited about yet.”

“The bomb reached the ring, went to the other side, and detonated.”

“We don’t know that yet,” I pointed out. “All we know is that it vanished through the ring. So far, the Macros haven’t sent anything back in our direction. I’m not breaking out champagne yet, Marvin. What if it was a dud?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“So you say. How can we be sure?”

“Launch a normal probe.”

I looked at the command table. He was right, of course. In order to verify the test, we had to go in there and take a look around. But the last time I’d done so, hundreds of enemy ships had appeared in response.

I tightened my guts and straightened my spine.

“The robot is right. Launch a probe. Hell, launch ten of them. Use the wire-guided types and the seek-and-return models.”

The staff worked relaying the commands. We soon had a shower of small contacts headed for the ring. We watched as they crawled forward and vanished one at a time.

The wait was a short one this time, but it was agonizing none the less. Had they all been destroyed?

I’d almost given up hope before I looked at the timer Jasmine had set up. The fastest of them took a few minutes to go in, scan and return. Getting a good amount of data from an unexplored system took time. In this case, we’d get little more than a snapshot—but it would be much better than nothing.

“The first probe has returned, sir!” Jasmine said.

I could hear the excitement in her voice. Her tone was taken up by a dozen throats. People shouted and laughed. The unbreachable ring had been breached. We eagerly awaited the data as it was transmitted and relayed.

All the probes were coming back, all ten of them.

“Sir?” Jasmine said. She pointed to a blinking light on my console. “Marvin’s calling again.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know. He wants his pat on the head, and I’m going to have to give it to him. But I don’t quite feel like telling him how great he is yet.”