The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) (3 page)

We were standing in the lobby by this time, and I saw the streets outside were filling up with news people. Their camera drones hovered behind them like buzzing wasps.

I shook my head. “Bring the airlift down from the roof five minutes from now.”

“What?” he demanded, but I was already on my way to the lobby exit.

As we emerged into the dying sunlight, I swept up Jasmine into my arms in a dramatic gesture. She was startled and shy.

“I can walk,” she hissed in my ear.”

“No you can’t. Not until we get aboard the lifter.”

Jasmine was embarrassed as I hammed it up for the cameras. Every one of them was providing feed for some net-news outlet. She gave them shy smiles, and they ate it up. I knew we were giving them their latest splash photos for their websites. I could visualize captions about personalized rescues and heroism.

Captain Sarin, Riggs’ latest romantic partner, was rescued in style at the scene of the attack…

They needed more of this kind of thing, and so did Star Force. To some degree, it would lessen the alarm the world would feel concerning the news that I’d almost been taken out by an unknown assailant.

When we finally boarded the airlift and were whisked away into the sky, I filled her in concerning the events of the day and what I’d discovered. No one, it seemed, had yet managed to figure out who had hit us.

But I had a pretty good idea
why
they’d done so. No one wanted me to put the ship-building facility into space.

The rescue people weren’t satisfied with flying me to a local safe house in the Alps. They took us straight into space and onto the
battleship
Potemkin
, Admiral Newcome’s ship. After the Peace Accords had been arranged and signed, Newcome had flown Earth’s fleet back to port and surrendered the vessels intact. I’d left him in command of the flotilla but lowered his rank to Rear Admiral under Miklos, who’d been promoted to Admiral.

Newcome greeted me aboard the ship, and I promised to brief him in the morning.

I adjourned with Jasmine to the best private quarters available. The evening turned out to be quite rewarding.

-3-

The next morning, Jasmine and I were up early and checking out the vids on the net. Every news report played me up as a dashing knight, and she played the part of my consort. She really seemed to like it.

One thing quickly led to another. Morning sex isn’t always as great as it’s cracked up to be, but the morning after my flashy rescue was an exception. Jasmine was in fine form, and I was unusually awake, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen a cup of coffee since the day before.

We had the best stateroom the ship could provide.
Potemkin
was an old Imperial battleship, and although it had been updated, it wasn’t like one of our more sparsely-appointed Star Force designs. There were pillows and hanging curtains, even a private portal to the stars outside. Our activities quickly frosted up the glass.

Outside the stateroom, a continuous parade of crewmen seemed to be marching by. I was baffled by this,
as it was quite early, no more than 0600. In my long experience aboard starships, they were usually fairly quiet at this hour. The few people on duty were either late for bed or yawning and stretching, preparing for the day shift.

The
footsteps outside in the hallway became inescapably obvious. They came every few minutes, impinging on our awareness despite the lovemaking.

Finally, as we were winding things up to a nice finish, a tap came at the door.

Nothing can screw up a climax like an interruption. We managed to enjoy the moment, but we were both left frowning at the door.

“Ship’s door,” I said, addressing the ship’s AI. “Open audio channel.”

A chime sounded, indicating it understood the command. Crow’s ships were intelligent enough, but they generally didn’t talk. They followed commands, and that was about it. In a way, I thought it was a design improvement over our more sophisticated—but sometimes argumentative—interfaces.

“Who is it?” I demanded loudly, knowing my voice would echo out into the passageway.

Jasmine squirmed away from me with a bed sheet wrapped around her and headed for the small private bathroom. I frowned and sat on the side of the bed.

“Are you speaking to me, Colonel Riggs?” asked a very familiar voice. It was none other than Marvin, my overly-intelligent, overly-eager robot.

Marvin was more than just your typical robot. He was a nanite brainbox with a massive capacity and an eclectic body he’d built himself with “spare” parts. Really, he was a being who regularly reconstructed himself. There was no one else, machine or flesh, quite like Marvin.

“Marvin?” I asked, my mind racing.

Jasmine came out of the bathroom, her face angry.

“That’s who we heard out in the corridor
?” she whispered. “He’s been lurking out there for the past half hour. Probably listening.”

I looked at her, then at the door. I didn’t try to deny the possibility. He would do things like that if he wanted to talk to me badly enough. I imagined him tapping and rasping up to the door, listening to us having sex, then scuttling away disappointedly. I suspected he’d been doing this over and over again, as if he was caught in a loop of some kind.

“How long have you been out there?” I demanded.

“Does that matter, Colonel? I need to discuss something important with you.”

Jasmine headed back into the bathroom with quick steps. I could tell she was pissed off at the robot.

I pulled on some smart-pants and let them close over my legs and waist.

“All right, come on in,” I said resignedly.

The door melted away, and Marvin humped into our quarters. He was a bit too large for the space available.

Using his own ever-morphing designs, Marvin had always altered his shape the way others changed clothing. Today his central body mass consisted of a single cube—reminding me of the first time I’d met him. He had about a dozen upper-body tentacles. The lower ones were thick and short and were being used as legs. The upper appendages were long and snake-like. Instead of his usual dozen camera-eyes, I counted only seven. These were held aloft via the writhing nest of upper tentacles. He had so many damned limbs he still had plenty left over to manipulate his environment.

I noticed right away he didn’t have any gravity plates attached to his undercarriage. That must have been why he’d been making so much
noise as he move around outside, “politely” waiting for us to finish our activities.

I was surprised by the lack of grav plates and wondered what it meant. He liked to fly using gravity repellers, and often got into trouble for unauthorized investigations in space. One of the things we disagreed on most often was whether or not he should have the power of independent flight and space-travel. While configured for flying, he could do more work, but he also tended to zoom off and do things no one wanted him to. Often, these independent activities
gave Star Force a headache.

Today, he had no repellers at all. I could only surmise that he’d trimmed them out of his design in order to placate me—as sort of a peace offering.

That thought didn’t put my mind at ease, however. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect. When dealing with Marvin, I knew that the more cooperative he was at the beginning, the more I was going to have to pay at the end of the exchange.

Jasmine closed the bathroom door and fired up the shower. I felt a twinge of regret. I liked showering with her after our encounters. It was kind of like having a light dessert after the main meal.

“Let’s start over again,” I said cordially. “Hello, Marvin. You’re looking trim this morning. What’s up?”

“Hello, Colonel Riggs. I’m here to formally ask for your permission to solve a major problem Star Force has been facing for some time now.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I said, chuckling at his intensity. “Tell me what you’re talking about first.”

“Are you aware there are two rings exiting the Thor System that have never been successfully explored?”

“Oh, that,” I said.

I was indeed aware of the unexplored rings. Thor had three rings we knew about. One led to the Eden System, and we pretty much controlled that one for now. We had Welter Station, a giant fortress in space, sitting right next to it on the Eden System side. The other two rings were more mysterious. One was about an AU out from the central
binary stars and led to an unknown location in space. When we’d chased the Macros out of the system, they’d used that ring to escape.

The third ring was
in the oceans of Yale, a water-moon that used to be inhabited by the Crustacean species. We’d managed to switch off that ring using some control codes we barely understood. It hadn’t functioned for many months, but when it had, Macros had used it to invade the world’s seas directly.

For a long time, we’d carefully avoided both rings. We didn’t want to trigger any kind of violent response from the Macros, who were undoubtedly waiting on the far side of the rings. Several times, we’d sent in stealth probes
through the active ring in space, but we’d never gotten the probes to return, nor gotten any data back from them. It was as if those ring transported anything traversing through it directly into the heart of a black hole.

“Which one are you talking about?” I asked Marvin.

“The ring in space. The underwater ring is small and disconnected at this point.”

“
The space ring…” I said. “Are you suggesting more probes? Because I don’t see much point to that. We’ve tried many times and failed consistently.”

Marvin’s lower, thicker legs churned momentarily. He sidled closer to me.

“There are two possible reasons why the probes aren’t working,” he said.

“Yeah.
The main one being that the Macros are instantly blowing them apart.”

“I can be more precise than that.”

“Okay,” I said cautiously, “let’s hear it.”

Internally, I was already telling myself to be careful. This was one tricky robot. Rasputin himself couldn’t have talked the Czar
ina into some of the crazy things Marvin had been able to get me to do.

“Let me start with a list of possibilities,” he began, “one i
s that, as you suggested, they’re being destroyed somehow the moment they go through the ring.”

“That seems obvious. What’s your other possible reason?”

“They’re unable to function due to an unforeseen system failure.”

“That’s almost the same thing, Marvin. Your ‘theories’ are useless.”

“Not so. If the latter situation is the case—and possibly even if the first one is the problem—I have a solution.”

“Yeah?”

We stared at one another for a second. I realized that Marvin was waiting for me to beg him to tell me his solution. I was annoyed, as this talk didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and I had the feeling it was going to end with Marvin requesting resources to do some strange thing that probably didn’t need doing in the first place.

“Aren’t you curious as to the nature of my solution, Colonel Riggs?” he prompted finally.

“‘Curious’ is too strong of a word,” I said. “I’d say I’m slightly interested—but getting bored fast.”

“Unfortunate. I’d thought you would be intrigued, as I’m engaged in solving one of the remaining mysteries within Star Force’s sphere of infl
uence. I want to discover what’s on the far side of the unexplored ring. A portion of my neural net has been working on that problem for over a year now.”

“I’m happy for your brainbox, Marvin. But, personally, I’m just glad there haven’t been any more attacks coming from the Macros for a long time. If they stay on their side of the ring, I don’t care why they do
so. I’m in favor of leaving them alone.”

“A quiet stalemate isn’t going to be the final result of this conflict, Colonel Riggs.
The enemy will not rest. They’re very busy right now, let me assure you. They will come to us by any means necessary when they’re ready.”

I thought about it and realized that Marvin was probably right. The Macros weren’t like humans. They didn’t calm down and go into “peaceful mode” when no enemies were in sight. Instead, they built up for the next conflict.

“All right, all right,” I said, heaving a sigh. “You’ve got me curious now about finally scouting that ring. Let’s hear whatever idea you have—but without listing any weird special equipment you might think you need.”

Marvin’s tentacles curled and uncurled excitedly. He did that when one of his plans w
as working out. I knew that he figured he had a fish on the line and was reeling the clueless bastard into the boat.

“Let me
start by explaining the supporting facts so you can understand the validity of my proposal,” he began.

“Get on with it.”

“Very well. If the probes are being destroyed when they cross into the enemy system, it can’t be instantaneous.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is no such thing as a true instant in time—it is a continuum. Perhaps the process of destruction takes a nanosecond, or a millisecond. Whatever the answer is, that’s the timeframe in which we have to work.”

I snorted. “That isn’t much time, Marvin. You can’t even get a computer chip to add two numbers in a nanosecond.”

“The reaction will have to be extremely quick. In fact, it will have to be ongoing as the probe passes from our system to the next. If it is already engaged, it will not be necessary to sense a changed situation and react to it.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Here,” he said, curling tentacles in my direction. He indicated the command screen embedded in the conference table. All major ships in our fleet now had them. It made tactical discussions far easier.

The big oval screen glowed at his touch. It showed the Thor star sy
stem, with its three dead water-moons once inhabited by trillions of Crustaceans. I didn’t like to look at it as it was probably my biggest failure to date.

“At this end of the Thor system, we have the ring which links to Eden. Over here, we have the second ring, which chains to an unknown destination. The third ring is underwater and currently inactive on the world formerly known as Yale.”

“Formerly? It’s still Yale, even it if is a radioactive hellhole.”

“Reference updated,” Marvin said. “In any case, imagine we construct a probe with a single powerful signal emanating from it. We send it through the ring, and, even if it’s a very, very brief signal, we’ll find out where it comes from when we hear it.”

I frowned. “I can see how your plan could work. You’re saying that it could be anywhere in the galaxy, and wherever it’s transported, if it’s broadcasting when it goes through, it will be broadcasting when it comes out. Even if it’s destroyed almost instantly, we should get a blip.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“I don’t like it for two reasons.”

“I’m ready to defend my proposal,” he said.

“I’m sure you are. Reason one: we’ve never sent anything noisy and disruptive through the ring before. We’ve tried to be stealthy, so as not to trigger the Macros into activating a counterattack.”

“I would suggest that our attempts at stealth either haven’t worked, or they haven’t been relevant. The fact that the probes never return and the Macros never come in response indicates they were detected and destroyed—and yet the anticipated Macro response wasn’t triggered.”