Demon Star

by B. V. Larson

  “In the details, maybe,” I said, “but I think he’s correct in principle. They’ve built up all this wonderful kinetic energy. They’d be stupid not to use it for more than mere travel.”

  “So that explains why they’re not slowing down, but they’re still going to be fighting an uphill battle when they stop and come back to Trinity-9.”

  I walked around the holotank, looking at it from all angles. Suddenly, I saw what I would do if I were them.

  “It’s because they’re not planning to go back home.”

  Running my fingers over the controls, I set up a different sim. “What if they do this?”

  This time, instead of coming back, the Demon fleet kept on going after their slashing attack on the Whales, curving gently but inexorably toward Trinity’s central stellar pair.

  And toward Ellada.

  “Shit,” Hansen rumbled. “With half their fleet helping the Whales, the Elladans are gonna get smeared.”

  “What are we going to do?” Bradley said.

  “You two talk strategy. I need to speak with Diogenos.” I entered the ready room and told Valiant to put me through to the Elladan liaison.

  Diogenos’ overly handsome face soon appeared on the screen. “Greetings, Captain. What can I do for you?”

  “It may be I can do something for you, Senator. I’m sending over a couple of files with simple simulations that I hope you can adapt to your computer systems, but I’ll explain anyway. The Demon fleet doesn’t seem to be slowing down for an assault on Trinity-9—the Ketans’ planet—we think they’re going to hit and run past, aiming for Ellada. Half your ships will be caught hopelessly out of position.”

  Diogenos’ patrician face turned gray with realization. “That is grim news, if you are correct. Our strategy has always been to use the Ketans as faithful phalanxes and bulwarks to absorb the Demons’ firepower.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That seems like a brutally cynical attitude.”

  Diogenos shrugged. “We’re the superior species. We taught them technology long ago and encouraged their evolution. Without us, they would still be like the whales of the oceans, bright animals only. Besides, their planet is enormous. With no solid surface, it’s generally immune to strategic strikes with large-scale weaponry. Their floating cities can maneuver, even submerge beneath the clouds for a time, and their people can disperse, feeding as if in the wild. We Elladans, by contrast, are vulnerable to attacks on our city-states, our agriculture, and our industry.”

  So much for being the superior species! I kept the thought to myself. “Philosophy aside, what will you do about the Demons?”

  Diogenos’ eyes stared past the vid pickup, as if into the distance over my shoulder. “I have relayed your insight to our military. They will decide such matters. Now I must speak with the Senate. Thank you for the warning, Captain. We welcome any further aid from our faithful allies.”

  “No problem, Senator. Riggs out.”

  Allies, eh? I guess we’d been upgraded from “children.” But I wasn’t sure what other aid we could lend.

  Then I remembered that we were also in the Demons’ path, although we still had time to move out of it.

  -11-

  “Valiant, connect me to Farswimmer.” I didn’t want to rely on the Elladans to explain to the Whales our predictions about the Demon attack.

  When Farswimmer appeared on the screen, I told him about our conjectures.

  His tentacle motions conveyed dismay. “Our ship commanders wondered about the lack of deceleration but believed that the Elladans would come up with an explanation and a course of action.”

  “The Elladans? You’re relying on them to do your thinking and run the battle for you?” I wasn’t sure if my incredulous tone translated.

  “Of course. They’re much more adept at the conduct of hostilities.”

  “And who takes the brunt of the casualties?”

  “In terms of ship losses, we do—as is fair. It’s our own planet we defend, after all. But in terms of lives lost, the Elladans suffer more than we do.”

  “I’m surprised the Elladans take any losses. As I understand it, the Demons have always attacked your planet rather than Ellada.”

  “Creatures such as yourselves and the Elladans are small and require large crews of individuals to serve your warships, correct?”

  “Sure, mostly, though we do have some small ships with only one person aboard and even unmanned ships. But we find that there are advantages to having more people aboard—redundancy and flexibility, for example.”

  “Exactly. Each of our ships contains only one body. Therefore, fewer lives are lost.”

  I sat back thoughtfully. “Of course. That makes sense. Each of you takes a lot more life support than a human.”

  “We’re also much more adept at multitasking, given our physiology.”

  “Physiology?” I wasn’t at all sure what he meant.

  “Of course. One of us is like a crew of humans.”

  “Huh?” Clearly, I had missed something somewhere.

  “Did you not peruse the files we sent?”

  “Uh,” I said cautiously, “I skimmed over some parts. What are you referring to?”

  Patiently, it seemed to me, Farswimmer said, “Each of us has several brains, adding more as we grow. When too many occupy one body, we divide into two beings.”

  “Multiple brains…yeah, I saw that, but I thought the extra ones were to help control a very large creature. Are you trying to say that you actually have more than one mind living in each body?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then who am I speaking to now?”

  Farswimmer laughed. “All of us, as we’re all interested in newcomers. If you were an Elladan, for example, probably half of our minds would be preoccupied with their own peculiar interests.”

  I force my slackened jaw to close. “Well, it’s going to take some time to get used to that idea, so for now I’m going to treat each of your bodies as one being, okay?”

  “That will not offend us, Captain.”

  “Good,” I muttered, still thrown off. Well, the best I could do was follow my own advice, so I decided to simply go on as I had been. “In any case, you might want to start reorganizing your defenses.”

  “We will consult with the Elladans. Thank you again, Captain Riggs. We depart.” The screen blanked.

  What a bunch of happy-go-lucky creatures. Didn’t they feel the urgency in all this?

  I knew that they’d fought similar battles with the Demons on many previous occasions, but I didn’t think the Whales should be so complacent. I wanted to grab Farswimmer by the tentacles and shake some sense into him—or her, or them…whatever. It especially bugged me that they seemed to defer to the Elladans in everything. I wasn’t even sure why it bothered me. After all, it was better than if they tried to lord it over us humans.

  I left the ready room and joined Hansen and Bradley in running tactical sims in the holotank.

  It was all well and good to ponder multi-brained whales and oddball humanoids with delusions of grandeur, but we’d never get where we were going if we didn’t live through the next few days.

  * * *

  The Elladans and Whales took our warning seriously in the end.

  I watched in grudging admiration as the Elladan commander, whoever he was, immediately turned his fleet around and blasted back toward the inner planets on the most efficient course possible.

  Projecting the Elladan and Demon fleets’ paths, it became clear that the defenders would get to Ellada late, but only by a little. This presumed the Demons would decelerate to assault the planet.

  If they cruised on through instead, they could do a lot of damage, but then they’d be in the same position we predicted for Trinity-9—having to turn around and come back for a serious assault.

  I ordered my little squadron to take a similar but separate course that would have allowed the Demons to overtake us, b
ut place us at long range. We could apparently accelerate faster than the Elladans, a fact I found interesting.

  We couldn’t be sure of their ships’ limitations, though, as neither ally had provided specs on their respective ships. I couldn’t really blame them. I wouldn’t have given info like that to a bunch of new people that popped into the Solar System either. Still, I would think that if the Elladans could move faster, they would be doing it in order to get home in time to fight.

  The Whales shifted their defenses too, placing their warships behind their moon fortresses, setting them up as shields against kinetic strikes. It was the space borne equivalent of digging foxholes, in case we were correct in our guesses. From their chosen positions, they could strike with beams as the Demon ships went by.

  Hansen stood next to me at the holotank as the timer ticked down. “Almost there,” he said unnecessarily. I could see the situation as well as he could.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Good luck, Whales. Now we’ll see if Bradley was right. Glad we’re a long ways away.” We were far ahead of the Demons, of course, on our way to Ellada, though the enemy was coming after us like a speeding freight train.

  In the tank, we watched as three hundred red pinpricks suddenly blossomed into thousands and began to maneuver. Contacts broke apart and separated.

  “A missile barrage,” Hansen said. “There are more than a thousand new contacts.”

  “Targets?” I asked.

  “Plotting. It’ll take a few seconds to determine their trajectories.”

  It was my guess they were firing at the Whale ships as they flew by. I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. They’d probably spotted us by now as well.

  While the enemy couldn’t alter course much, they could spread out, both sideways and front to back, and that was what they were doing. Now, instead of a compact fleet, they became an expanding and moving sphere.

  The leading edge of the globe of Demon ships touched the Whale defenses. Red and green pixels winked out by the dozens. I zoomed in on the action and slowed down the recording, intensely curious about what exactly was happening in this titanic confrontation.

  Increasing the resolution to maximum, I focused on one enemy. It turned out to be a needle shape, about a hundred feet long and two wide, like a very narrow missile body. It had no thrusters or repeller vanes that I could see, though perhaps it was too distant for such detail.

  I followed it in as it struck a Whale orbital asteroid fortress, where it gouged out an enormous crater. Several others slammed into the same installation, and in short order the base had been turned into a smoking wreck.

  “Bradley was right, more or less,” Hansen muttered. “Cheap kinetic missiles.” He pointed. “The Whales are taking some out, but they’re so slim that they’re hard to hit from the nose on, and even if they do…”

  “There’s no real mechanism to damage. They have to be melted and forced off course by the heat and laser pressure, or they’re going to hit anyway.”

  “At least the Whale warships won’t be taken out.”

  I saw he was right. The Ketans’ cruisers were either shielded by their asteroid moons, or they were maneuvering to get out of the way of the Demons’ ballistic darts. With space so vast, it was actually quite easy to dodge non-maneuvering projectiles.

  The Demon warships were another matter.

  At such high speed, the battle took place within the space of minutes. In the end, the Whales had lost most of their relatively immobile fortresses, but only a few ships.

  “What about this flock of contacts here?” I demanded, pointing out a swarm that had moved separately, past the rocky moonlets.

  “Plotting. There—ah, that’s bad.”

  The missiles weren’t heading toward the whale forts or their ships. They were headed toward the planet.

  “They’re doing a civilian strike,” I said, watching grimly. “Do we know where they’ll land?”

  Hansen shook his head. “We can figure out the coordinates, but not what’s down there in that soupy atmosphere. Let’s hope it’s not a bunch of Whale elementary schools.”

  Helplessly, we watched these missiles plunge toward the gas giant. The Whale warships, sensing the threat, moved out from behind cover to intercept. Beams slashed out, taking a few of the missiles out—but the range was extreme and most of their shots missed.

  “They can’t stop them,” I said. “But they feel they have to try. They’re out of position, and they’re going to get hurt.”

  “That’s probably why the Demons did it, to draw out the Whale warships.”

  The strategy was working. Dozens of Whale warships were hit and destroyed once they were out in the open.

  We continued watching with tight-lipped concern as the missiles slammed down into the Ketan home world. The impact explosions brightened the atmosphere like lightning seen from above a cloud.

  By this time, the Demon fleet had been reduced to half its original size, but most of that was due to their own design and strategy. Their slim ballistic missiles hadn’t been launched, but rather, they’d been split off. In other words, some of the enemy ships had been composed of nothing but a control mechanism and a bunch of darts stuck together to create a ship. When the time came, each traveling body disassembled itself, leaving nothing but an engine and a framework also aimed at a Whale fortress.

  “Do you think they’ve saved more of those kinetic bundles for Ellada?” Hansen asked.

  “Probably,” I said, “but our side will have an advantage for the next battle.”

  He looked at me, questioning. “So, we’re going to get involved?”

  “Don’t you think we ought to? They just struck civilian targets before our eyes.”

  Hansen looked at the holotank but said nothing.

  “The next wave of ships will have to decelerate at Ellada to fully engage,” I continued. “That will let us catch up to them. Unless I miss my guess, we’re going to create a lot of scrap for our factories.”

  Hansen’s eyebrows went up even further. “Really? How?”

  I smiled. “When I give the battle orders, XO, keep your eyes on the holotank.”

  -12-

  I spent the remainder of the day thinking. I’d almost decided to confront Sakura about what Kalu had dug up, but I now had decided against it. With us going into battle soon, she was vital to ship operations. Even if she had it in for me personally, there was no evidence she was a traitor to Star Force or wanted to sabotage the mission as a whole.

  As long as I was careful and gave her—or whoever it was—no easy opportunities to get rid of me, it made more sense to let sleeping dogs lie.

  I did drop by Hoon’s workshop in armor again. Suiting up in armor was a pain compared to wearing a spacer’s jumper, but it made me feel safer.

  Hoon didn’t remark upon my equipment. Maybe a critter with an exoskeleton naturally assumed those without were happier when armored.

  He wasn’t entirely wrong.

  “Professor,” I began, “it seems you’re in the clear again, at least as far as anyone is.”

  “Apology accepted, young Riggs. Now, I have much work to do.” He gestured toward the air-water-lock I’d only just entered.

  “I didn’t apologize,” I growled, but then relented. “Whatever, if it makes you happy. I’m actually here to discuss any theories on the slime we found inside the Demon ship. And, I’d appreciate being addressed as ‘Captain.’”

  “I’m sure you would. The slime is obviously shielding of some sort.”

  I ignored his irascible commentary. “That’s what I thought…but for what?”

  “The robot and I have two theories, but they’re farfetched.”

  “Farfetched is better than none at all. Indulge me by speculating.”

  “I’m not certain you could comprehend the mathematics.”

  “Then leave it out and explain in layman’s terms.”

  Hoon sighed, or at least that�
��s what came through my translation software. “Very well. As one of the less idiotic members of your species once wrote, eliminate the impossible and what remains, however improbable, must contain the truth.”

  “You’re quoting Sherlock Holmes? You know he was a fictional character, right?”

  “I’m quoting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Are you not aware that the author is actually the one who created the quote? Fictional characters cannot create.”

  I threw up my hands. I should have known that putting Marvin and Hoon in the same room together was a mistake. “Argh. Go on—the slime is shielding?”

  “If you want me to explain, you would do well to cease distracting me with irrelevancies.”

  I kept my mouth shut and waited, teeth grinding.

  “You do realize that slime, as you put it, has the purpose of preventing biological infections?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “At least, that’s what it does for humans.”

  “Very good. But as far as we can tell, these Demons aren’t disease prone.”

  “So…the slime prevents something else from getting through?”

  “There is hope for you yet, young Riggs.”

  “Sure, Hoonie-boy.”

  “I find your mode of address entirely too informal.”

  “Ditto, Professor.”

  “Very well…Captain.”

  What was with all these fat-brains that made them feel so superior? If they were genuinely so smart, they’d have figured out that scientific capability wasn’t the only measure of competence. “Please, Professor, cut to the chase.”

  “That’s it. The mucus layer is designed to prevent the intrusion of biological agents. What kind and for what purpose is as yet unknown.”

  I tried to scratch my head before I realized I was in armor. “I was hoping for more clear answers.”

  “We all hope for the best, Riggs. We settle for realities and long periods of study. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my work.”

  “Fine,” I said, and left.

  Out in the hallway, I found myself cursing Hoon. He was smart and useful, but his attitude was extremely irritating.