Conquest (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  Lasers flashed. My headset was full of chatter. I moved to the nearest opening where a corpsman had been dragged down, flailing. I dove into the hole and Kwon followed. We quickly found a large chamber underneath.

  It took three Macros to kill one of my men—at least three of this relatively weak variety. Two held him locked in their pinchers while the third used drilling equipment to burn through the armor. Using a laser drill that could melt rock, the burrower opened up the marine’s suit and once it lost its integrity it popped and the man was instantly killed by the intense pressure at this depth. We were about a mile deep, and the pressure here was over a hundred fifty times that felt while standing on the beach.

  “Kill the drillers, kill the drillers! Relay that,” I shouted over my suit radio with the strongest possible signal.

  Kwon’s twin beams were already blazing, striking the drilling Macro. I joined him.

  “Use pulses!” I shouted. “No long burns, you’ll cloud up the water.”

  Both of us fired in bursts, hammering at the driller. The two pincher-armed workers dropped the body of the marine they’d methodically killed and churned toward us. They crawled over the rocky interior of the chamber like steel lobsters.

  We soon had disabled the drilling Macro. After that, there wasn’t much they could do to us. We kept wrestling and firing at point-blank range, until they sagged down in bubbling ruins.

  Working together and targeting the drilling machines, my four companies made fast work of the entire nest. That could not be said of Bravo Company, who’d run into the nest alone and had been annihilated.

  “Looks like Bravo Company gave them hell, at least,” Kwon said.

  “Indeed they did,” I said, trying not to grind my teeth.

  There had been only about fifty of the machines active when we arrived. I counted my marine dead. Besides the company they’d first ambushed, they’d only managed to kill five men. Still, that was a hundred and five, total.

  I gathered my survivors and prepared to move out. This took longer than I was accustomed to, as commands had to be relayed and people took time to do headcounts. I wondered if we should have all gone down as a mass force. The Macros had to know we were down here by now.

  I decided it was time to use the hydrophone. Possibly, other units had run into nests like this one. If they hadn’t, they needed to know about the possibility. We were looking for underwater Macro domes with factories inside, but as yet hadn’t found one.

  Every battalion was under orders to report a dome the moment they located it. The plan at that point was simple: we’d mass our strength and take it out. Unfortunately, if none of us had yet found a dome to attack, the plan was a failure.

  At my call, a corporal came to me with his com unit floating behind him. It was about the size of an ice chest and was tethered to his waist with a silver line of nanites.

  “Now, sir?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Power this thing up and aim it at the closest gathering point.”

  He worked the controls, tapping at metal nubs and scratching his armor over beads of metal that moved under his rough touch. In order to make sure the com unit was durable, I’d built the shell entirely of constructive nanites. My marines were clumsy in their suits, especially underwater. We tended to dent equipment, but these systems naturally smoothed themselves out. Smart-metal made an excellent material for infantry equipment.

  “Battalion One calling Battalion Three,” I said. “Respond, please.”

  I waited for a time and made the request once every thirty seconds. After three repeats, I began to worry slightly, but then a voice came back. It was tinny and difficult to hear using this system.

  “…here…” my earpiece squawked, after a period of crackling static.

  “Battalion Three,” I said, “calibrate your equipment, please.”

  Silence for another half-minute, then finally: “Is that better, Colonel?”

  “Much. Who am I talking to, please?”

  “Captain Sloan, sir,” came the reply.

  I smiled. He had been Warrant Officer Sloan, but after surviving two of my campaigns, I had decided to move him up. He’d shown more smarts than many of my Ivy League champions ever had.

  “Sloan, good to hear your voice,” I said. I quickly described the enemy nest we’d tangled with. After ordering him to relay the warning, I asked him if he’d made contact with the enemy.

  “Just one machine, sir. We figured it was a foraging scout. We took it out and haven’t seen any enemy response.”

  “You probably won’t at this point of the invasion. The enemy is weak now, that’s why we are coming after him. Like ants, they’ll build workers first and—”

  “Got it at the briefing, sir,” Sloan said. “Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve received a call from Battalion Six. Mind if I listen to them?”

  “Go right ahead, they might have something interesting to report.”

  I waited another minute or two. When Sloan came back, he sounded excited.

  “They’ve got another entrance, sir. Just like the one you found, but larger. They are in action now.”

  Entrance? I thought. It took about three seconds—sometimes I’m slow. “Captain Sloan, where does the entrance lead?”

  “Unknown, sir. Battalion Six reports strong resistance at a cave entrance of some kind. Sounds like what you encountered.”

  “Relay this news around the other battalions on the southern flank,” I said. “I want everyone to know what we’re facing. They are to relay back their status and try to maintain their position on the seafloor at their gathering points.”

  “I’m on it sir,” Sloan said, “but it will take me a few minutes.”

  “Roger that. We’ll do the same with the northern units. Riggs out.”

  I handed the set over to the non-com who was dragging it and had him relay my messages. I felt uneasy. I didn’t like being down here at the bottom of the cold dark sea. I didn’t know what was happening to my men. We could be losing this battle, winning it, or perhaps idly standing around, mostly ignored by the Macros.

  “Kwon!” I roared.

  “Colonel!”

  “Take a squad down and investigate the corners of these tunnels. Find out if they go deeper. Do not enter unexplored tunnels, just report back to me. You got that?”

  “On it, sir,” Kwon said, bouncing away over the rocky bottom. He rounded up a team and headed down into the holes around us.

  I rolled out a computer scroll—it was really like a tablet computer, but mounted on a plastic mat. It filled my faceplate with a blue-white glow. I flattened it on a boulder and looked over the scene. I was in Battalion One, in the center of the formation. There were ten battalions in all. Most of the others were off to the north and south, but several were directly ahead. They’d made the dive first, and had moved the farthest out into the underwater trench. If we were already in contact with the enemy at two points, there might be a pitched battle going in other spots. I now felt I’d screwed up in regards to the hydrophone equipment. One unit per company was not enough. If the unit was lost, the company would be out of contact for the duration. If the Macros caught on, they could target our hydrophones. We could then be divided and swallowed up one company at a time.

  Taking a deep breath of stale air, I tried to think clearly. This place was oppressive—worse than space. The trouble was you couldn’t see anything around you. At least in space, there wasn’t much to obscure your view of the enemy. Out there, I’d always had a pretty good idea of what I was up against.

  Kwon reported back several minutes later. “No tunnels sir. At least, we didn’t see any. I think they really were mining here.”

  “Good going. Prepare the men to move out in three minutes. I’m not standing around here any longer than that.”

  “Excellent, Colonel,” Kwon said.

  I could tell he didn’t like this place anymore than I did and I’d made his day by giving the order to move out. Moments later, Captain Sloan
finally got back to me. By that time, I was ready to demote him.

  “Colonel?”

  “Riggs here.”

  “None of the other battalions have met the enemy, sir.”

  I felt immediately relieved.

  “But Battalion Ten,” he continued, “the one directly north of you, isn’t responding. No one has been able to get into contact with them.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Five companies lost? Or at least, unable to respond?

  “Okay Sloan, your team and mine are the closest to Ten’s position. We’ll go investigate, double-time. I want all the other battalions to move to the large cave entrance Battalion Six located. We have a definite enemy contact there, and we have to keep the pressure up.”

  Very soon I was gliding through the dark waters again, going deeper still into the ocean. Occasionally, there was a clicking sound in my suit and a fresh trickle of cold seawater ran down to wet my toes. The nanites worked hard to weld the microscopic hole shut again, and all was well. I wondered just how deep these suits could go—how much pressure from the billions of gallons of water above they could take. Would men begin popping like eggs at a given depth? I’d never had the time to test them under these conditions.

  But most of all, as I slid through the burbling quiet, I thought about the Macro factories and their protective domes. I’d expected to encounter them by now. Where were they?

  -25-

  We reached Battalion Ten’s designated gathering spot before Captain Sloan’s team did. We glided swiftly to the area, but everyone along the line slowed down warily as we drew near.

  Something was desperately wrong. Instead of a flat area of seabed before us, a great hole presented itself. It was hard to tell at first what we were looking at. It resembled a cliff edge, similar to the one we’d dropped down to get here. The rim was ragged, as if it had broken away recently. Exposed sediment was darker than the bottom we’d been passing over, which consisted of sand intermixed with tumbled stones. When we reached the edge, I ordered a halt and everyone obeyed.

  I gazed in both directions, seeing my men line up. Their suit lights could be identified at a hundred yards or more in the cloudy water. I could tell they formed a crescent.

  “It’s a pit,” I said. “Kwon?”

  “Right here, sir.”

  “Send a squad in each direction. Tell them to try to follow the edge of this formation all the way around. If they run into each other on the far side, they are to return. If they keep going for more than five minutes without finding anything, tell them to do an about-face and come back anyway.”

  Kwon found two non-coms in green-lit suits and sent them off to follow my orders. I waved the corporal with the communications unit forward and tried to contact Captain Sloan. He should be arriving very soon.

  Before I could get the hydrophone working, Sloan arrived. He sailed along, looking for blue-lit officers until he found me. It was a relief to be able to communicate clearly with radio.

  “What the hell is this, Colonel?” Sloan asked me as soon as he was in range.

  “A big hole.”

  “Pardon me, but that’s not helpful.”

  “Yeah, I think it didn’t help Battalion Ten, either.”

  “You think they glided right off this cliff? Five hundred men?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think the cliff was here when they arrived. This is the gathering spot they had staked out. They showed up on station, waited for orders, but something hit them before our transmission came in.”

  Sloan was quiet for a moment. “Something that big? So soon?”

  “I don’t think it was some kind of super-Macro. I think it was an explosion. The concussion could have knocked out their suit systems. Either that, or it was a whole lot of little Macros under the surface.”

  “What are we going to do about it, sir?”

  It was my turn to hesitate. There was a big part of me that wanted to head over to that cave the majority of my force was assaulting. But I didn’t like leaving marines behind without investigating. I also didn’t like massing all my marines in a single spot on the ocean floor. Mostly, I wanted to know what had hit my men at this spot.

  Before I’d made any kind of decision, the squads I’d sent off to circumnavigate the pit returned. They’d met up on the far side, as I had suspected they would. The hole was circular, and roughly a mile in diameter.

  “We’re going down,” I told Sloan. “One company at a time. If a unit lives long enough to signal back the all-clear, the next company will step off this cliff.”

  “But sir—”

  “Don’t freak out, Sloan,” I said. “I’ll lead the first unit. You can wait up here. We’ll step off the edge in one minute.”

  “I don’t know what you are trying in imply,” Sloan said. He sounded hurt.

  Too bad, I thought. “You are a survivor, Sloan,” I told him. “That’s not the same as a coward. It’s not a bad thing.”

  “Well, sir,” Captain Sloan said. “I’d like the honor of leading the first team down.”

  I was surprised, but decided if he wanted to do it, he could have the job. I watched him line his men along the edge. A hundred of Star Force’s finest. When they jumped, a small part of me knew that if they all died, I was going to feel badly. But I had to find out what was going on. If the Macros had somehow slaughtered five hundred of my men at the bottom of the sea, I wanted to at least know how they had done it.

  I had a sudden thought as I watched Sloan marshal his marines. “Captain,” I said over the command channel.

  “Colonel?”

  “Send them down one squad at a time. Weapons out.”

  He liked the idea and gave the orders. The first squad took the leap, then the second. Sloan stepped out with the third squad. I saw his blue suit among the numerous red-lit ones. I was able to pick him out for a long time as he fell deeper.

  More squads went, but when the last ones were stepping off, there was a sudden commotion. A rush of bubbles came up from the hole. Then more bubbles. They were silver and there were way too many of them. Far from thinking them lovely, I saw those bubbles and knew his men were in trouble. The only way these suits should be able to release bubbles was when they ruptured.

  I heard calls up the line, from suit-to-suit, man-to-man. They were passing up a message. When it got back up to us, it was a scream.

  “Too deep! Release your pods!”

  Every man had an emergency bubble to take them upward. Unfortunately, they found out that they didn’t really work once you went down more than six thousand feet. They hadn’t been designed for that depth. When the gas canister fired to fill the plastic bladder, it popped in most cases. A few men shot upward, dragged toward the distance surface by one wrist. When they passed us, they cut themselves free and glided to the rim of the hole.

  Others came back up using their suit’s repellers. It wasn’t as fast, but it was more controlled. I counted the men as they came back up. We’d sent down about seventy, and we’d lost most of them.

  I gazed down into the hole, frowning fiercely. Kwon came up beside me. He was unmistakable in his green-lit, oversized suit.

  “Colonel Riggs?” he asked. “What happened?”

  “The suits can’t go down that far,” I said. “They imploded. Like a sub that sinks to the bottom. Their suits ruptured and the nanites couldn’t keep up. In short, they died.”

  “But how did this hole get here?”

  “I suspect the Macros did it. They set off a big charge here under our marines. Maybe there was an underground chamber beneath the gathering spot for Battalion Ten. In any case, I think they collapsed the seabed, and the marines fell. They could have used their flight systems to get out of the trap, but I’m guessing their commander ordered them to take the drop, to see what was at the bottom. He must not have realized their suits would pop when they went too deep.”

  “But the lead men should have seen what was happening and flown out the way Sloan’s
men did.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe they all went down at more or less the same time and hit the kill zone together.”

  “Hey sir,” Kwon said, pointing down over the rim. “Who’s that?”

  I looked down. I smiled slowly. A blue-lit suit was rising up toward us. I didn’t know how he’d lived, but I knew who it had to be.

  “That, my good man, is the unkillable Captain Sloan.”

  All along the line of leaning marines a cry went up as he kept coming. Every second he came slowly, but doggedly, closer.

  “Maybe his suit is damaged,” Kwon said. “One repeller might be out.”

  “Hey Sloan,” I shouted. “Good to see you slip out of that one. I lost a bet with Kwon, because of you.”

  “You did?” Kwon asked, bewildered. He pointed downward again. “What’s that thing?”

  No one answered him, because we could all see it now. Sloan didn’t have a problem with his suit—not exactly. He had all his repellers going full blast and had his gas-bubble out too. Unfortunately, he also had the upper half of a Macro latched onto his foot.

  We aimed and lit up the tenacious monster. A mass of steam-bubbles rolled upward from every gun, and the robot was torn apart. Moments later, Captain Sloan drifted over to me and I took his hand and hauled him up over the rim.

  “That was close,” he said.

  I nodded, impressed. “Closer than usual, even for you.”

  Kwon knelt and busied himself removing the last clamped-on Macro arm that dangled from Sloan’s left leg.

  “Did you build the officer’s suits to the same specs, Colonel?”

  I opened my mouth to say yes, but hesitated. I recalled leaving Sandra in charge of the duplication process. Could she have tampered with the design? Could she have altered it to keep me safe, knowing I would wear one of the officer’s suits?

  “I thought I did,” I said.