Conquest (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  “Hold your fire,” I ordered the gunner. “Relay that, helmsman.”

  “But sir—”

  “Show me the configuration of the new ships,” I demanded. “What are we facing?”

  “They are considerably smaller than any Macro ships we’ve ever encountered.”

  “Put one up on the damned screen,” I told him. “Give me a close-up.”

  The new enemy ships finally came into sight. There was a large wing of them moving after the Macro Cruisers. They looked vaguely like the old NASA shuttlecrafts to me, but a bit larger. They had stubby wings and a pointed snout. They were clearly designed for atmospheric travel as well as voyaging in space.

  I squinted at the vessels. The lines were unmistakable.

  “That’s a Worm ship!” I shouted. I whooped for joy, and the crew looked at me as if I were mad. “Show me more, what are they doing?”

  Data poured in and the reports were good. All good. The Worms had nearly two hundred vessels. They were all small, but they were pursuing the fleeing Macro cruisers and firing on them. I shook my head in amazement. They’d been busy. I had to admit, of all the people’s I’d met in space so far, these creatures impressed me the most. They’d never even considered surrender or peace agreements. They simply fought the Macros and they’d died in their millions, but the moment they’d been given a breather they were back at it, putting up an offensive fleet rather than focusing purely on defense and rebuilding their lost cities. If anything, they were even tougher than we were.

  Fortunately, I had had the foresight to transfer translation neural patterns from Marvin for all known species into every brainbox in the fleet. Our ships could talk to these aliens. But I knew from experience such translations were not that simple. The symbolic pictographs of the Worms and the idiomatic poetry of the Centaurs were challenging mediums, even after you had established a means of communication.

  The Worms were particularly challenging to communicate with. They used images to communicate remotely and sculptures to communicate in person. They were tactile, rather than audio or optical in their conversations. When using radio communications, they’d fortunately developed a simplified set of pictographic symbols to express ideas. They weren’t words, exactly, but rather images that conveyed concepts. When combined together, they communicated meaning. It was rather like having a pen pal who only understood Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  “Barbarossa,” I said, addressing the ship directly. “I need to open up a channel to the Worm ships.”

  “Clarification required: Worm ship. Please define.”

  “Scan the nearby vessels. Many of the smaller ships are not Star Force ships, nor do they meet the definition known as Macro cruisers. These ships are known to us as Worm ships.”

  “Definition complete. Associations established.”

  “Good,” I said pausing for a moment to think. “We need to transmit something to them. Access your data on translations of English into Worm pictographs.”

  “A one-to-one translation of human speech into Worm pictographs is not possible. It is suggested—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, interrupting in annoyance. “Believe me, I know all about it. I need the pictograph for hunting together—some kind of fat, sliced-grub thing. Send that along with the images for machine and destruction.”

  Captain Miklos looked at me with a bloodless face. We were in the domain of new aliens, and I sensed this crew felt out of their depth. Well, that was just too bad. You had to pick things up quickly in space—either that, or you died.

  “Symbol group selected,” Barbarossa said. “Transmitting.”

  “Let me know when you get a response from them.”

  There were perhaps thirty long seconds to wait. During that time, much of my fleet had flown through the ring after me. They came in two or three abreast and advanced quickly after us. We were not yet in firing range. I squirmed in my chair, and my armor squinked as I did so, the cringe-worthy sound of metal rasping against metal.

  “Incoming repeating message from Worm ships: grub, machine, destruction.”

  “Good,” I said in relief. “Accelerate to full speed, helmsman. Relay to the fleet, we are going to chase down those Macros and engage them. No one is to fire upon a Worm ship without authorization. Maybe with luck, we can catch some or all of the Macros before they reach the far side of this system.”

  I wanted to get into the fight, but it was going to take some time. We’d slowed down before plunging through the ring, and that delay had cost us a lot of momentum. Even with our faster ships, we’d have to accelerate hard for days to catch up and join the running battle.

  Captain Miklos leaned toward me and eyed my screen. “What the heck do those symbols mean, Colonel?”

  “The grub means hunting, a team interaction. The machine symbol clearly refers to the Macros. Destruction indicates we are going to destroy the machines. The Worms communicate differently than we do. Did you attend the officer’s briefing on alien cultures?”

  “Yes, of course, sir,” Miklos said, leaning back into his own chair. “But it isn’t every day you meet a new alien species.”

  “Well, get used to it,” I told him.

  We pursued, watching the two groups of aliens fight it out ahead of us. We were all heading toward the next ring, which linked the Alpha Centauri system to Aldebaran system, the home system of the Worms. Frequently, the Worms made passes at the Macros, harassing and skirmishing with the larger ships. I grinned broadly. Having allies made the universe a brighter place.

  It took time for our sensors to figure out everything we were looking at in a new system after crossing through a ring. The distances were immense, and some of the ships presented little or no radar signature. They were only visible when they fired weapons and could thus be counted optically by our sensors and the brainboxes connected to them. After an hour, we had hard numbers. The Worms had started with two hundred and seven ships when we’d entered the system. The Macros had started out with forty-one cruisers. At this point, the Macros were down to thirty-four ships, while the Worms had a hundred and seventy-nine ships left.

  Calculating the loss ratios, I realized the Worms were only barely on the winning side thus far. The Macro cannons were taking their toll each time the Worms drove in close to hit them in a sweeping pass. On two occasions as we watched, the Macros fired two barrages of eight missiles. In each case, a few Worm ships were caught and destroyed by the missiles. The Macros were clearly holding back their firepower, and the enemy cruisers only fired their last weapons when they were too badly damaged to keep up with the rest of the pack.

  The tactics of the Worms were effective and impressive. They would make a strafing pass, firing at a particular cruiser at the rear of the formation. Targeting the engines, they sought to damage and slow the vessel. When a doomed cruiser lagged behind the protective cover of its fellow it fired its last salvo at its tormentors. Immediately afterward, the cruiser would be set upon by the Worm ships. Like a cloud of swarming piranha, the Worm ships tore the straggler apart.

  The Worm weapons were unlike anything I’d ever seen. They appeared to be particle-beam systems. Gushes of hard radiation flared lavender as we watched from afar. The guns seemed effective, but the beams moved at less than the speed of light and didn’t have anywhere near the range that our lasers had. Still, after witnessing their power, I was impressed. If a Worm ship got in close to one of our laser vessels, I had no doubt their ship would win the duel. That was the trick, though—they had to get in close. We calculated their effective range at about twenty percent of the distance our own weapons could reach.

  “Just like back home on their homeworld,” I remarked to Captain Miklos. “The Worms like short-ranged, hard-hitting weapons. If we showed them a sawed-off shotgun, I bet they’d heartily approve of the design.”

  Captain Miklos nodded, staring intently at the screens. “The Worms are taking serious losses. Are they always this—vicious?”

  “Pretty much,
yeah,” I said. “But remember, they have good reasons. This fleet is heading away from Earth, but its flying toward their system. They are fighting to defend Helios, not just to help us out.”

  “Ah, right. This is fascinating, sir. Do you ever wonder how many civilizations there are out there? How many races like the Worms or abominations like the Macros might exist?”

  “All the time, Captain. All the time.”

  “Sirs,” the gunner interrupted. “There’s a new unknown contact out there.”

  “Why didn’t you pick it up until now?” I snapped.

  “The ship has been hanging low, below the plane of the ecliptic,” the gunner explained. “It hasn’t been firing or using visible thrusters. It’s been shadowing all the other ships. I only just picked it up now.”

  “Great, a fourth player at this party,” I grumbled. I didn’t like this news at all. We had this battle in hand. In time, the enemy would be taken apart ship by ship. Once we were able to join in the battle, we’d speed up the process. The enemy would either have to turn and make a last stand like a wounded bear brought down by a pack of wolves, or they would be torn apart bit by bit. Any new elements to the equation were not welcome.

  It was several minutes before the brainbox interpreting the data gave us input on the ship’s configuration.

  “Uh, it looks like one of ours, sir,” the gunner told me in surprise. “Either that, or it’s an odd Nano-ship design.”

  I leaned forward. “Put a close-up on my screens.”

  The gunner deftly tapped at his boards and my screen lit up with an odd wireframe image in yellow. Green was for known friendlies, red for enemy, blue for structures and yellow for unknowns. Barbarossa’s brainbox didn’t know how to classify this vessel any more than I did. I looked at the lines of it, puzzled. It had curves in the center, in a pattern similar to our own vessels. But it had a large number of oddments hanging off it—almost like they’d been tacked on. Metal struts, parabolic dishes, chunks of metal that appeared to have no obvious purpose.

  “What’s all that crap hanging on it?” Captain Miklos asked. “Is it a junkyard hauler?”

  I smiled suddenly.

  “Sort of,” I said. “He probably picked up a load of broken pieces from the debris we just flew through. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Chunks blasted off Worm ships—those would be especially enticing.”

  “What?” Miklos asked, looking at me as if I were mad.

  “It’s Marvin,” I explained. “It has to be.”

  -44-

  “That crazy robot couldn’t resist a pile of alien junk if it meant his own doom,” I explained to the bemused captain. “He caught the curiosity gene somehow when he was born. He’s got it bad. Maybe it was passed down by the Nanos who formed his original nanite brain.”

  “Born, sir? He’s a machine, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe born is the wrong word. His creation was an accident, to be sure. But couldn’t that be said of most of us?”

  Captain Miklos gave me a strange, sidelong glance. I ignored him and smiled at the yellow wireframe sketch of Marvin. In a strange way, I was glad to see he’d survived this long. Here he was, cruising around the Alpha Centauri system picking up more junk. He was part genius and part homeless guy with a shopping cart.

  “Let’s contact him and see what he has to say for himself,” I said. “Barbarossa, open a channel to the unknown ship. Its designation is Marvin. You can use standard English when communicating. Transmit my voice without interpretation.”

  “Channel request sent…request accepted…” the ship said. After a few more moments, it spoke again. “Channel open.”

  “Marvin, you mechanical weasel,” I said. “This is your daddy, Kyle Riggs.”

  “Hello, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said politely. “Are you here to destroy my being?”

  “Uh—no Marvin,” I said. “We’re here to destroy the Macros you’re shadowing.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Colonel.”

  “Why do you think we’re here to shoot you? Have you been a bad robot?”

  “By no means. But I’d calculated a small probability that Star Force was displeased by some of my actions in the recent past.”

  “I am annoyed with you for helping take out our mines at Venus,” I said. “But let’s talk seriously, Marvin. You realize the Macros will never do anything other than try to destroy you upon detection from now on, right?”

  “Yes—unless some other arrangement was made to their satisfaction.”

  I frowned at that. Once again, I thought to myself I had to figure out a way to clip his wings.

  “What do you know about the Worm fleet?” I asked. “Did the Worms set up an ambush here at the ring and wait for the Macros to come through?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did you talk them out of blasting you?”

  “I told them about the approaching Macro fleet.”

  I frowned at the walls of Barbarossa from which Marvin’s voice emanated. “Did I get that right? Did you talk the Worms into setting up their ambush?”

  “Well, I told them the Macro fleet was coming to their system. They were quite pleased at the prospect of attacking it.”

  I laughed. “I bet they were. Good going, Marvin. Maybe I didn’t screw up by letting you loose in the first place.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Colonel Riggs.”

  I glanced over at Captain Miklos. He looked doubtful. He probably thought I should lure Marvin into weapons range and blow him away. I had to admit, that was the safest move. He’d done several odd things and right now I was willing to total them all up as a positive for Star Force, but that could change at any time. I couldn’t let him run around loose forever. I didn’t have an easy way to get him back into my grasp, however.

  “Hey Marvin,” I said, “would you mind easing off your engines a little and flying back here to join my fleet?”

  He didn’t answer that one right away. I could tell the neural chains in that brainbox of his were recursing deeply, looking for danger. I could almost hear him thinking what’s his angle?

  “Why would you suggest that, Colonel Riggs?”

  There it was—he didn’t trust me. It was sad, in a way. I tried to come up with a snappy reply. I didn’t want to take a long time to respond. Marvin was smart, and he knew it took us longer to come up with plausible deceptions than it took to tell the truth.

  “Actually, I’d like to examine some of the junk you have all over your ship, if you don’t mind,” I said. “We really need to study both Worm and Macro technologies more closely. So far, we’ve never captured a Macro ship and brought it back to Earth in one piece. That is doubly true of Worm technology. We know very little about it. We’ve never even seen one of their spacecraft or their particle weapons up close. Do you have anything like that in your little collection?”

  Another hesitation. If he’d been in the room with me, I’d bet he’d be staring at me with at least three of his four cameras. I had his full attention now—or as close to his full attention as any human could warrant.

  “I do have samples of Worm technology. In fact, most of my current specimens are scraps of Worm ships. They are quite different, you know. They are more like humans than Macros, being biotics, but they are more—wild, you might say. If that description makes any sense to you. Their technological devices are constructed individually, they are works of art rather than mass-manufactured duplicates.”

  “Having met them in battle up-close and personal, that makes perfect sense to me. They do seem to fashion their warrior harnesses and kits in a custom fashion. I didn’t realize this trait extended to their ship designs.”

  “Oh, but it does!” Marvin said. He blathered on for a while, telling me how the Worms managed to build various elements of their electronics and drive systems. Even their circuit boards were individually fabricated, being assembled on a substrate of vomitous resin rather than fiberglass.

  I knew as I lis
tened that I had him. I waved for the helmsman’s attention.

  “Range?” I asked quietly.

  “He’s slowing and gently gliding back toward us,” the helmsman said.

  I smiled, pleased. Without directly agreeing to anything, Marvin was drifting closer. I got the feeling he was glad to have someone to talk to. Space was a lonely place for a solitary intellect.

  Captain Miklos caught my eye and gave me a knowing nod. I was sure he figured we’d lock our lasers on Marvin and blast him the second we could. I hadn’t made my decision on that point. The robot was a wild card, but he had yet to do us any real harm.

  Marvin and I continued talking for a time, back and forth. Now and then, I checked the ranges, which the helmsman had helpfully relayed to my screen. I was somewhat disturbed when I realized we would reach the Macro fleet before Marvin was within range. He was slowing and drifting toward us at a very gentle rate. He’d only given his course and speed a nudge in our direction. We would be in a firefight with the Macros before he was in our grasp. At that point, we’d probably have bigger things to worry about. Clearly, Marvin’s trust was not yet absolute.

  I had options, of course. I could change our fleet’s trajectory slightly and bring us together faster. That would slow us down in our pursuit of the Macro fleet, however. Hmm. Maybe that was exactly what Marvin wanted. Maybe he was testing us, to see if we were really here to catch him or to catch the Macros. I nodded to myself, feeling a growing certainty I was being tested. Marvin had managed to stay alive in the face of the Macros, Star Force and the Worms. If he was anything, he was adept at survival.

  After we broke off our little chat, Captain Miklos turned to me, smiling grimly. “That was masterfully done, Colonel,” he said. “I’d underestimated your capacity to deal with these aliens. I can see it must be done with care and subtlety. We’ll be in range of the rogue robot after we are engaged with the Macros, but we can always spare a few beams for him.”

  I snorted. “No,” I said. “He won’t let us get into range. He’s only testing us.”