Conquest (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  Miklos frowned, uncertain.

  “Just watch,” I told him.

  More hours passed. The Macro fleet had lost three more vessels. The Worms had lost a dozen ships in the same time. The Worms seemed to be running out of steam. They were still making passes at the enemy, but with less of their characteristic vigor. I figured they’d realized we would catch up soon and they should wait to hit hard when we were all together.

  The ring that led to Helios loomed near over the next hour. As they drew close, the Macros again fired salvoes of missiles to eliminate any mines they may meet as they passed through the ring. I watched the tiny pinpoints of light flare then quickly fade as nuclear fires cleansed the volume of space in front of the ring. The ships began filing through after that.

  The first to vanish were the Macro ships. The Worms followed, then Marvin. We glided up in silence. Every crewmember stared tensely. What was on the other side? The last time we’d jumped, we’d met with the happy surprise of a Worm fleet and enemy wreckage. This time, the surprise might be played upon us.

  I glanced at Captain Miklos. He gripped his command chair tightly. His face was staring at the forward wall, squinting as if he expected a painful surprise.

  I couldn’t see any way we could know what was ahead, and neither did he. Whining about it wasn’t going to help either. We sat in our chairs tensely, waiting for the stab of the needle.

  We jumped.

  -45-

  The star known to Earthlings as Aldebaran was a red giant about sixty-five lightyears from our world. From the point of view of Earth it was in the Taurus constellation and lined up with the belt of Orion. The star was truly huge, its diameter being forty-four times that of our sun. There were a few crispy planets circling the ancient, monstrous star. Only the planet Helios was in a position to support life. It was a heavy-gravity planet with sunken seas and towering Worm cities that stood like termite mounds here and there on the hot surface.

  Nothing shocking occurred as we flew through the ring. The only surprising thing was the behavior of the Worm ships. They were falling farther behind the Macros and veering off slightly—moving above the plane of the ecliptic for the Aldebaran system. I studied them, frowning.

  “What are they up to?” Captain Miklos asked, becoming nervous. “Their ships are no longer in range of the Macros. They’ve broken off.”

  “They probably decided to hit them again when we catch up. Maybe they finally realized we can’t go any faster than we are currently traveling. A bit of math will predict the intersect of this fleet and the Macros. Speaking of that, when will we catch them, helmsman?”

  “Just short of the next ring, sir,” he said, working his computer.

  “Excellent. I didn’t want to have to wait until we reached the next system to fight them. I’d like to see Eden again, but every jump we make is nerve-wracking at this speed.”

  “It bothers me too, sir,” Captain Miklos said. “But I’m not used to spreading my atoms over lightyears via alien technology. You’ve done it a number of times. Is there some special danger I should be aware of?”

  I chuckled. “Using a little imagination, the dangers are countless.”

  “Sir?”

  I took a deep breath. “Think about it, captain. What if the ring on the far side malfunctions, or simply isn’t there? Worse, we’ve see these rings switch on and off. There’s even some evidence to indicate they can be reset to go to a different destination. What if we came out in the atmosphere of a planet? The rings on Venus and the one on Helios both are inside the gaseous envelop of a world which connects to a point in space.”

  Miklos stared at me. He shook his head. “We’d be smashed like ants, sir. At this speed, hitting an atmosphere would be like hitting a wall of granite.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Now you know why I’m nervous. I don’t expect a problem, but I can imagine plenty of them.”

  Miklos sat back in his chair and looked disturbed. I shook my head. He shouldn’t have asked me.

  Many hours passed. We were gaining on the Macros, but only slightly. To make matters worse, they seemed to be more capable of managing curving course changes. As the next ring wasn’t perfectly lined up with the entry point into the Aldebaran system, we had to turn our ships toward the next ring. Since we were already moving at high speed, we had to fight our own inertia. We would still catch up with the enemy before they escaped the Worm system, but it was going to be a close thing.

  I didn’t like cutting things closely. I didn’t like the prospect of failing to catch them and having to fly into the unknown yet again at these speeds. We couldn’t afford to slow down, or they would lose us. We couldn’t veer off and miss the next ring either, as that would only leave us with the long process of braking, turning around and going back through it. The maneuver would take us a day or so at least, depending on how cautiously we moved. No, we were committed and I hated it. I much preferred to keep an enemy guessing. An enemy that knew what you were going to do many long hours ahead of time had plenty of opportunities to screw you over.

  Marvin now flew between us and the Macros. He’d slid through the ring, but had managed to stay out of range of every gun in all three fleets. I could hardly blame him. Slowly, he was drifting closer to us. But he wasn’t going to let himself come into laser range. We’d plotted his flight path. At no point did it enter the globe on my screen that represented our possible range of fire.

  As there was nothing better to do, I headed back into the troop pod and played games on rolled-up screens with the marines. Kwon and I had a drink or two—the man never entered battle without a body-warm flask of something on him. When I grew tired I headed back to the bridge to sleep in my command chair with Captain Miklos and his crew.

  I noticed how the marines and flight crew didn’t really mix. I thought about urging them to sit down together, but decided against it. We were about to get into a death fight with more cruisers than we’d ever dealt with before. If these men didn’t want to cozy up with one another, that was their business.

  I fell asleep for an entire shift in my chair. I probably couldn’t have done it without the help of Kwon’s rotgut. When I woke up, I saw Miklos’ face near mine. He was tapping on my visor.

  My armored hand reached up and batted away his hand. I saw him wince in pain. When a battle-suited hand slapped you, it hurt.

  “Sorry,” Captain Miklos said, withdrawing out of my face.

  “Me too,” I said, groaning and stretching. “What’s up?”

  “There’s an incoming message, sir.”

  “From who?”

  “The Worms. They are repeating a message over and over.”

  Frowning, I pulled up the symbol set on my computer. The first one was the grub-thing which I’d seen before. It meant buddy or hunting-partner. The next one was an image of something big and round. The last one was some kind of odd organ. If I had to guess, it might have been an eyeball. But that was only a guess.

  “What the hell are these things?” I asked no one in particular. I needed a hot shower, my brain was slightly fuzzy.

  “Barbarossa has no clue,” Miklos said.

  “I thought these ships could speak Worm.”

  “They know everything we’ve recorded from past transactions. But the last two of these symbols are new to us, and the ships.”

  “How long until we reach the enemy line?” I asked.

  “A little under two hours.”

  I shook my head. “That’s cutting it close. You should have awakened me sooner.”

  Miklos and the helmsman exchanged glances and shrugged. I heaved myself to a standing position and made irritated noises. I headed for the elimination chamber and struggled to get my helmet off. I gulped coffee and thought about a shower. There wasn’t really enough time.

  “Barbarossa,” I shouted. “Forward that message to Marvin. Request a translation.”

  “Message sent,” said the ship.

  “Sirs?” the helmsman spoke up sudden
ly. “The Macros are changing formation.”

  I stumbled out the elimination chamber and climbed back into my crash seat. I shook my head to clear it. “What the hell are they doing?”

  No one answered. As we watched, the enemy fleet spread out, seemingly in every direction. Ships went, up, down and sideways. They were slowing, too.

  “We have them!” I said. “They have decided not to dare another ring. They are going to turn and fight. We’ve run them up the proverbial tree, gentlemen.”

  Miklos didn’t answer. He looked less convinced of victory and more worried than I was.

  “Full deceleration,” the helmsman said. “Scattered pattern. Could they be running into something?”

  I frowned at him, then addressed the ship. “Any answer from Marvin yet, Barbarossa?”

  “Incoming now.”

  I heard Marvin’s voice next. “Symbol translations vary. The first one indicates a hunting party or comradery.”

  “I know that.”

  “The second symbol is the image of their sun, the red giant known to humans as Aldebaran.”

  “Okay, what does it mean?”

  “It means many things. Life, heat, danger. It depends on context.”

  “Wonderful. What about the last one?”

  “That is an image of a Worm organ. Specifically, the optical organ located in the anterior portion of Worm physiology.”

  “Huh,” I said, trying to puzzle that one out. Hunting-partner, sun, eyeball…. No wonder Barbarossa had no clue. “What does it all mean in this context, Marvin?”

  “I could only guess.”

  “Then guess!”

  “Since we are close to combat, I would assume the sun means danger. I would also hazard that the eyeball means either watchfulness, or a forward perspective.”

  I suddenly had it. “Are you telling me the Worms are saying, ‘Friends, danger ahead?’”

  “Yes,” Marvin said. “That would summarize the concepts nicely.”

  “Well,” Miklos said. “The enemy are directly ahead of us. And they are turning to fight now.”

  “Yeah, but they sent this even before the Macros started turning around.”

  “Colonel,” the helmsman said. “There’s something else. The Macros—one of them just blew up, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Nuclear explosive, low-yield. They probably hit a mine.”

  I stared at him for a long second, thinking.

  “Mines,” I said. “The Worms put a mine field out here in the middle of open space, on the likely path between the two rings. That way, the enemy couldn’t just blow them up the way they’ve been doing with tightly placed fields right in front of the rings.”

  “Two more explosions. One more Macro destroyed, another damaged.”

  “New message incoming from the Worms, sir.”

  Worried, I examined the new symbol-set on the screen. The first and second symbols were the same. The last one, however, was a full-sized worm warrior.

  “Tell me what this is, Marvin.”

  “Friend, danger, and the raging worm warrior,” Marvin mused. “In this case, I think they are marveling at our bravery. It is a compliment, sir.”

  “Our bravery? Why the hell are the complimenting us now?”

  Captain Miklos made a strangled sound, then turned to me with a white face. “We must be in it, sir. The minefield.”

  I nodded. That had to be it. “Hit the brakes!” I shouted. “Turn us around for full thrust deceleration. Helmsman, give me numbers. How long until we are within effective range?”

  “Less than ten minutes sir. They are ahead of us on the deceleration curve. In fact, we are going to plow right into them, even while braking at full power.”

  I struggled with my helmet. I clanked back to the troop pods. The door melted away and a platoon of startled marines looked at me. No one was buttoned up, not even Kwon.

  “This is it, marines!” I roared. “Suit-up tight, double-time. Check your gear and say your prayers. We’ve got about ten minutes to live.”

  -46-

  Barbarossa began firing her lasers automatically when we reached effective range. By then, two of our destroyers and four smaller ships had eaten a mine. The only consolation was that the enemy had lost three more cruisers.

  I noted with chagrin that the Worm ships remained unscathed. No doubt they had a friend-or-foe recognition system which prevented the mines from detonating against their hulls. Bitterly, I watched my ships vanish one after another in puffs of white brilliance. No wonder they thought we were brave. They’d warned us about the danger, but we’d plowed ahead, determined to battle the machines in the midst of a widespread low-density minefield. I supposed I could have asked them for the code and the signal frequency of their mine-recognition system, but it would have taken days. We could barely communicate at this point, and no doubt they were as puzzled by our symbol translations as we were theirs. Transferring technical information was out of the question. There simply wasn’t time.

  The enemy were down to less than thirty cruisers when we came within range of their cannons. At that point, the Macros pulled an unexpected move. They trained their guns on Barbarossa and poured fire into my destroyer.

  As closely as I could figure, they must have caught our radio signals and listened in. They clearly knew Barbarossa was the command ship, the one sending out orders to the others. Either that, or it was blind luck when Macro Command picked my ship to concentrate upon. I don’t believe in that kind of luck, so as our ship took a hammering, I cursed wildly in my helmet. Our communications were too open, our encoding weak.

  I didn’t get much time for cursing or thinking of any kind. The ship’s hull couldn’t take this kind of punishment. The first burst of fire ripped the roof off overhead. My only thought was it was a good thing we didn’t get hit low. They would have knocked out my marines in the troop pod, which hung in the belly of the ship.

  “Eject!” I screamed over the ship’s com system. “All hands eject!”

  The ship went into a spin. Barbarossa was already dead, her brainbox must have been hit. I could tell by the behavior of the smart-metal walls. They didn’t bother to twist and reform themselves into smooth shapes. They stayed frozen like splattered solder. I could see star moving by laterally outside, indicating we were in a slow spin.

  The helmsman was dead at his post. Something had punched through his relatively thin Fleet suit, probably a piece of shrapnel from the ship’s hull. Captain Miklos shot out of the opening in the roof however, and I followed. When we were outside the dead ship, I saw flashes nearby.

  “Keep moving! Head directly away from the ship!”

  The Macros were still pouring fire at the crippled Barbarossa. I grabbed Miklos, as his suit didn’t have propulsion power on its own, and I dragged him with my boot repellers at full power. We zoomed away from the ship laterally until we were at a safe distance. The ship blossomed into a flare of brilliance behind us that made my autoshades black out momentarily.

  “Kwon, did you make it out?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kwon’s signal came to me. His voice was clear and strong.

  I smiled, looking around. A dark shape blotted out part of Aldebaran. Silhouetted by the massive blazing orange sphere, Kwon looked small, but he was relatively close to me. I was unsurprised. He seemed to have an extra sense useful only when it came to finding me when we were under fire.

  I joined the platoon local circuit, and I could hear Kwon shouting in my helmet. He was working to gather the rest of the men to our position. We were soon flying in a loose formation in the general direction the rest of the fleet was headed.

  I let him do his work and had a look around. We couldn’t really see the other ships, they were out there in the darkness, close in astronomical terms, but too distant to make out with the human eye. Occasionally, we saw flares and flashes as ships died to either mines or enemy fire. Most of any space battle was like that, they were generally cold silent affairs. The void f
elt empty even in the midst of a passing fleet.

  “How many got out, First Sergeant?” I asked.

  “Fourteen sir—including us.”

  I nodded, pleased. Really, for having just bailed out of a dead destroyer, we’d beaten the odds.

  “Who have you got there, sir?” Kwon asked me.

  “Captain Miklos.”

  “Is he dead?”

  I looked down at the figure in my grasp. I had his suit bunched up in my armored fist, holding him by the scruff of the neck. He was limp. I gave him a gentle shake. His body flopped like a rag doll in the mouth of a terrier.

  “Captain? Are you alive in there?” I asked.

  I got no response.

  “Hmm,” I said, “I don’t think his suit has lost integrity. He’d be frozen stiff if it had. Maybe he lost consciousness somewhere along the way.”

  “Very good, sir,” Kwon said. “What are your orders?”

  “Keep flying. We need to turn feet first and start braking hard.”

  Kwon relayed those instructions and I ordered a radio blackout except for short-range unit communications. I decided I wasn’t going to attempt to command the whole Fleet now, they were on their own. The Macros were gunning for me, and I might as well let them think I was dead.

  “I think I’ve got good predictive numbers on the locations of the nearest enemy cruisers. If they haven’t changed course much, we can intersect them at about a half-degree sunward from here.”

  We adjusted our trajectory and kept braking. The key difficulty was going to be our relative speeds. The Macros had been slowing down a lot. I hoped we could slow down even faster, matching their speeds. If we were going too fast when we hit the cruiser line, we would crash into them at killing velocity, or shoot right past. If we slowed down too much, we wouldn’t reach them. It was a difficult set of calculations, but I had an officers’ suit on, which had a superior brainbox. Still, I was worried. I needed better intel on the enemy fleet. We’d left our vessel so early in the battle, we couldn’t expect to be perfectly on target.

  With about one minute to go before the two fleets were scheduled to clash and fly through one another, I decided to chance a call on an open circuit.