Conquest (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  “Marvin,” I called. “Do you recognize my voice? Don’t use my name, just say yes or no.”

  The response came several long seconds later. “Yes.”

  “Please use binary to upload the coordinates, relative course and velocity of the nearest enemy vessel.”

  The signal came in a moment later. I relayed it to my surviving marines. I tapped the green accept destination button virtually with my armored finger in space. I couldn’t even see my hand in the blackness, but feedback in the suit allowed me to feel as if I was tapping at the virtual screen displayed on my HUD.

  I was lurched around sickeningly as my suit’s autopilot engaged. We had been heading in what was decidedly the wrong direction. In fact, as I swung around and began to accelerate in our direction of travel, I realized we’d been braking too long. The enemy was still ahead of us. I wasn’t sure how far.

  We flew on into the night, squinting ahead. Then I saw it, a pitch-black Macro cruiser. There were no running lights, as the machines didn’t believe in safety. The ship looked bigger up close, something like a medium-sized office building in space. I knew we were coming toward the front of it, as we’d have been able to see the blue glow of the engines if we’d come up from behind.

  “There,” I said to Kwon, pointing. “How many grenades do we have?”

  “An even dozen, sir.”

  Normally, it took as many as ten hits to ensure a cruiser was destroyed. They were very tough vessels.

  “Throw all of them and break off,” I ordered.

  The operation went almost perfectly. We only lost a single man who had some kind of control malfunction at the last moment. I was never sure why, but he drifted too close to the final explosion and was vaporized with the Macro ship.

  I didn’t dare communicate with my fleet, but I could read the situation fairly well. The three fleets seemed to be locked in combat, neither side retreating. They’d matched speeds and now sat in space, taking one another out one at a time. The Worm ships seemed particularly effective, flying in erratic, swooping patterns around the enemy ships and slashing them with their particle beams. I hoped they wouldn’t notice us and take a potshot.

  A few minutes, we followed Marvin’s second set of coordinates. We let our suits do the maneuvering and approached a second cruiser, which was locked in a fight with two Worm ships that swung around it like moths circling a lantern. The problem was, we were out of grenades and our arm-mounted beamers were never going to cut through that thick hull.

  “The missile ports are opening up,” I shouted. “Let’s go for it.”

  Kwon relayed the order. A dozen shadows joined us as we tightened our formation, all intent on a single goal. A Macro missile flared brightly as we reached the port. I realized in an instant the cruiser was firing, probably at the Worms that circled the ship. It launched with a gush of hot vapor, and I could see the Macro technician driving the missile as it left its rack.

  Macro missiles were not configured the same way ours were. They did not have to be as aerodynamic, as they were normally used in space. They were really small, suicidal spaceships. The pilot was just another machine, a crewmember bent on his own self-destruction.

  I’d seen a missile like this up-close in the ground at Andros, where we’d tried to defuse it. Then it had been half-buried in the earth, however, and badly damaged. The nose section of the missile was the warhead, in the form of a metal cone. The midsection held the Macro pilot, enclosed in a framework of metal tubing. Behind him was the engine with its flaring plume of hot exhaust. The entire thing was a strange sight.

  I thought, for just an instant, that the machine saw me as well. Then it was gone in the vastness of space, on a one-way journey to strike down one of our ships.

  “Get inside the port, full throttle!” I ordered.

  I saw men all around me surge forward in response to my order. I joined them.

  The missile port closed as we slipped inside. Not all of us made it. One man had lost a leg, two more were trapped outside, thumping on the hull.

  “What now, sir?” Kwon said, breathing hard.

  We were cramped in the missile magazine. All around us was machinery and two more missiles. Fortunately, no other Macro technicians had loaded themselves into the last two spots.

  Moments after we entered the port, we were rocked and tossed about by an explosion outside—very close. I imagined the missile had found one of the Worm ships or gotten close enough and detonated itself. The men we’d left outside stopped sending us signals, and I figured we would never find any remains.

  “Disable these missiles,” I ordered. “I don’t want them taking out any more friendly ships.”

  “And after that?”

  I sucked in a lungful of stale, suit air. “After that, we take this ship.”

  -47-

  The fighting went hard, and we almost lost. We never made it to the engine room, the key to taking over any Macro ship. Kwon and I were down to five effectives, having left our wounded and dying in a quiet corner of the ship on the lower decks. Honestly, I thought we were dead. Any moment, I expected the Macro marines to find us and finish us off, or for our own fleet to blast the ship into fragments, unaware they’d killed their own commander.

  In the end, help came from an unexpected source. Reflecting back on the situation, it was the only help that could have come.

  A monstrous entity of shambling metal slithered down the passages, showering sparks as it came. I knew from experience most of the sparks were from the bare metal wires it touched as it passed by. Macro crews tended not to bother insulating their power wires. The monster itself was constructed of seemingly random articles of metal. The hind legs that pushed it forward had the grasshopper-like, spring-loaded anatomy of a Macro worker. But the head section and the torso was an open framework of steel tubing. What identified the creature to me, were the three whipping black arms that sprouted from the thorax region and which the thing used to drag its body forward along the passage.

  “What the nine hells is that, sir?” Kwon asked me in a whisper.

  I stared at it for a second, then turned to Kwon, grinning inside my helmet. “That’s Marvin. Hold your fire, everyone!”

  The marines did as they were told, but they weren’t happy about it. They kept their weapons trained upon the approaching abomination, ready to blast it the moment it made a false move.

  “Hello, Colonel Riggs,” it said. The voice seemed very strange, being so civilized while emanating from such a frightening source.

  “Where’s the rest of you, Marvin?” I asked.

  “Outside on the hull. I found a long burn-through scar on the dorsal side of the ship. The Worms must have done it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, leaning back against the wall of the ship. “I assume Star Force has taken the rest of the ship?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Uh, why are you here then?”

  “To warn you that this ship is scheduled for demolition. It’s still active, and your replacement commander is systematically destroying all the vessels that didn’t escape.”

  There were a string of things I didn’t like about Marvin’s statement. I fixated on the main point, however, which involved our survival.

  “Why didn’t you tell them I was aboard this ship?”

  “Because the Macros are listening in to our communications. I didn’t want the enemy to target you, sir.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. I had to agree with his logic. During our conflicts with the Macros since our rebellion, they’d taken pains to pinpoint my position and they seemed to be gunning for me. I heaved myself upright and my marines did the same. There were a number of groans.

  “All right,” I said. “How do we get out of here?”

  “Follow me, sir.”

  We did so, picking up our survivors on the way. Fortunately, we were able to clamp them onto the back of Marvin’s strange body. As he humped and sparked his way through the ship, our wounded flopped about on hi
s back. Those that were able to do so, complained bitterly.

  We found the rip in the hull Marvin had spoken of. It was a tight squeeze for him, but was easily managed by my marines. We were soon floating free in space.

  “Are there any more active Macro cruisers in the area?”

  “No sir, but several of them haven’t been knocked out yet.”

  “Who is running fleet ops then?”

  “Commodore Decker.”

  I winced. He was one of Crow’s hand-picked favorites. The man was old guard British navy, with little in the way of imagination. He was competent, if annoying.

  “Commodore Decker?” I called on an open channel. “This is Colonel Riggs, please respond.”

  The response didn’t come for another minute or so. I began to become annoyed. “Commodore Decker, I repeat, this is—”

  “Riggs? Where have you been hiding, man?”

  “Inside the belly of a Macro cruiser.”

  “Humph. Glad to hear you made it.”

  “Let’s connect on a private channel, Decker.”

  “I’m in the middle of Fleet ops now, so I’m afraid I can’t chit-chat, Riggs.”

  “Private channel, please.”

  A few moments later, I had my private chat with him. He didn’t want to give up ops, having assumed command when Barbarossa was hit and he’d figured I’d been lost. I couldn’t blame him for that, but I didn’t want these disabled Macro ships destroyed. After a short argument, he recognized my authority as mission commander and I resumed command. My surviving marines were taken aboard a second destroyer where they suffered the probing ministrations of the ship’s medical room. Fortunately, I’d escaped serious injury. I avoided the skinny black arms of the medical nanites as well and let my own personal nanites repair my body. The process would be slower, but I would stay more lucid. For command, that was a necessity.

  I managed to cancel all efforts to destroy the crippled enemy ships. We left the hulks floating in space and headed for the ring to Eden, through which the last handful of enemy ships had escaped. I was angry with Commodore Decker for not pressing ahead and stopping them, but the damage had been done. On the positive side, I had to admit he’d done a fair job of mopping up and managing a bad situation. We’d won the battle due to our superior numbers and the weakness of the Macro fleet after it had hit the Worm minefield first.

  That thought brought me around to the Worms, who were still following us. They were down to seventy-three ships, while we had only forty effectives. I was glad to see half the Star Force destroyers had survived the engagement. I wanted to have something left to return to Crow when I went home.

  We rolled through the Eden ring at a relatively cautious pace. No one knew what we’d meet on the far side, but I wasn’t comfortable with allowing even a fraction of the enemy to escape if I could help it. If nothing else, they were carrying away copious amounts of intelligence about our strength and tactics.

  On the far side, we were greeted with no explosions, enemy fleets or the like. Instead, I was treated again with the vista of Eden. A yellow star sat in the center, burning with unusual stability. A tightly-held ring of hot planets hugged the star’s waist. Mid-system a band of six lovely, inhabitable worlds orbited at a stately pace. Farther out was the lone gas giant and beyond that were several far-flung, frozen rocks.

  It took us a few minutes, but the sensory data soon came in. The enemy cruisers were retreating away toward the opposite side of the system. I had to wonder if there was another ring out there among the outlying ice-worlds. There didn’t seem to be any other destination that made sense in that direction.

  We posted a sentry ship at the ring and pursued the enemy. I relayed news of our battle through the sentry, knowing it would eventually get back to Earth via the chain of ships I’d left at each ring. Even at the speed of light, the radio waves would take several days to reach Star Force back on Andros Island, but at least Sandra and the rest of our homeworld would know the fleet had been victorious and had ground the enemy down to almost nothing.

  A tense moment came when our sensor-data began to paint the picture from the rest of the Eden system. I knew there were enemy Macro ships here, orbiting the habitable worlds. At least there had been when I’d left the Centaurs to their fate.

  I restlessly watched the screens as the brainboxes located enemy ships and Centaur satellites. Eventually, large Macro machines were spotted roaming the surfaces of various planets. The ships were what mattered to me most. I was relieved when the facts were displayed on the forward walls. There were only six cruisers garrisoning the system, the same number I’d seen when I’d last visited here.

  A broad smile spread across my features. They were not going to be able to face us. We were too many, too strong. Besides that, they’d been beaten several times in a row by this fleet, and their instinct would be to run, and to keep running until they had the power to turn and destroy us once and for all.

  As that thought crossed my mind, my smile diminished. If they truly were fleeing to the next ring—to yet another star system I’d never seen, what might be waiting for me there? For all I knew, the next system held their local nexus in the region. A vast armada could be nearby, and I had no way of knowing the truth.

  Commodore Decker hailed me. I answered the call on a direct channel.

  “I say we turn around,” he said without preamble.

  “No,” I replied firmly. “I will not abandon the Centaurs a second time. I made a commitment to these people the last time I was here. We will press ahead.”

  I heard him mumble something, but could not make out the words. The channel with the Commodore closed suddenly. Information regarding the status of the Centaurs began to flow soon thereafter. They had two fewer satellites than they had possessed when we’d last visited. A grim development for a people who seemed to be on the edge, and who were precariously situated with their entire known population located in vulnerable satellite habitats. I wondered how many of them had died, and how the Macros had engineered their demise.

  “Incoming alien message, Colonel,” Marvin said into my helmet suddenly.

  “What is it, Marvin?”

  “It’s the Centaurs, sir.”

  “Open a channel, I wish to speak to them.”

  “The message isn’t for you, sir. It’s for me.”

  “What?”

  “I—I don’t understand. I believe I’m—I’m experiencing an update, sir. I’m about to restart, sorry.”

  “What?” I shouted the question. Concern ran through me. An update? I thought of all the times software had spuriously updated itself on my home computer. Marvin’s mind would be destroyed.

  “Jam that signal,” I ordered. “Helmsman, you are in charge of communications. Jam the alien signal coming from the Centaurs.”

  “Uh, yes sir,” the helmsman said, he began speaking urgently with the destroyer’s brainbox. Soon a powerful signal was sent out into space around us.

  I ordered the crew to direct cameras toward Marvin, who was following us in his junkyard ship. An image came onto the screen that filled me with worry. Marvin was drifting. His engines had stopped. He was lifeless.

  We slowed long enough for a long ship’s arm to reach out and latch onto him. I felt the loss deeply. Somehow, I’d lost another friend. Oddly, I felt it more than I did most deaths, as this one was a unique intellect. And partly, I suspected, because I had helped create Marvin, to make him what he was.

  How could I feel attached to this bizarre robot? I wasn’t sure, but I did feel something. I was left staring at the screen in grief.

  -48-

  Marvin didn’t show any signs of life for the next several minutes. As each moment passed, my hopes faded. I was reminded of the day my children had died at the cold steel hands of a ship like the one we flew within now. Marvin’s mind had been stilled by an automated, thoughtless subsystem.

  Quite possibly, the Centaurs hadn’t ordered the download of a blank intellect into his br
ainbox. When we’d last left Eden, they’d been in the act of transmitting the contents of a powerful brainbox to give us information about other species and the like. The operation had been suspended when we’d left the system before the download was complete. That partial mind of Marvin’s had made him what he was, had given him his unique personality.

  I imagined the original download had been queued since we’d left the region by some server on their side. Months had passed, but the moment their server detected Marvin’s return, it had decided to finish what it had started. He seemed to have no choice or defense against the erasure of his mind. I supposed any piece of software set up to accept automated updates would be in the same situation.

  I sighed.

  “Sir, the Centaurs are attempting to communicate.”

  “Keep jamming them.”

  “But sir, this could be seen as a diplomatic breach.”

  I stared at the young lieutenant. “I don’t care. Continue jamming.”

  The helmsman turned away. He appeared huffy about it. I truly didn’t care what he thought. I watched the screen with Marvin being dragged behind us. As I watched, an oddment of metal peeled away and was lost in space behind us. He was beginning to disintegrate—or at least his collection of junk was.

  After about five minutes, I heard a weak signal in my helmet. “Restart complete.”

  “Marvin?”

  “Backup restoring. Please wait….”

  Breathing through my teeth, I waited. I felt like a father hovering outside an operating room.

  Finally, Marvin’s voice came through again. “Colonel Riggs?” he asked. “What happened? I appear to have malfunctioned. Am I being towed or am I a prisoner?”

  I laughed. “You are being towed,” I assured him. “You—sort of fainted.”

  I explained the download the Centaur brainboxes were trying to make to him and the automatic nature of such things. I could tell while conversing with him his mind was undamaged. I supposed the system worked in a similar fashion to an earthly computer system when doing an update—it didn’t erase the old software until the new code was completely downloaded and ready to install. My jamming had caused it to retry for a while, then give up and call it a failure. The update operation had timed out, and then reloaded the backup, meaning Marvin’s original mind. Marvin’s mind had been restored.