by B. V. Larson
I went on, “Because you’re now an officer in charge of military property—that is, the ship and the contents of the brainbox you incorporated—you’re clearly under my command. For now, you can be the sole crew member of Greyhound until I say differently.”
“Then I’m Captain Marvin after all.”
I sighed. “If it will make you happy yes, but don’t get arrogant, or I’ll bust you to enlisted rank and put one of my human warrant officers in charge. Or maybe I’ll promote Kwon and he can be the captain.”
Marvin squirmed. “That would be a grievous strategic error.”
“And another thing, stop cannibalizing the ship for your own use. That’s misappropriation of Star Force property.”
“Aye, sir.”
After that Marvin was very cooperative, which to me was a dead giveaway that he’d gotten most of what he’d wanted from me in the first place. I knew the robot had played me, but at the same time, I now had the backing of law behind me rather than just force and persuasion. It remained to be seen whether that would work to my advantage. I made a mental note to get Adrienne looking up all the regulations and laws in the ship’s databases relating to Star Force military justice. After all, if I had to court-martial Marvin, I’d need an ironclad case.
We spent the final hours before we came within range of the Panda battle station getting a shield generator to Greyhound. To do it quickly, we fitted a repeller on the device and then launched it on a path where Marvin could overtake it and pick it up easily. Hansen and Marvin had to perform something of a dance to make sure the Panda missiles stayed focused on Greyhound, but in the end it worked out.
Once Marvin reported the generator had been installed, we were ready. I made sure my people rested and had a meal. I ate breakfast with Adrienne.
“Last meal?” she joked as I put my plate of food down on the table across from her.
“Not nearly as good as what’s on Greyhound,” I complained.
“The beds suck, too.”
“We call them bunks. Welcome to Star Force.” I raised an eyebrow and shoveled some form of reconstituted egg product into my mouth.
“Speaking of that…how come Marvin gets to be a captain and I’m still a civilian?” she asked me.
“He’s just a warrant officer,” I said without thinking, and then I realized what she was really asking. “Do you want to join Star Force?”
“It might make it easier to deal with the scientists and engineers. Right now I don’t have the credentials to get respect that way, and I have no formal rank or status aboard this ship.”
“Good point,” I said as Adrienne forked some more breakfast sausage into her mouth. At least that stuff always tasted the same no matter what it was made of. “Okay, I’ll appoint you as a warrant officer, too.”
“With a date of rank preceding Marvin’s.”
“Deal.” I could see she had thought this through. She was constantly proving to me she was smart as well as pretty. I felt a little guilty at such a stray thought. The sensitive and moral part of me shook its finger and told me sternly that not enough time had passed since Olivia’s death to be thinking of her sister. But it was hard not to, after having been thrown together in this life or death kind of situation.
I smoothed my face, afraid my thoughts had shown on through. If she’d noticed, Adrienne didn’t let on. I never knew with women. In the emotions department, they were much too deep for me. I wasn’t a complete clod, but I’d always gravitated toward more outgoing girls, the ones that were comfortable with guys. Olivia had been like that. Adrienne was different. She was less boisterous, more feminine—but still intense and strong. There were a lot worse alternatives to have as my companion at meals.
Oblivious to my thoughts or faking it, Adrienne said, “I guess I’ll need a uniform. In fact, you could use another set, and I believe others might need spare clothing as well. If we live through the next hour, we can have the factory make some new clothes.”
I nodded, unsure what to make of her plan, but it seemed harmless. “That’s a great idea.”
“What about that Crustie?” Adrienne asked. “Is he being taken care of?”
“Yeah, he’s fine,” I said. “He has his own quarters, though he complains the compartment is too small.”
“I’ll check to see that we have scripts for his suit and food.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You know, you need some regular duties aboard ship if you’re going to be a warrant officer. I think I’ll put you in overall charge of all the civilians and the factory. That will relieve me of some worries and let me focus on operations.”
She smiled like the sun coming out. “That’s a wonderful idea. You’re getting the hang of this command thing.”
I realized I was smiling as much as she was. Her words and face had made me feel good. I had to wonder if I’d been played again. But even if I had, I figured in this case, it was all for the best. After all, I trusted Adrienne far more than I did Marvin.
-14-
Like most battles, this one started slowly and built up in intensity. I stood at the holotank, dividing my attention between it and the forward screens.
“Signal Marvin to start his script,” I told Hansen.
I’d given Marvin a very precise plan and had explained exactly why I needed it done that way. He’d agreed without dissent. Like a kid who finally gets that new toy he’s been wanting, Marvin wasn’t yet bored with being the captain of his own ship. Maybe that had been a secondary intention of his all along. Maybe he had stowed away on the yacht so long ago in hopes that he could sneak aboard and “salvage” it.
Or maybe he’d planted the bomb himself. I turned that thought over in my mind and looked at it from all angles, not finding anything to prove or disprove it. I filed it away for later.
I watched as Greyhound accelerated smoothly in a long looping course, keeping the missiles close enough to continue their lemming behavior. They pointed their noses toward their mutual target, keeping separation from each other but otherwise acting mindlessly. Their programming was barely sophisticated enough to aim slightly ahead of the target, where it would be when they got there. Normally this would be an advantage, improving hit probability, but in this case, it also made them highly predictable.
I was depending on that predictability.
“Launching the mini-missiles,” Hansen said as the time hack came up on the screen. From this point forward, everything was preplanned. In the holotank I saw the four hundred little powered darts cruise forward under maximum repeller power, which wasn’t a whole lot. We were still an hour out from the ring and battle station. That hour would give our missiles time to build up enough velocity to be perceived as a threat.
“They’re all activated,” Hansen said a minute later.
Next, we launched the drones Adrienne had been putting together with skateboards and small warheads. Marines operated them by remote control from their suits, one per man. Normally, the skateboards would be carrying the marine pilot, but today they were providing me with extra tiny ships on the cheap.
“Make sure you don’t enable the nukes on those drones,” I reminded Hansen. We’d had the marines practicing with the slow-moving guided weapons, repeller missiles really. But if there was one thing every Fleet officer knew, it was that if something could be broken, misfired or made to malfunction, a marine could do it.
Hansen shot me one of his signature “get off my back” looks and went back to watching his board.
Instead of heading toward the battle station, the drones proceeded in front of us, toward the ring. I intended for them to lead us through. Maybe they wouldn’t be needed, but if there was something waiting on the far side, they would give the unknown enemy thirty-two extra targets, and maybe a nuclear headache.
Over the following minutes, we played a waiting game. Valiant’s gunnery noncoms held the mini-missiles aimed at the Panda battle station while I watched a spider web of tracking lines in the holotank slowly converge. The mar
ines kept themselves occupied by practicing with the repeller drones operated by their suit HUDs.
Greyhound’s long loop came back to meet ours ten minutes before engagement—just outside of the predicted range of the battle station’s biggest beam weapons. They hadn’t fired missiles at us, for which I was grateful. Probably they figured there was no point in wasting ammo when their beams could do the job. The longer they waited, the easier this was going to be. Like a mechanical clock with many moving gears, my plan was coming together.
Crossing into range of the enemy introduced variables. I had no idea exactly when they would start firing. I fidgeted, but tried not to show that I was sweating underneath.
“Shields on,” I said as we closed into range. “Keep all the capacitors at full. The weapons are last priority.” If everything worked right, we wouldn’t even need them on this side of the ring.
“They’re firing,” Hansen announced.
The holotank displayed fresh red lines representing the shots of dozens of huge antiproton turrets. They stabbed outward through space, slowly reaching for us. Fortunately, they weren’t targeting Valiant yet. Instead, our green pinprick missiles began to wink out, turning into white flares of pixels that quickly faded to nothing.
“We’re losing mini-missiles faster than expected,” I said. “That’s gonna be a problem later.”
Greyhound, trailed by its flock of thirty-six Panda missiles, eased in alongside Valiant. As the weapons were still finishing up their curving course and were trying to aim ahead of their target, they actually flew a path that would take them, by our finely-tuned calculations, through a spot exactly twenty miles above the ring—precisely where the battle station was.
Unless the Pandas were able to regain control of their missiles, I had turned their weapons against them. Now, if we were really lucky, they would have proximity fuses with huge nuclear warheads and no ability to distinguish friend from foe. It wasn’t so much that I hoped they would strike home and blow the snot out of the battle station—I just wanted the huge fortress to be desperately concerned with the threat to their existence and therefore, ignore us.
“Coming in range of their secondary beams,” Hansen said. The battle station had hundreds of smaller antiproton beams, presumably used to knock down missiles, boarders, or fighter craft. They joined the bigger weapons in lashing out, trying to pick off the mini-missiles. In response, our controllers threw them into random repeller spins, trying to keep them alive as long as possible.
“We’re still losing them too fast,” I said aloud. “We should have made more of them.” By my calculations, all of the mini-missiles would be picked off before the Panda missiles got within range, giving the battle station about thirty seconds to shoot at us, even with our extra speed.
“Hansen, arm all the drone warheads,” I said, coming to a decision.
“About time!” he said, perking up.
I glanced at him then contacted Kwon. “Marine commander, divert half the repeller drones. Keep the other half aimed at the ring. Target the battle station and try to get them into detonation range. Go ahead and blow them up when they reach their maximum damage radius. I want to rattle the Pandas and keep them busy.”
I heard a sigh come out of Hansen. He wasn’t getting the Panda blood he dreamt of. That was too damned bad.
Diverting the drones had been one of my contingency plans. Better to risk going through the ring with fewer of them than suffer a pounding from all those Panda beams. I doubted Valiant could survive a concentrated barrage for long. Our surprise burst of speed might save us once, but I was reserving that for a last throw of the dice.
The drones filled in most of the time between when the last of the mini-missiles died and the Panda missiles arrived. “Ten seconds,” I called. The holotank showed the sixteen remaining repeller drones had passed through the ring. The marines would pick up control of them when we followed.
“They’re targeting us,” Hansen barked as the battle station turrets slewed toward our ship.
“Flank speed, now!” I yelled, but Hansen had already put the pedal to the metal and punched us forward with all the power of our engines. Greyhound fell back slightly, then caught up again to ride in our shadow. Marvin was no fool. He was putting the bulk of Valiant between him and the threat.
The battle station fired a titanic salvo toward the ship instead of the last of the mini-missiles. Most of their shots missed sternward. Valiant rocked with one heavy blow and several near misses. Power surges ran through the ship, causing the fluctuating inertial fields and grav plates to bounce us around, but everyone had nanite arms holding onto their bodies by this time.
“Shields held,” Hansen reported with relief. “We took a direct hit from one of their big guns, but we got lucky. It landed where we had a double screen.”
“Yes,” I said with a pointed look. “We were lucky.”
He didn’t look at me, but I figured he’d gotten my point. If he didn’t, the crew had. My dad had always told me a commander has to convince his people he’s always one or two steps ahead of the average officer. He didn’t have to be the smartest guy in the fleet, or the bravest—but it helped. He just had to anticipate and keep winning, because everyone loves a winner.
More importantly, people follow winners.
The Panda guns turned to deal with their own traitorous missiles next, and we passed through the ring at high speed. We never did get to see what happened to the battle station, and within moments we were too busy to care.
When we exited the ring, the ship was buffeted with turbulence—at least that’s what it felt like. The screens lost visuals. I looked at the holotank, which synthesized inputs from all our sensors, and shouted in alarm: “Full braking!”
Whatever attitudinal problems he had, Hansen was an excellent helmsman. He turned the ship end-for-end, throwing us into a full-powered deceleration. I noticed Marvin had done the same with Greyhound.
“What’s going on?” Hansen asked, holding tightly to the controls as Valiant shook like an airliner in a thunderstorm.
“There’s something big in front of us,” I replied. On the holotank plot, it looked like an enormous curving wall. “Damage control,” I called. “Get those repair nanites to the forward hull. I want my visuals back.” We’d lost external cameras to whatever we were passing through. It must be gas or dust, something relatively thin. If it had been thicker, we’d be heating with friction as if entering a planet’s atmosphere.
Then I noticed the drones that had been ahead of us weren’t there anymore. The swarm of green contacts had vanished from the holotank.
“Kwon, are any of our marines in contact with their drones?”
“No, sir,” Kwon replied in command chat.
I pulled up the radiation levels on my console. They were high for open space, though not dangerously so.
“I think I know what happened,” I said aloud. “The drones detonated about a second before we flew through the ring. They vaporized a minefield or some kind of guard ship, clearing our path, but they left all this gas and dust.”
“That fits,” Hansen replied. “We’re smoothing out.” He was right. We were passing beyond the area of destruction. Then the visuals came back on as optical sensors were repaired or replaced, and the main screen showed what we were up against.
While it was difficult to get a good view directly ahead due to our engine exhaust, the curving wall was so large and so far away that it didn’t matter. Looking from the main screen to the holotank and adjusting the scale, I finally recognized our situation.
“We’re inside something,” I said. “A huge sphere…or maybe a hollow planet.”
We stared at the growing pool of data, trying to make sense of it all.
-15-
Once we had slowed enough to avoid slamming into the wall ahead, I had time to examine the situation. We cruised slowly inside an enormous globe. The ring was behind us, spinning in the middle of the globe. Floating with us were strange struc
tures like snowflakes, thousands of them drifting around. They were between five and twenty feet in diameter.
“What are those made of?” I asked, relaying the question to the science lab below decks.
“Some kind of crystal,” the answer came back from Hoon, who was leading the analysis team. “Spectral analysis indicates high levels of silicon.”
“What keeps them floating around?” Logically, the gravity of the sphere must pull objects down toward the ground, so something must be countering it for the snowflakes to remain in space.
“I believe they have repellers, Captain Riggs.” Marvin’s voice came over the comm channel. I hadn’t told anyone to include him in the discussions, but he’d somehow tapped into our communications. I probably should have included him, so I let it pass.
“Nonmetallic repellers?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “They’re fascinating machines, using both mechanical and electrical processes but only trace amounts of metal. I am looking forward to examining them.”
“Hold on, Marvin,” I said. “That will have to wait. We need to find out where we are, and what’s dangerous in this environment. That battle station was defending the Pandas against something.”
“That’s Captain Marvin—and I believe the situation is self-evident.”
I growled in exasperation. “You’re under my command, Marvin. I don’t have to call you ‘Captain.’ Check your regs. Now, what’s self-evident? We’ve been a bit busy planning and executing our escape from the last system. All you had to do was follow orders, so I’m sure you had plenty of time to take readings and form theories.”
“The gas and dust we encountered as we came through is the remnant of structures blown apart by our drones.”
Something didn’t quite seem right about that. “Our drones were contact-fused,” I said. “What are the odds all sixteen struck one of these crystalline snowflakes and detonated?”