Star Force 10: Outcast

by B. V. Larson

  “Strange…” I said.

  “Maybe they have a divided command structure, and we’re not the main fleet’s responsibility,” Hansen ventured.

  “Maybe. Try hailing Marvin. Tell him I know he has a factory, and I’m not angry.”

  “Message sent.” We waited, but heard nothing from Marvin.

  The Lithos replied in the meantime. “Negation escape peace destruction.”

  “Crap. I think they just told us to go to Hell,” I said. “Anyone catch anything different from that message?” I looked at Adrienne. She rubbed her face with her palms then left her eyes covered as if that would help her think. The mannerism sent a knife into my gut as I remembered that Olivia used to do that. I wondered how long it would be before I could get back to Earth and find her killer.

  A moment later, I scolded myself for my thoughts. Thirty people had lost their lives in the ring mishap that started this whole thing. Why was Olivia so much more important to me than thirty random humans? Maybe it shouldn’t be true, but that was just the way I felt. Probably most people were the same even if they wouldn't admit it.

  “I can’t make that phrase mean anything good,” Adrienne finally admitted.

  “Valiant, transmit the following: peace desire then a distinct pause then truce.”

  We waited for several minutes with only the murmuring of the watch-standers passing reports and coordinating among the crew, breaking the silence. No message returned.

  Finally, Adrienne couldn’t stand it anymore. “Are they still coming after us?” she asked.

  I looked at the holotank. “Yes, no change. Maybe these Lithos are just too alien to converse with on our terms. You’d think the ones following, the ones we’re talking to, would care that we’re going to kill them all when they arrive. They can’t win, and if the main fleet comes toward us, we can run.”

  Everyone was silent for ten seconds, checking and rechecking the data. Nothing changed.

  “They’re crazy,” I said, breaking the quiet spell. “Four cruisers coming after us and they aren’t even joining up to form one squadron. We’ll pick them off one by one if they come in separately.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Hansen said.

  “Yeah. I guess it is good news…but I wish we could at least call a truce.”

  “Perhaps killing those four ships will put an end to it,” Adrienne said. “If they do have a divided command, perhaps each force is like a feudal warlord’s vassals. By weakening one, the other feels stronger. We might be doing the main fleet’s dirty work for it, while providing them with valuable intelligence on our capabilities.”

  “Dammit, I feel like I’m in Oz and I can’t see behind the curtain. Our only option is a military one.”

  “So much for your ‘show of strength’ theory.” Hansen said, putting real sarcasm into his voice.

  That crossed a line for me. I couldn’t let it pass. He was undermining my authority. However, there’s a saying in the military: pulling rank means you’ve lost the argument. Putting a subordinate in his place while neither looking like a bully nor sinking to his level was an art I hadn’t yet mastered. I didn’t yet have my father’s near-absolute command position, his raw physical power, nor his experienced crews. I was just one ensign thrust into the spotlight. Still, I had to try.

  Turning a steely stare on Hansen, I eyed him for a moment.

  “It’s easy to take cheap shots, Helmsman.” I locked eyes with him until he lowered his. “Very well.”

  I turned my back on him, but I wasn’t finished yet.

  “Pass the word to rotate the watch. Valiant, notify me of any significant change in the Lithos’ disposition. Mister Hansen, take a walk with me, would you?”

  -29-

  I led him without comment through the corridors to the ship’s pool room. By tradition every ship had one, though it was often officially designated something else like “auxiliary storage,” or “recreational spaces.” The game was called “pool,” but was more like jai-alai with baseball bats.

  The object was not to put balls into pockets but to hit the other player with them. The sport combined skill, agility, and hand-eye coordination—as well as requiring a healthy tolerance for pain. While the nanites kept the resulting injuries from maiming the participants, they didn’t stop them from hurting.

  “Pool?” Hansen looked at me sideways as I palmed open the door.

  “An excellent stress relief, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.” He stepped inside, looking around casually at the bumpers, which amounted to small repellers built into the walls. The bumpers allowed for adjustable difficulty, a modern improvement on the plain walls of the past.

  Back in the old days, these rooms had been made of hard steel so the balls simply bounced off purely by physics. There was always significant energy loss that way. Modern pool rooms had adjustable repellers that could be set in any way the players wanted, from damping shots up to sending a ball back at exactly the same speed no matter how hard it was hit. On the control pad I changed the settings to “marine,” the highest level. Now I could fire a bullet in here and it would ricochet back just as hard.

  “What’s this really about, Ensign?” Hansen asked.

  He was within his rights to call me that, but constantly omitting the courtesy title of Captain by definition implied disrespect.

  “We need to clear the air,” I told him. “A little talk, a little game.” I grabbed a ball and bounced it off the nearest wall, catching it again, and then picked up a bat.

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  “Hansen, I don’t want you to be a yes man, but you’re straying into a disrespectful zone in front of the crew. There’s a way to disagree with your commander and a way not to, and you’ve been around long enough to know the difference. If you have such a hard time with me, why didn’t you accept command of your own frigate?”

  “Maybe I should have,” he said.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “You really want to know? Sir?” This last came out in a sneer.

  “Talk.”

  “Because I want to be on the bridge when one of your reckless decisions backfires. I want to be there to take over command when you run into something you can’t handle and fall apart. I owe that to this crew and this ship. And the way I see it, those frigates are just expendable screens for Valiant. I didn’t live through the Macro Wars just to become a sacrificial pawn to your ego, and I pity those poor suckers who are.”

  By this time he’d come up to me and pushed his chest almost into my face. I’m an average-sized guy, a shade under six feet, but Hansen was four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.

  With two nanotized men, size differences mattered. The bigger guy generally had the advantage. I say generally, because other factors came into the equation. Skill, experience and so on. In my case, I had my father’s DNA, which had been rewritten in Marvin’s special baths, as well as the nanites in my blood. I wasn’t as strong as my dad, but I was still considerably tougher than the average marine.

  I gave him a confident smile. “Sounds like you want me to fail. Why is that, Hansen? I’ve never sacrificed anyone. In fact, I’ve done my damnedest to bring everyone through alive. There has to be something more. Did your pet turtle die due to one of my father’s decisions?”

  “You’re a smartass, Riggs, just like everyone says. You’re so full of yourself you think it’s all about you or your heroic daddy. You want to know what’s bothering me? I have more time in Star Force than you’ve been alive. You’re fresh out of the Academy and six experienced officers died so you could take command in front of me on a technicality. That’s bullshit, and you know it. I should be in charge.”

  My smile widened into a grin. “At least you’re being honest now. You want to be the boss. And you know what? If I was certain you’d be the better captain, I’d turn it over to you.” I wasn’t actually so sure about that, but the line sounded good. “But clearly, you’re not.”

>   “Clearly? How is that clear?”

  “After the captain got eaten, you wanted to punish the Pandas. That would have been suicide.”

  “It was a natural impulse to attack the Pandas.”

  “Could you have gotten us through that ring?”

  “I would never have gone through the ring. That was your first crazy move. I would’ve stayed in the Panda system, outrunning them until we found a safe place to repair and rebuild. Now look at us! We’re more screwed that ever, in the middle of a battle with fleets ten times our strength and an enemy worse than the Pandas. You know what I think?”

  “Now’s the time to tell me,” I prompted him.

  “You’re still a boy. I think you want to hunt aliens, get some trophies, and prove you’re just as good as old man. And you want to do it all with your highborn princess by your side. If you want to get home, it’s only because you’re trying to live up to your father’s reputation for fighting and screwing everything in sight. It doesn’t matter to you how many people you kill to do it.”

  I stared at him for a second. “You think quite a lot of yourself, don’t you?” I asked him.

  He snorted at me and shook his head.

  “You know,” I said thoughtfully, “I have no problem with you pulling me aside and arguing your position, but by regulation—and frankly, by suitability—I’m the captain of this ship. You’re the best man I have for XO but this habit of undercutting me in front of the crew is going to stop today, one way or another.”

  “It’s going to stop? Why? Because you say so?” He looked at me in disbelief.

  “No. Because I’m going to prove to you I’m the better man.”

  “You’re not going to do that,” he said, laughing.

  I gave him an unblinking stare. “I’m going to make your day, Hansen. We’ll have a contest of your choice. Pool? A fistfight? Lasers at fifty paces? Whatever you want. If I win, you lose the baggage, straighten up, and accept my right to command. If you win, I’ll turn over command to you.”

  Hansen eyed me with a hungry expression. I could tell he wanted what I was offering, but he was a little wary. His eyes searched my face. “A duel, huh? Is that the only option?”

  “Are you scared?” I asked him, smiling a little.

  He smiled back. “Hardly. You’re cocky—and kind of skinny.”

  “Then choose,” I said.

  He took a step toward me. I stood my ground.

  “You’ll really give up command?” he asked. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to have an XO I can’t trust to back me up one hundred percent. So, make your choice or wet yourself and back down. We only have about ten hours until the first Litho cruiser comes into range.”

  His face darkened. “Let’s play pool,” he said.

  I felt relieved. A fistfight would have been more iffy and lasers would have risked serious injury or death—but pool allowed for a gentlemanly contest. I congratulated myself on manipulating his choice. I’d deliberately led him here, thereby planting the suggestion of playing pool in his mind. What he also didn’t know was that I’d been the star of one of the Academy intramural pool teams and even then I’d held back my full capability.

  “Here,” I threw him the one-ball. “You first.”

  Hansen rolled his shoulders and warmed up a bit, tossing the ball from hand to hand. “Ready?”

  I nodded, standing relaxed.

  Winding up, he batted a hard two-bank shot aimed center mass, a standard ploy. It came in fast and it looked like he was quite good—for a ship’s crewman. I stood there and took it in the chest.

  “Good shot,” I said, coughing only twice. I wanted to run my fingers over my ribs and determine if he’d cracked them, but I resisted the urge. I forced a confident grin and waited for his next swing.

  When he batted again, a two-banker, I stepped aside and caught the ball as it went past. Without pausing, I let the momentum carry me around and fired a straight one-bank off the far wall. The pitch resembled an old-fashioned fastball. The hard sphere bounced into his back almost as fast as I had thrown it, which was very fast indeed. It slammed into his left kidney before he could more than begin to dodge. He staggered, grunting.

  “What the hell…?” he muttered, eyeing me in shock.

  “My shot again,” I said, locating the three-ball and this time using the bat.

  Crack! The ball streaked to the floor and bounced up at a wicked angle, but missed his hastily covered testicles. Instead, I nailed him in the thigh. He hunched then straightened determinedly. His eyes were already bloodshot, and he watched me with bared teeth.

  “Four-ball in two,” I announced. This shot banked twice and nailed him in the buttocks. He almost dodged it, but I was cranking up the velocity of my strikes each time.

  Most marines could bat a ball at about a hundred fifty miles an hour, which meant the heavier ball carried much more kinetic energy than an average baseball. I could nearly double that speed with my inherited Microbe physique, meaning my shots hurt more than major league baseball batted right into a bystander.

  By the time I made my final shot, I almost felt sorry for him. It struck him in the shoulder, and I heard a bone snap as he was knocked to the floor. After picking up the nine-ball, I bounced it in my hand and looked at him expectantly where he lay. To his credit, he’d taken eight shots in a row without conceding.

  “That’s game,” I said, putting my hands on my knees and staring at him.

  “You cheated,” he gasped, rolling painfully onto his back. “That’s impossible for a normal human, even nanotized. You’ve got some kind of enhancements.”

  I shrugged. “I used every advantage I had to win the game within the rules, just as I always do. So no, I didn’t cheat. You chose the contest. You didn’t have all the intel you needed, and you made a poor choice.”

  “And I was going to take it easy on you,” he said ruefully, rubbing his broken shoulder. “Okay, Riggs, I’ll live up to my part of the bargain, but that doesn’t mean I believe you’re the better commander.”

  “I hope for all our sakes you’re wrong.”

  I held out a hand for him to take. He hesitated, but finally did so. I lifted him to his feet by his good arm, letting him feel the effortless strength I kept leashed inside.

  “Eventually you’ll change your mind,” I told him. “If not, you can always have a frigate to command. And for your information, I don’t intend to sacrifice ships with crews in them. That’s what the combat drones are for. Now, let’s go get a beer.”

  After splitting two of my hoarded Earth beers with Hansen, I sent him to the medical bay. I knew he’d be feeling better in an hour, and almost one hundred percent by morning. Nanites were wonderful things.

  I didn’t return to the bridge immediately. Instead, still feeling the adrenaline from the confrontation, I grabbed a couple of cold cases of factory beer from stores and went down to marine country in the ship’s belly-pods. Handing three bottles per man or woman, I shared a drink with the troops, slapped backs, and traded dirty jokes. Marines tended to be coarser than Fleet, but that was because their duties were harder, their job descriptions more dangerous, and their life expectancies shorter than the crewmen. They were the ones that engaged enemies personally, hand-to-hand and face-to-face, and I loved and respected them for that.

  “Hey,” I said to Corporal Lopez, whom I’d just beaten arm-wrestling, “you want to play something you can win?” Showing the marines I was better than they were at something was good leadership.

  “Sure, sir,” he said.

  “I need some suit practice. Force on force sim, what do you say?” The battlesuits could be occupied in simulation mode, and though they would never leave their niches, from the point of view of those inside, they would be running around fighting through any scenario in memory.

  “Oo-rah, sir!” he said, with the others around joining in the cheer. Oddly enough, letting them show they were better at something was also good leadership. Mu
tual respect.

  We suited up enthusiastically and soon were crawling, running, and jumping through blasted landscapes, “shooting” each other with realistic enthusiasm. I insisted we set the suits on hurt mode, so we would feel some of the pain of being shot via feedback circuits.

  I got hurt a lot. I didn’t care. In a way, it felt good. Maybe I was punishing myself a little bit for my own arrogance, because inside the suit’s VR world, my extra strength and speed didn’t mean squat. It was set to do what an average marine could do, no more, no less, and I was happy to see these troops were good at their jobs. They kicked my ass all over the battlefields of a dozen planets, moons, and spaceships.

  Roman emperors used to have a guy that followed them around saying, “Remember, you are mortal,” at intervals, just to remind them they weren’t really the gods they claimed to be. I figured this could be my version.

  Some people might wonder how I could be doing all this while hovering off a hostile planet in a war zone, but throughout history, naval combat has always involved long stretches of waiting punctuated by short periods of blazing hell. The British of the wooden ships era didn’t beat to quarters until a half hour or less before engagement, and always made sure the men were fed a hot meal first.

  That’s why I took the time to decompress when I could, and insisted the people under my command did the same. Permanent vigilance just meant that no one was on his best game when the crap hit the airfoils.

  Also, on the sea, with the sole exception of the pre-sonar U-boat era, ships could always see threats coming from a long distance. In space, that’s even more true. If your sensors are good enough, you can spot planets circling in a nearby star system light years away, so it’s hard to sneak up on anyone. Between our active sensors from thirteen warships banging away, the eyeballs of the watch-standers, and the brainboxes of the combat drones spread out around us, we should have plenty of warning.

  Checking in at the bridge after the morale-building exercise, I found out nothing had happened yet, and Marvin hadn’t answered, so I decided to take a shower and a nap. Afterward, I dropped by the wardroom.