by B. V. Larson
I knew why the klaxons were sounding, we were underway. I could have used more time, several weeks in fact. But for unknown reasons, Macro Command figured they had given us long enough to reconfigure our forces. They had never asked me how long I wanted. They had never asked anyone anything ever, as far as I could tell. They didn’t like questions from us either, they only responded to demands.
Sandra had been in bed with me, but she was missing when I woke up. She stepped out of the shower unit naked and dripping. Her legs were long and tan. Runnels of water trickled down her calves. She hadn’t bothered with the dry cycle on the shower unit, and had just popped the exit button.
“Is this it?” she asked.
I nodded. “Sounds like it. I can feel the ship’s attitude jets firing.”
We pulled on our suits without bothering to adjust them. We left the flaps open, knowing the nanite-chains impregnated in our reactive suits would figure out we weren’t closing them ourselves and seal the flaps after a while. Sometimes it was annoying when they insisted on rearranging your outfit, but they usually guessed right.
Still carrying our boots, we rushed out through the bulkhead of our shared quarters into the narrow hallway. We moved quickly to the other end of the command brick and joined Sarin at the big screen. Gorski came in a few minutes later. His eyes were wide. Everyone looked nervous, and everyone knew we were nowhere near ready for this.
“Sandra, connect me with Macro Command,” I said.
Sandra had spent the last few days familiarizing herself with the bigger, more complex com-board in the command brick. She’s picked it up quickly, as it was essentially the same system as the private unit I had in my office. In the old days, however, she’d only handled my personal and political communications. Now, she was responsible for relaying commands to people who might die if she screwed up. I could see she was taking the job seriously. She had that fixed, focused expression on her face I’d come to recognize in my crew.
The connection was up in seconds. I didn’t bother to praise her now, however. This was strictly business.
“Macro Command,” I said. “This is Kyle Riggs. I require an update on our mission status.”
“Mission is active.”
“Give me the estimated timing for contact with the enemy.”
“Four hours, fifty-eight minutes.”
“Give me the estimated timing for our assault operation.”
“Assault operation will commence in four hours, fifty-eight minutes.”
I nodded and pursed my lips. Not much information there. Either we did not quite understand each other, or our assault was to begin immediately when we got into range with the enemy. Either way, we had less than five hours before things became serious.
“Sir,” Major Sarin said, gesturing toward the screen.
I eyed it. The donut-shaped ring loomed close. We’d been parked in orbit nearby for a day or two, but now the ships were nosing into the ring. Once we passed through it, we would be transported to another star system. As far as we’d been able to determine, such transportation was instantaneous.
“Everyone brace for impact,” I said. “Remember the mines we hit the last time we entered a system, people. We don’t know what we are walking into.”
Sandra hesitated a second, staring at the screen. I glowered at her until she remembered her job and relayed the order to everyone. Almost immediately, nanite arms reached down from the ceiling and grabbed each of us by the hooks that ringed our belts. More arms looped down and attached loosely to our wrists and ankles. All over the base, anyone who was not strapped and clamped to something solid made sure they were.
The two Macro ships slid up close to the giant ring on the screen. The cruiser slipped through first and vanished. My guts clenched into a ball, and our invasion ship followed the cruiser.
There was a shudder as we went through. I knew the feeling well by now. We had been transported to…somewhere else. To another star system. I once again wondered who had built these rings, these gateways that linked the stars. I knew the Macros hadn’t built them, even if they seemed adept at their use. Some other race had to have built much of the technology everyone seemed to be using: the rings, the factories that duplicated anything, the Nanos and the Macros themselves. I suspected there was a race which I called the Blues who were at the bottom of some of these mysteries, but I no longer believed they were responsible for all of them.
I watched the screen as the sensor data came in. All of us watched, hardly breathing. We’d embedded a sensor array in the outer hull of the invasion ship some weeks ago and were able to gather a considerable amount of info from its passive systems. The Macros either hadn’t noticed the garbage can-sized sensor array, or they hadn’t cared to remove it. We were very glad for this small allowance. The only thing worse than heading into an unknown, hostile system, was doing it blind.
“No mines sir—at least, not yet,” Major Sarin said.
We all breathed more deeply, feeling fractionally relieved. Instant doom was not at hand.
The screen blanked then. The data coming in from the Helios system had ceased, so it had to redraw and project the environment it was now sensing outside the invasion ship. The star came up first, unsurprisingly. As the source of energy with the greatest output, it was the easiest thing to plot. It was fairly distant, by the look of things. Either that, or the star was smaller than most.
When the brainboxes chose a color for it, I was relieved to see a bright, yellow sphere. At least it wasn’t a radiation-blasting white or blue star, nor was it a dark neutron ball that might threaten to crush us.
“Looks like a solo star,” Major Sarin said.
“Navigator, do we have a range yet?” I asked.
“Triangulation not yet possible,” Gorski said. “We haven’t moved far enough from our initial position. But judging by gravitational pull and brightness, the star projected on the map should be an accurate depiction. It is a G-class—a yellow-white star, like our own Sol. I would say it is fractionally smaller and younger, but other than that, very similar. The system seems to be a single-star system.”
“Do we have confirmation on that?” I asked. Most star systems were not like our own Solar System. Most in the galaxy were binary or triple-star systems. Some systems revolved in a storm of stellar objects, tight clusters with many stars tugging at one another in close proximity. Such systems were inherently dangerous, due to increase radiation and gravitational effects.
“Unless there is some dink star out there past our initial scan,” said Gorski, “then we are pretty certain.”
“Okay, so far so good. Where are the damned planets?”
“Maybe there aren’t any planets,” said Sandra. “The Macros said we were going to fight satellite structures.”
“Unlikely,” I said. “Whoever built these satellites would have had to have something to build them with.”
Even as I said it, a gas giant popped up on the screen. It wasn’t too far off, either. It was pretty far out from the single star, but not as far out as Jupiter. Eyeballing it, I would say it was about where our asteroid belt orbited back home. “There’s the first one,” I said.
“Oh, that’s a good sign,” Sandra said.
We all looked at her. “I’ve been reading about star system structures,” she said. “We don’t know everything yet, but a gas giant tends to suck in debris and makes the inner planets more habitable.”
I nodded, pursing my lips. “It’s a theory,” I said. “But you are right, as far as we know that is the mechanism. I’m glad to hear you have taken an interest in astronomy.”
Sandra smiled. “What choice do I have out here?”
“While we are on the topic, let’s see if we can figure out where here is,” I said, knowing it was best to keep a waiting crew very busy. “As I recall, Gorski, you plotted our last star system’s position based on stellar mass and volatility.”
“Right sir, the nearest match for the red giant we found was Aldeb
aran—it’s close to Earth, about sixty-five lightyears out. The star lines up with the belt of Orion.”
“Isn’t that more of an orange giant?” I asked.
“Right sir, but it fits the spectral signature of the Helios star.”
I nodded. “I find that interesting, as the Blue Giant I visited once was most likely Bellatrix—the left shoulder of Orion. Let’s review: we have a known chain of five star systems. The first link on the chain is the blue giant Bellatrix—at least we think it was Bellatrix. Only Sandra and I were out there and we spent the whole time running around avoiding the Macros, not taking careful measurements. Anyway, subsequent analysis of the video we brought back places the star in that region, around the constellation of Orion.”
Everyone nodded and worked their instruments. No one looked terrified. No one looked as if they were going to barf on my screen. I kept talking, and they stayed focused and calm while data poured into their computers concerning the new star system we’d just discovered.
“The second star on the known chain of systems is Sol, our home star,” I continued. “Third was Alpha Centauri—very close to Earth. The fourth was the red giant where we fought the Worms on Helios. This is the fifth system we’ve mapped. It appears to be G-class. A yellow, cheery, solo star. Perfect for warm-water planets and life. What is the stellar mass, Gorski?”
“About ninety-one percent that of Sol, sir,” he said. “Interesting new detail coming in: the star is metal-rich according to spectral analysis.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“A higher likelihood of rocky planets.”
I nodded thoughtfully. If we were on a colonizing mission, this would be an excellent place to start. None of the other systems I’d visited thus far had been inviting places for humans to live.
“Sir, more bodies are being plotted now—a lot of them,” Gorski said.
We watched quietly as planets appeared magically on the big screen. There were indeed a lot of them, and no less than six were in what we projected to be the habitable zone. Two of these were twins, both about the size of Mars. They orbited one another in a tight, tidally-locked dance. It was as if each was the moon of the other.
Such a lovely system. There had to be habitable planets here. It was a colonization mission commander’s dream.
“Life signs?” I asked quietly.
“None yet, but we have six in the zone for liquid water, and a grand total now of twenty-one bodies, not counting moons.”
Twenty-one worlds. My mind could hardly grasp it. Our eight planets—plus Pluto—seemed paltry in comparison. Eleven of these were out past the gas giant, frozen iceballs it was certain. There was a handful in too close as well, blasted worlds that must look like Mercury. But it was those six worlds in the cradle, nestled between a gas giant and their steady, warm sun, which kept drawing my eye.
I looked around my crew and saw that all of them were feeling a sense of wonder. We had discovered what might turn out to be a treasure-trove of habitable planets.
“I wish this was a friendly, exploratory mission of peace,” Sandra said.
We all looked at her, and we all wished the same thing. But we had come here to fight—and we didn’t even know who we were up against yet.
“Something I don’t get,” I said aloud. “There are six living worlds, and yet the Macros said we are going after people on satellites. What’s wrong with the planets? Have we spotted any of these stationary structures yet?”
“No sir. They are too small to detect yet. They wouldn’t have much gravitational tug, less than a moon. They probably aren’t emitting too much radiation, either.”
“Try radio waves. Are we picking up any com traffic?”
Sandra jumped a little and worked at her board. “Oops,” she said.
I looked at her with a flat stare. She made tapping adjustments on her screen. Suddenly, the big screen lit up with contacts.
“I think I had it set for known contacts and signals only,” Sandra said. “It was just showing our two Macro ships.” She turned back to the big screen. Then she shut up and joined all of us in jaw-dropping shock.
The screen swam with hundreds of contacts. There were ships around every planet, or satellites of some kind. Dozens of contacts roved the surfaces of all six of the central planets and a few on the icy worlds as well.
“Give me some color!” I shouted. “Sarin, give me something. I want to see red on unknowns, blue on Macros.”
“Working on it, sir,” she replied evenly. “Blue contacts are Macros.
There it was. I had my answers. Every contact on the surface of every planet was a Macro. All six of the living worlds were crawling with them. Up in space, there were red contacts, however. Unknowns in stationary orbits. Those had to be our targets. Orbiting apart from the satellites was a small number of what I assumed to be Macro ships.
“Looks like we’ve come to this party late,” I said.
“Why do they even need us?” asked Major Sarin. “The Macros have them surrounded; they are running wild on every planet.”
I shrugged. I had a few ideas already. Maybe the satellites were rigged to blow up if they got too close. Maybe they knew they would take a few losses in these final assaults and decided they’d rather lose human fodder. Or maybe, this was all a big test to see which side was stronger, these defeated beings or my marines.
Whatever the answer, I knew we were going to be fighting brother biotics again soon, people who appeared to be on their knees already, and it made me sick.
“Colonel?” Sandra said.
I didn’t answer for a second. I just stared at the screen. I was trying not to have an angry outburst. It would not be good for morale.
“Kyle,” Sandra said insistently, her voice full of sudden emotion. “I’ve got new contacts. Very close, very faint.”
My eyes swept back to our spot on the map. We were at the ring still, in terms of distance we’d covered little ground. There was a scattering of tiny, green dots nearby.
“What are those?” I asked, frowning.
“They’re…” Sandra trailed off. She tapped at her screen with urgency, and piped through a transmission to our speakers. “I think they’re ours.”
“S. O. S…” a scratchy voice came in for a moment, then faded out, then came in again. “We’re Star Force marines, Echo Company. Can anyone read me?”
A chill ran through me. I knew I was hearing my own marines, calling to me for help.
-5-
For one crazy second, I thought we might have gone through some kind of time-warp. Then I thought of a worse scenario. Maybe, just maybe, we had finally experienced a relativistic effect of the rings. What if this one wasn’t operating properly? What if it really had taken centuries to transport us from Helios to this system, and the men outside were beaten Star Force units from our own future? For all I knew, I was looking at six worlds covered in Macro robots that had once been human colonies. If that were the case, we were far worse than late for the battle. We were centuries late, and we were on the wrong side.
I tried to push these wild thoughts away. They wouldn’t do any of my crew, or myself, any good to contemplate.
“I know who it is,” Sandra said. Everyone looked at her this time, and not with disgust, but with hope.
She smiled, but none of us smiled back. We didn’t share in her hope yet. “It’s the guys that fell through the ring—back on Helios, remember? They had to go somewhere.”
I stared at her, and suddenly I realized she was right. It had to be. It was the simplest answer. The contacts were small. They could be single men, floating in space. They would have been out here for what…four days now? They could have survived that long. Our rebreathers were better than old Earth technology had ever built. With nanos scrubbing out the CO2, they could function almost indefinitely. They would have been critically short of water, power and rations, but….
I nodded. “I think you’re right. They are our marines.”
“The ma
rines who were sucked through the ring with the Worms?” Major Sarin asked in something like shock. “They are still alive?”
I nodded again, and leaned on the table. I leaned close to the tiny green contacts. I felt a growing certainty. “Is there no way we can get a signal out to them?” I asked.
Sandra shook her head and bit her lip. I had known the answer of course, but felt I had to ask the question. I had set up a sensor array in the skin of the invasion ship weeks ago, but it was passive in design. It didn’t transmit radio signals. All it did was feed data down a nanite wire to us in the hold.
We heard the S. O. S message again. The marine giving it sounded tired, but determined. Maybe he could see the Macro ships flying by. I wasn’t surprised none of the Macros had stopped to pick them up or even to send them an acknowledgement. My marines were broken equipment. Useless and beneath notice. There was no compassion in the Macros. They probably didn’t even comprehend the concept.
“You have to do something, Kyle,” Sandra said.
Right then, for the first time, I thought I had made a mistake promoting her and putting her on the command brick. She was too familiar with me, and made constant breaches of protocol under stress. I figured I’d have to come up with a way to get her into another job description soon. Without pissing her off too badly, of course.
I put up my hand for quiet. “I’m trying to think of something.”
“We could try a focused radio beam, it might penetrate the hull,” Gorski suggested.
“Just call up the Macros and tell them to pick them up,” Sandra suggested.
Major Sarin didn’t say anything. She watched me and the board, flicking her eyes between both.
“We’ll try the Macros first,” I said. “Connect me with Macro Command.”
“Channel open,” Sandra said immediately.
“Macro Command. We require reinforcements for maximum combat effectiveness.”
“No reinforcements are available.”
“Negative, Macro Command. We have detected a group of our marines in very close proximity. They are stranded. We could bring them back to this ship and increase our combat numbers significantly.”