Annihilation (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  Even with all those physical improvements, Sandra and I stood out as unique. Like very few others, we’d gone through additional treatments. We’d been improved by taking microbial baths administered by Marvin. The Microbes in question were a sentient species, capable of collective thought and action. They’d worked on our bodies at a biochemical level, altering them. As a result, Sandra was one of the fastest beings I’d ever encountered, and I was one of the strongest.

  She writhed in my grip as I came fully awake.

  “Let me go, or I’m going to kick you,” she said.

  I kept my grip and smiled. “When you jump on a sleeping marine’s chest, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “I’ll kick you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She glared at me darkly, and I let her go a moment later. I was having fun, but I also wanted to have sex again at some point in this relationship.

  Sandra jerked her arms away from my hands and crossed them under her breasts. She stayed sitting on my chest, however. I didn’t complain about that. She had been a fit, shapely young woman when I first met her. After undergoing physical transformations, she was as cut and sculpted as an Olympic gymnast. Due to my own physical alterations, her weight didn’t bother me at all. To me, she felt as if she weighed ten pounds or so.

  “Clearly, you want to tell me something,” I said.

  “I’m feeling jealous.”

  “You don’t say? Never would have suspected it.”

  “You liked that girl. She was normal, soft, young. You liked her.”

  “She seemed friendly. But she’s only a kid to me.”

  She slapped me across the face. She moved so fast, I couldn’t react quickly enough to grab her wrist. A trickle of blood ran from my cheeks where they’d been smashed into my teeth. A normal man would have been seriously injured. In my case, it didn’t really hurt, but it did sting a bit.

  “What was that for?”

  “For lying. I was a young girl when we first met. You went for me quickly enough. Don’t forget I can read your physical responses, Kyle. I could hear your blood pound in your veins. I could hear your breathing accelerate.”

  “Yeah? Did Alexa get turned on too?”

  I shouldn’t have said that. I knew I shouldn’t have said that. But I was stinging a bit from the bash in the mouth. I was tired, and sometimes when I’m tired my mouth gets one second ahead of my brain. This was one of those times.

  Her hand flashed out of the dark again. This time, I knew it was coming. I had my own hand up to block hers.

  Unfortunately, I’d guessed wrong. I’d expected her to go for a right-cross again. But she surprised me, using her left. She was ambidextrous, and I should have anticipated the move, but I didn’t. She caught me a good one, slamming me in the right ear. This hurt even more than my cheek did. Something about getting hit in the ear—even after all my treatments, it hurt.

  I grunted and grabbed her. We grappled for a second, and I flipped her over on the bed and landed on top of her. A normal woman would have been crushed down by my weight and pinned, helpless.

  But Sandra was no normal woman. My weight meant nothing to her. She kneed me, twisted and I was flying across the room. She was so fast!

  I bounced off the lockers and came up in a crouch. We faced one another, breathing hard.

  We’d fought before, but this was more serious than usual. The whole thing surprised me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She heaved a huge sigh and stretched out on the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I stood straight, but I didn’t step closer to her. Sandra was moody, but this was unusual, even for her. I didn’t say anything. Blood dribbled from my chin, but I ignored it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it’s because she’s a normal human girl. Younger, prettier, but most of all…normal. I know you miss that. I hate that she’s something you want. I hate that she’s something I can’t be.”

  I opened the lockers and rummaged out a bottle of vodka. Usually, I was a beer man. But tonight I felt the need for something stronger. I poured and she appeared at my side.

  “I don’t like it straight,” she said.

  Funny comments swam in my head, but this time I managed to stop them before they came out of my mouth. Instead, I got out a mixer and gave her a drink. Our glasses clinked and ice cubes tinkled inside.

  We drank our beverages in relative silence. I didn’t bother to make up lies, telling her I wasn’t attracted to Alexa, and that she was prettier than that Earth-girl tramp. I didn’t even bother to apologize for the changes in my heart rate when the girl came near. She was too smart for that kind of talk. More importantly, I knew that if I made any more false moves, she might go off again. I did my damnedest to say nothing at all.

  So we drank, and afterward we made love. She’d always been a demanding, strenuous lover, but this time our activities were more intense than usual.

  It was good, and when I finally did get some sleep, it was the sleep of exhaustion.

  -12-

  We made planetfall precisely on time over Eden-8. I sipped coffee and blinked my red eyes. The nanites cleared the toxins left over from alcohol faster than normal human livers could ever manage, but somehow I still felt hard liquor in my brain the next day.

  “There’s a report from the task force in the Thor system, sir,” Miklos said.

  I glanced at him. “Anything serious?”

  “If it was I would have awakened you.”

  I nodded, and flicked my finger over the screen of a tablet. It was from Captain Sarin. I’d left her in charge out there. She said there were some odd readings from the bottom of the seabed on Yale. I frowned.

  “Nothing’s changed? Just these vibrations?”

  “Right sir, looks as if someone is trying to use the ring to communicate.”

  When the rings were used to relay transmissions from one star system to another, they did so through a process of sympathetic resonance. Since the rings were essentially in two places at one time, if you could cause one to vibrate slightly, you were logically vibrating the one on the far side at the same time. Using this system and applying a code to the vibrations allowed for the instantaneous transmission of message over countless lightyears.

  “Jasmine is blocking this, right?”

  “Of course, sir,” Miklos said. “The instant the signal was detected, the fleet began jamming it.”

  “But we still don’t know who is trying to send what message through, do we?”

  “No sir. We do know the message is not intended for us. It could be the Macros trying to talk to the Crustaceans, or the other way around.”

  I frowned. “What possible motivation could the Crustaceans have for communicating with their masters now? Don’t they know the machines are trying to kill them all?”

  Miklos shrugged. “Anything is possible, sir. We just don’t know. I feel forced to remind you that the Crustaceans did not agree to ally with us. For whatever reason, they are still technically allied with the Macros.”

  “I don’t like it. But I do understand it. The Crustaceans are coldly logical when it comes to their own survival. They don’t fear us as much as they do the machines.”

  Miklos made a vague gesture that seemed to indicate I could be right, but he wasn’t agreeing fully. I ordered some coffee and headed for the docking ports. The carrier wasn’t built to land in an atmosphere, so we boarded smaller ships to take us down to Shadowguard.

  When I finally stood on the battlements of my castle in the sky, I felt better. I liked it here. There were good memories already building, and somehow the place made me relax. I paced the walls for an hour, watching the sun drop over the horizon. The nights fell quickly here, and dawn was never far away.

  Tonight we were having a formal state dinner. This was the perfect place for it, and it would be our first. General Kerr had told us he’d make a formal announcement concerning Earth’s diplomatic intentions a
t the dinner. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I was looking forward to the meal. The kitchens and chefs on staff at Shadowguard were the best in the Eden system.

  I started off the evening by showing General Kerr and his entourage around. Alexa was noticeably present, but subdued.

  Sandra was noticeably absent. But I knew she was lurking around somewhere nearby. She might be on the battlements or on the central mountain crag that anchored the fortress. My relationship with her was an odd one. She was part bodyguard, part lover—and part something else. We’d been through so much together I couldn’t imagine life without her shadow casting itself over mine.

  I knew that wherever she was, she was watching me, but I tried not to think about her. I knew I needed to clear my mind.

  I showed them most of the rooms, but not the command-and-control center, of course. We passed a number of dungeon-like doors which hid sensitive equipment, leaving them unopened. I knew that just looking at our hardware wouldn’t be enough for them to gather much intel about it, but decided to err on the side of caution.

  Instead, I showed them the battlements, the views and the ballroom where we would shortly have dinner.

  “This is it, huh?” Kerr asked me. “Let me tell you something, Riggs. This is a fine medieval castle. The trouble is I’ve seen them before, plenty of them. We’ve got them all over Europe clutching the top of one Alp or another. I’m not terribly impressed by anything other than the view.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, General,” I said evenly.

  “I know you’re hiding your real tech somewhere. I’m surprised you aren’t proud enough to show off what it can do. Have you figured out how to spy on Earth through the rings, yet?”

  I blinked, startled. I’d never even thought of the idea. It was alarming, but I guessed immediately that it might be possible. Even if you just hooked up a remote control camera to the rings and used the vibration system to transmit back the images…

  “You know as well as I do that we’re both jamming the rings, sir,” I told him evenly.

  “Yeah, right.”

  General Kerr was watching me closely, and I knew I’d probably revealed too much with my face. Damn the man, he was cagey.

  “Are you ready yet to make your formal proposal,” I asked, deciding it was a good time to switch the topic. “I’ve yet to learn exactly why you’re here.”

  “Let’s start with the salad. I’m starved.”

  “All right,” I said, and led them to the dinner table. I wasn’t quite sure why Kerr was stalling about delivering his message, but maybe it was his natural flair for the dramatic.

  Sandra appeared when the dinner bell rang as if she’d been waiting for it. I knew that she had. One second there was a shadow in a doorway, the next she was seating herself at the table.

  I had the kitchens lay out our finest fare. It was different from an Earth meal, naturally. We’d had some livestock and edible plants transported from Earth and grown here. Most of these had come with the refugee fleet I’d rescued last year, along with the majority of our civilian population.

  I’d avoided eating the few goats, chickens and cattle we had. Instead, I wanted to use them as breeding stock and build up to a nice harvest next year. I explained this to Kerr and his people as we sat down to our first course.

  “At the moment, we’d even made it illegal to eat most of our earthly foodstuffs,” I said. “Anything that can be used to grow more food—especially animal herds—has been protected. We’ve got a few things that are ready to harvest like coffee and beans, but most of our food comes from local alien crops. Eating unknown digestible has given us a few thousand tummy-aches, but we’ve sorted out what can be eaten and how to prepare it.”

  “I can’t wait,” Kerr mumbled doubtfully.

  We started with six platters of seafood.

  “Most of these mollusks were flown in from Eden-6,” I explained. “Our hottest tropical world. Over ninety-five percent of Eden-6 is covered by seawater. The fishing is excellent in the shallower regions.”

  “Mollusks?” Kerr asked doubtfully. “Forgive me for the ‘C’ I got in biology thirty years ago, but are you talking about snails, Riggs?”

  I cleared my throat in annoyance. “Just try one, General. They’re toasted to perfection. Dip them in that garlic-butter sauce, you won’t be disappointed.”

  Making a face, Kerr tried it and chewed doubtfully. After a few seconds, his face softened. “Weird-tasting.”

  “Well, I quite like it,” said Alexa.

  I glanced at her and smiled, but quickly took my eyes off her. Sandra was sitting at my side, and she watched me with careful interest.

  The table was long and rectangular. Some of my staff had pushed for a circular table, saying it went with the knights-and-castle theme, but I’d refused. I wasn’t King Arthur, and this wasn’t some kind of egalitarian round table. I sat at the end of the big table with Kerr on my left and Sandra on my right. Most of Kerr’s staff members were placed close to us at the head of the table, with Miklos mixed in on the left side. Alexa was three seats down on my right, across from Kerr and Miklos, but on the same side as Sandra. I didn’t want to give Sandra any excuses to stare at the girl.

  Sandra had been irritated when I’d allowed them to bring sidearms to the dinner table. I assured her it wasn’t a problem. A low caliber bullet was unlikely to bring down any marine, and we were armed too, with much more sophisticated weaponry. Our needlers could burn a hole through inch-thick steel—most likely before the Imperials could get a weapon out and aimed properly.

  Real military people on the frontier felt naked without a weapon near at hand, and I understood that natural desire. We didn’t have many traditions in the Eden System yet, but we knew instinctively that a table full of armed men usually guaranteed a polite dinner would be had by all. Accordingly, I’d ordered all of my people to be armed at all times while in the presence of our visitors.

  The salads came next, excellent bowls of green and blue vegetation. These were local to Eden-8, as was the main course. When the roasted air-swimmers were brought out, everyone sighed in anticipation. The smell alone was intoxicating. Even Kerr’s eyes lit up. I felt a surge of pride. If we had a single meat that could challenge anything from Earth, I was our fresh-killed and roasted air-swimmers.

  We were talking in a lively fashion and just starting to dig in when I noticed Lieutenant Alexa Brighton. She was standing at attention. Her plate of air-swimmers lay before her, untouched.

  Everyone quieted and stared. I felt Sandra tense. Most of us wore an expression of surprise. Sandra’s was one of dark suspicion. I knew she was ready to spring at the girl if she presented any kind of threat.

  For once, I made no attempt to restrain Sandra. I didn’t like this either, and I decided Sandra’s natural paranoia might prove correct today.

  General Kerr spoke first. “Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked formally. “Did you want to be excused?”

  “No sir,” she said. She bit her lip. Her eyes didn’t meet any of ours. They stared off over our heads. She was standing at full attention, as one might do when on a parade ground. “I wanted to make a statement.”

  The crowd had been murmuring, but now they fell quiet as a group. The clicking of forks and knives died with the whispers and speculations.

  “There’s no need to be formal,” Kerr said softly. “We are all engaging in polite conversation.”

  “No sir,” she said. “You don’t understand. This isn’t conversation.”

  Kerr narrowed his eyes at her. His fork was poised in mid-air. He’d been devouring his air-swimmers with gusto, despite himself. Now, he placed the fork neatly beside his plate. He dabbed his lips with his linen napkin and sat back in his chair.

  “Let’s hear it then. And I’m hoping it’s something that will make your father proud back home.”

  Alexa glanced at him for a moment, then looked dead ahead again. “I don’t know about that, sir. But General Kerr, Colonel Riggs�
�I wish to defect. I’m formally resigning my commission from the Imperial forces. I would like to simultaneously submit my application for any role available in Star Force.”

  The room fell into a deadly silence. Miklos and I exchanged glances. Miklos seemed as surprised as I was. I looked at Sandra and Kerr, but neither of them met my eyes. They were both staring at Alexa. Neither of them wore happy expressions.

  “Now?” Kerr demanded. “Now you choose to announce you’re a traitor? This is a state dinner. You’ve embarrassed everyone here, most significantly your father back home. I formally reject your request to resign. I doubt Riggs would want you in any case.”

  Alexa looked at me then, for the first time. There was a desperate look in her eyes.

  “I—I await Colonel Riggs’ decision,” she said. “This is his territory. It’s his choice.”

  There were a lot of eyes on me now. Everyone was in shock. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I was certain the girl had caused herself a great deal of trouble back on Earth if she was to be dragged home. Kerr would have her arrested and who knew what else. The Imperial government was not a soft one, by all accounts. It was an iron-fisted dictatorship.

  My mind swam, trying to foresee the possibilities. If I accepted her plea, gave her my protection and granted her asylum, she might be able to give me invaluable intel on the Empire’s military. On the other hand, it would be a diplomatic nightmare. It was just the sort of incident that had occurred with regularity during the Cold War between the dictatorial East and the free West. I now understood what those leaders must have been thinking when these things had occurred on their watch.

  “I’m surprised by your request,” I said at last. “I’m sure you can understand that. If I were to accept your application—and I’m only thinking about it now, mind you—I wouldn’t want that to sour the improving relationship between the Empire and Star Force.”

  It was at that moment I heard a click. It was a quiet sound, almost inaudible under the boom of my own voice. But it was there, and it was unmistakable. Having been in military action for years now, the sound was very familiar to me.