by B. V. Larson
I snorted. Then I lost it and openly laughed. It was my first laugh since I’d seen Sandra drooling bubbles on the floor of the pool room. I couldn’t help myself. Sadly, the laughter died as quickly as it had come.
“I think you’re right about her clothes,” I said.
“She’s doing it for your benefit. You know that don’t you?”
“Come on. I’m an old man to her.”
“A very powerful old man. She’s the kind that’s attracted to that. I can tell.”
I thought of a dozen rude things to say, such as “it takes one to know one.” But I managed to say none of them. Usually, my mouth acts like a self-destruct system when around women. But today, I held on.
“She’s part of your bridge staff,” I said. “Transfer her if you want to.”
Jasmine sat quietly. I could tell she was thinking seriously about doing it. I sipped my coffee as if I couldn’t care less.
“No,” she said at last. “That would be unprofessional of me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. I shouldn’t be jealous of her. Why should I be jealous? You were never interested in me in the first place.”
“I certainly was,” I said, “but now is definitely not the time.”
She stood up. “Good night, sir,” she said. “Thanks for the waffles.”
I nodded and watched her go. I wondered to myself, as I watched her posterior shift under that sheer layer of smart cloth, if the whole nanite-thing had changed our sexual behavior patterns. I’d have to say that Star Force marines, both male and female, were a randy bunch. We had bodies that brimmed with energy and recovered quickly. We looked younger and fitter than normal people, and we were often placed in stressful, isolated situations. All of this promoted an active sex life. Affairs between troops were common, and we generally didn’t frown upon them. We were all disease-free, after all, as the nanites cleaned out our bodies routinely from stem to stern.
There was some concern about the females becoming pregnant. The topic had rarely come up in staff meetings, but when it had, the general consensus was that if pregnancies happened, they were good things. No human colonists had ever planted themselves on a new world before, and we’d just done so on three lovely planets. It was in our best interests to go forth and multiply vigorously.
There were bound to be other social implications dictated by our situation. I guess it was all part of our new way of life. It was totally unplanned. We were feeling our way, figuring out how our culture would behave one step at a time.
A harmless, healthy relief of stress. That’s what my old college-teaching colleagues would have said. And they were the ones who ought to know…
-34-
I went down to visit Sandra in medical before turning in for the night. There was no significant change in her status reported by either Dr. Swanson or Marvin.
Marvin had, however, made progress after a fashion. He’d built something big, strange, and vile.
I recognized it the minute I saw it. A bulbous tank from which thick vapors arose. The numerous PVC pipe connections leaked, creating a steady patter of droplets hitting the floor. The entire medical chamber was dank now, with condensation dribbling from the roof and trickling down the walls. Something was going on inside that bubbling tank, and I thought I knew what it was.
“Microbes, Marvin?” I asked, inspecting his work.
He’d been watching me since I came into the chamber, but he hadn’t said a word.
“Hello, Colonel Riggs,” he said. “I’m glad you stopped by. As you can see, I’m completing my first developmental step. The colony is alive and well. I’m teaching them to work with neurological synapses now—dead ones.”
“Where the hell did you even get a colony to start with?”
“Microbes are everywhere in our environment. Human bodies typically encompass more than a trillion single-celled organisms.”
“Of course,” I said. “We have them inside us. All you had to do was steal a sample from Sandra and build the environment…”
Marvin didn’t confirm nor deny. He didn’t have to.
I approached the tank, which was made of layered smart cloth and pipe-fittings. It pulsed and gurgled. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. I performed a brief inspection and I noticed two things that were especially upsetting. First, there were what appeared to be brains floating in the tank. I wasn’t sure if they were human or bovine—or what. Second, there were electrodes hooked up to the tank. I knew what that meant. When we’d first run into the Microbe race on a Macro cruiser, the machines had been shocking them to force them to cooperate.
“I seemed to recall having forbidden this kind of work,” I said sternly. I ran a hand down a nanite wire that led to an electrode. Nanite wires tended to be like shaped-mercury, almost liquid in nature. They were rarely shielded. I could feel the current in it, like a buzzing sensation on my fingertips.
Marvin lifted a black tentacle. He snaked it under the tank and touched a large valve at the bottom. He studied me with his countless cameras.
“This is the release valve,” he said matter-of-factly. “If I open it, the contents of the tank will spill into the drain you see below the tank.”
“Drain? Where did that come from?”
“I had the nanites form it. The pipe leads down through the main hold and out into space.”
I pursed my lips. “What are you saying, Marvin? You’re willing to abort this abomination right now? No arguments?”
“If you say so, Colonel.”
We stared at each other for several seconds. I looked away first. I walked to Sandra’s coffin and gazed into it. She was as lovely in her deathly state as she’d ever been in life. Tan skin, dark luxurious hair and body sculpted with the muscles of an Olympian. She’d had a mole on her cheek when we’d first met, but somewhere along the line the nanites or the microbes had decided to delete it from her face.
I sighed, and my shoulders fell. I realized I still had hope. While there was hope, I couldn’t let her go.
“You’ve got me, and you know it,” I told my scheming robot. “But I want you to stop shocking them. Find some other more humane way to get them to cooperate.”
Marvin’s tentacle slipped away from the tank’s release valve. He considered.
“All right,” he said. “I’m sure something can be worked out. May I proceed with my work?”
“For now,” I said. “Report when you have something tangible to show me. Carry on.”
I turned around and left. Dr. Swanson’s eyes followed me, but she didn’t say a word. I couldn’t imagine what she thought of the situation.
I felt emotionally drained, but I kept my face impassive in the passageway. I hid my state of mind until I reached my cabin. There, I sat on my bunk. It was the very same bed I’d shared many times with Sandra. I put my face in my hands.
I had no idea if I was doing the right thing or not. How many Microbes should die so that one human might live? Were a quadrillion of their lives worth one of ours? How much did it matter that the Microbes were intelligent, or that we humans were bigger and had vastly longer lives?
I felt overwhelmed by the weight of such ethical decisions. I figured that no one was really qualified to make the call. I searched my instincts for right and wrong. You had to go with your gut on stuff like this.
My gut was churning—but I let Marvin keep doing his dark work, anyway.
I spent the next two hours in my bunk, tossing and turning. Sleep didn’t come. The bed felt cold and empty without Sandra. Painful thoughts of her, mixed in with Jasmine, Dr. Swanson and even Ensign Kestrel haunted me. Worst of all was Marvin and his vat of gurgling biomass, an image which seemed to pop into my mind whenever I was finally falling to sleep.
“Colonel?” asked Jasmine’s soft, disembodied voice.
I had been dozing, but upon hearing her voice I startled awake and sat up in bed. Twenty-four hour instant communications systems weren’t always a good thing. As the commander of Star Forc
e, I’d been forced to give up a lot of my private time.
I cleared my throat and tapped the wall twice, unmuting the channel.
“Yes, what is it?” I asked, trying to sound alert.
“I’m sorry, sir, but an emergency call has come in from Commodore Miklos at Welter Station.”
“Patch him through.”
Miklos’ voice came to my ears moments later. He sounded frazzled.
“Sir? Colonel Riggs?”
“Yes, go ahead, Commodore. This had better be good.”
“It isn’t good, sir. It’s bad. We’ve got a new Macro fleet coming through at the far ring of the Thor system.”
“How many ships? How did they fare against our mines?”
“We’ve counted about fifty cruisers so far. But about the mines—no hits sir.”
I paused, blinked and frowned. I rubbed my face. “Did I hear that correctly, Commodore? No hits at all?”
“Nothing, Colonel. They have some kind of new approach. A ship led the way into the system, moving slowly and eating up our mines. They appear to have a mine sweeper.”
“How does it work?”
“We have theories, but no data. It’s complex—I’ll explain when you arrive at Welter Station. I can assume you’re coming, yes?”
I realized at that moment that the ship was accelerating under me. It wasn’t the full-press roar that one felt on a destroyer or a cruiser, but we were definitely underway. The big carrier Gatre was somewhat underpowered, but there was at least an extra G weighing me down, despite the inertial dampeners.
“Looks like Captain Sarin has made that decision for me,” I said. “We’re underway, and leaving the Blue’s homeworld behind. We’ll be out there in about twenty hours.”
“Make that thirty hours,” Miklos said. “As you must recall, you removed several engines from the design, sir.”
I could tell by his voice he was still hurting about that. I rolled my eyes.
“Right,” I said. “We’re taking the scenic route. Keep an eye on the Macros, and give me a count every hour.”
“I could advance into the system, Colonel. The Crustacean homeworlds are undefended.”
I considered pointing out that the Crustaceans were technically allied with the machines, not us, but I didn’t bother. In some ways, Miklos was right. We had a responsibility to the Crustaceans. They’d helped me militarily when I called upon them to do so. They might well have permanently broken their alliance with the Macros by firing on them. Sometimes, it was hard to know for sure how the machines had judged an event. I’m sure the Crustaceans were trying to deal with them, but that didn’t always go as planned.
“A good idea,” I said, “but I don’t think they’re after the Crustaceans. They’re probably coming here, as the Blues have been calling for them. If I had to bet, I’d say they were planning to take another shot at your battle station.”
“Let’s hope the third time is not the charm in this instance, sir.”
“It won’t be. We’ll gather our entire fleet into a single fist this time. I don’t want to split up my ships in the face of the enemy again. Wait for me. An hour after I reach Welter Station we’ll set sail for Thor-6 if we think we can take their fleet without the station backing us up.”
“Very good, sir.”
We signed off and I lay back down. Strangely, I found it easier to go to sleep this time around. Instead of worrying about Sandra or any other females, I had a war to fight. Battles were things I felt comfortable with. They were problems that could be solved.
-35-
I managed to get a good, long night’s sleep. Knowing I had thirty hours before the carrier task force reached Welter Station helped me to rest. If bad news came in now, I wouldn’t be able to do much about it. Every veteran knows that in wartime they should sleep whenever they can. I wished I could store up sleep now for the long slog I knew was ahead of me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured out a way to do that yet.
About ten hours out from Welter Station we began decelerating at a stately, deliberate pace—the only pace Gatre was capable of. I was awake by this time and well-fed. I’d even begun a workout in the ship’s cavernous gym. It was really an extra hold we were using right now, but with some well-designed ergonomic equipment I was able to feel some strain on my muscles.
A few of the cadet fly-boys were watching me with interest. Under two Gs of centrifugal gravity, I could curl about two tons of weight and bench-press more than three. I guess this impressed them. When I got up from the bench and mopped my brow with a towel, two of them applauded. One of these two ventured forward to talk to me.
“I bet you don’t remember me, do you sir?” she asked.
It was a common enough greeting from Star Force personnel. Usually, they were right. But in her case, I did remember her. Not her face, but her name.
“Fleet Commander Becker? I’m surprised you’re here.”
She smiled, pleased that I remembered who she was. The first thing I noticed about her was her reddish-blonde hair, which was cut short into what I would call a modified page-boy look. Her body was lanky. She seemed to be all arms and legs, but with the sharply-defined muscle tone that tended to identify everyone in Riggs’ Pigs. Judging by her attractive but lined face and piercing eyes, I guessed her to be in her mid-thirties.
“Aren’t you supposed to be out scouting around in the Helios system?” I asked. “As I recall you took part in the effort to run down General Kerr in his battleship.”
“Freshly transferred, sir,” she said.
“By who?”
“Captain Sarin and Commodore Miklos. I tested out weeks ago on the new fighters, and I received a top rating. They ordered me to switch from the scouts into the fighter wings.”
“I thought we’d replaced all our lost fighters from the Thor action.”
Commander Becker shifted uncomfortably. The lines in her face became deeper. She put her long thumbs into the pockets of her flight suit. I could tell she didn’t quite know what to say.
“We built new birds, sir,” she said at last after an awkward pause. “But not new pilots.”
“Oh, of course,” I said. I wanted to kick myself. Of all people, I should know that we could stamp out a new flying machine every hour, but pilots took twenty years or more to grow up and train. They were not so easily replaced.
“Well,” I continued, “I hope you’re commanding a wing of them!”
“Just a squadron, Colonel.”
I lifted a finger and pointed it at her, squinting. I remembered where I’d worked with her in the past.
“You were at the first battle at Welter Station, weren’t you?” I asked. “Back before we even called it Welter Station.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I was scouting both sides of the Thor ring back then.”
“You did a damned good job in the face of an advancing horde of enemy ships. I’m honestly surprised you survived that mess.”
“Everyone who got out of that alive was surprised. My scout partner wasn’t so lucky, however. He was taken out by the Macros before they invaded the station.”
I nodded, vaguely recalling the reports. “I’m glad to see you in this new position. A fighter jock’s got to be a survivor.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and turned to go.
I frowned, then said: “Hey, would you mind showing me around your fighter? I haven’t had a chance to check out the new model.”
She brightened immediately, and I could tell she’d forgotten about my slip-up concerning why new pilots were needed. I was still kicking myself about that one.
I followed Becker to the hangar. I knew that if there was one thing all fighter jocks like to do, it was show off their bird. I looked over the sleek craft with interest.
The fighters had never been very big, and this new model wasn’t any exception. If anything, they’d managed to make it more compact. It was built like a plane, but with very short, stubby wings. The wings could extend or retract to provide more lift
if needed when gliding down into an atmosphere. The tiny ship reminded me of the old, extinct NASA shuttlecraft, but on a smaller scale.
The wings weren’t the only part of the ship that could be reconfigured. The canopy was designed to coat itself with metal and turn opaque, or it could be left transparent like traditional aircraft.
I knelt beside the ship and put my hand on the wing. The nanites inside shivered slightly at my touch. Looking at the undercarriage, I saw the ship didn’t have wheels, but used skids instead. With grav-lifters for basic propulsion, I guessed the fighter would tend to land perfectly if you could get your airspeed down far enough.
I ran my hand over the wings, and the nanites again buckled at my touch.
“Jumpy, aren’t they?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “This is a brand new bird. They tell me the constructives will settle down and stop squirming soon. They still think they’re in programming mode, or something.”
I chuckled and stuck my head into the cockpit. There was only a single seat inside, but it was roomy enough. In space, a pilot had to carry more gear than aircraft usually did. You never knew where you might end up when you were flying around an uncharted star system.
“Big backseat,” I said. “What do you usually put back here?”
“A bladder full of nanites, or small explosives, maybe. Sometimes, it’s just for ferrying food or even a passenger.”
I nodded, and realized I was looking at another of Miklos’ elaborate designs. He had a different set of tendencies than I did. He liked to build craft that were capable of multiple mission types. I tended to build craft that were specifically shaped for a single purpose. His ships definitely provided more utility, while mine were slightly more deadly.
“I guess that can come in handy,” I said.
“Do you want to take a ride?”
I looked at her, startled. I realized she must have thought I was hinting around, hoping she’d offer. In truth, I’d been thinking about Miklos and his overly-robust designs. I didn’t feel like telling Commander Becker that, so I smiled instead.