by B. V. Larson
Sandra kicked at her clothing and clucked her tongue in disgust. “Treacherous little bastards. When you really need them, they shut off on you.”
“They aren’t the traitors here,” I said. “The Crustaceans did this on purpose. They hit us with something, and we have to assume the whole station is knocked out of action. Have we got any old tech lying around? Something as simple as a transistor radio?”
A bit of scrambling went on, and Welter found it first. I’d placed primitive tech systems here and there all over the station. I’d always suspected too much nano-based tech was vulnerable to an attack that neutralized it. In the tradition of the Macros themselves, I had backup systems. They were woefully inadequate however, allowing only basic communications.
Within a minute, I had an emergency handset in my fingers. I tried to raise the rest of the crew in their remote locations but got no response. I turned the com system out toward space next. We still had two ships out there and I wanted to talk to them.
“This is P-niner, calling base, please respond.”
“Pilot?” I asked, grabbing the microphone from Welter’s hand. It felt strange to grasp simple molded plastic again. “Identify yourself.”
“I’m Marine Lieutenant Becker, sir,” said a female voice. The radio crackled, but it worked.
“Okay Becker. Good to hear your voice. What is your status?”
“My ship is fine. I seem to have been outside the range of whatever effect damaged the station.”
“What did you witness, Becker? Any clue what hit us?”
“No sir, not exactly. There was an energy surge—like a small explosion. My guess is it was an electromagnetic wave generated by the Lobster ship. They suckered us, sir. Is the battle station operational?”
“Negative,” I said. “We’re knocked out for now.”
“What can I do to help, sir? Do you need rescue operations?”
“Negative. I want you to return immediately to your primary mission. Join your wingman on the far side of the ring. Scout the Thor system and scan for any evidence of a follow-up attack. If it’s coming, I need to know immediately.”
“Roger that, Colonel. Becker out.”
Becker left through the ring. We were left behind standing on a dark bridge lit only by glowing emergency lamps. I felt helpless and increasingly pissed-off.
“These crawdads had better know what they’re doing,” I muttered. “‘Cause I’m not happy standing around in my skivvies in the dark.”
“We should recall the rest of the local Fleet, Kyle,” Sandra said.
I shook my head. “Welter, report our status to the other commanders. Do not order an emergency assistance mission—not yet. We don’t know their true goals. Maybe they want us to pull back from the Helios ring.”
Sandra frowned at me. “Are you suggesting the Lobsters are working with the Macros? Or with Crow?”
“We simply don’t know.”
“But Kyle, how could they have made contact? They’re stuck in their own system, aren’t they?”
I shook my head. “Remember Marvin’s experiment with ring-to-ring communications? He was able to use the rings to transmit and relay messages. I’ve always suspected the Macros could do it, and I know the Blues can. Maybe the Crustaceans have this technology, too. Maybe they’ve been working treacherously under our noses.”
Marvin had only recently discovered the technology that allowed us to use the rings to transmit interstellar messages at a speed that was effectively faster than light. It was done by creating a mini-ring, using sympathetic quantum mechanics. It operated using the principles of quantum entanglement. The important thing was the resulting communication, which was essentially instantaneous over any distance, once two objects were attuned.
Welter had been listening to us intently, and joined the conversation at this point. “But sir, what could they gain from hitting us like this? They have to know we have the strength to destroy them if we want to. We have far more ships and this station alone is more deadly than anything they could throw at us.”
“Is it?” I asked grimly. “They just took it out with one simple ruse.”
“Yes, but we’ll get it back online within days sir, I’m sure of that.”
I wasn’t so confident, but I didn’t argue with him. “They may be in league with our enemies. They must have a plan, something that will shock us just as much as this strike did. Something to follow up on their advantage.”
They couldn’t argue about that. All of us were worried, wondering what underhanded nightmare they had in store for us next.
After I’d managed to pull on some old-fashioned spare coveralls and bandage my hands, I went below decks.
“Where are you going?” Sandra asked me sharply.
“To find Marvin.”
“Is he still alive?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
“I want to come with you.”
“I need you here on the bridge. Keep Welter alive and listen for the scouts. They should come back and report soon. When they do, come find me and relay the message.”
She didn’t want to be left behind, but she didn’t argue. I found the hatch Marvin had wriggled into and slid inside.
Without nanites, much of the battle station had been crippled. There wasn’t a major system on the station that didn’t depend on Nano technology. Even many of the doors, which normally operated by forming openings in the skin of nanites that formed temporary walls, now resembled gaping wounds in the hull. At the base of each of these ragged holes drifted eddies of dead nanites, looking like piles of ground-up metal.
Recalling that Marvin had said he was going to the generator chambers, I followed the Jefferies tubes in that direction. As the big station was parked in orbit over Hel, there was naturally little or no gravity. Our station had zones that provided gravitational fields for convenience, but the Jefferies tubes weren’t on that list. The tubes allowed access to rarely-visited regions of the vast structure that were too remote and underutilized to warrant building a full-fledged corridor.
As I passed into the generator zone, I saw massive walls of shielding which the tubes pierced. I nodded to myself and pressed ahead. Down here, the lights were dim and few, but there was enough to see by. It felt cold now, as the heating systems had failed and the freezing temperatures of the void seeped in.
I saw movement ahead of me, something dark that slid away with a rasping sound. The noise reminded me of a steel brush dragging across a concrete floor.
“Marvin?” I called as calmly as I could. “I know you’re here. Talk to me.”
“Why have you come, Colonel Riggs?”
“To talk to you, Marvin.”
“About what?”
“About exactly how you knew what the Crustacean ship was going to do.”
Marvin hesitated. I could see him now, in the dim light—or rather I could see one of his cameras peeping out. He was hiding around a corner of a tube that teed off to the right. I crept a few feet closer and gathered my feet under me, tucking my knees to my chest. There was no room to stand here, but I could squat under the low roof.
“Are you armed, Colonel?” Marvin asked.
I glanced down at the laser pistol in my hand. I’d taken it along without a thought when I’d abandoned my limp flight suit back on the bridge.
“Yes, I am.”
“Might I ask why, sir?”
“I’m a Star Force marine, and we just suffered a serious attack. I’d have to be a fool to wander around the station unarmed.”
There was a bit more shuffling and rasping ahead of me. I saw shadowy, tentacle-like shapes move into view, then retreat. Two cameras floated into sight, their activation lights glowing in the darkness.
“I suppose that makes sense. In answer to your original question, I didn’t know what the Crustacean ship was going to do. I simply took logical precautions.”
“Like hiding down here? Inside a shielded area?”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, do you know what kind of attack just hit us?”
“I suspect it was an electromagnetic pulse—a powerful one. It has damaged most of the ship’s systems.”
I realized then the extent of Marvin’s guilt. He’d known what was coming—or at least had expected it—and had said nothing to us.
“Indeed it has,” I said in a surprisingly calm voice. I knew it was best not to show Marvin how angry you were when you wanted to get information out of him. He was much more likely to answer you squarely if he thought he had nothing to worry about. Right now, I was boiling inside. I wanted to dismantle him and scatter him in pieces in an orbit bound for Eden’s bright yellow star. But I didn’t want him to know that. He would not be able to talk about anything else if he understood my true mood.
When I could think clearly and continue in an even voice, I asked him another question that didn’t directly revolve around his guilt in this matter: “Why do you think they did it? Why do you think they attacked us?”
“To destroy us, to drive us from the Eden system.”
“Logical. But they can’t hope to defeat us on their own. I have therefore deduced that they might have allies in this situation.”
“Agreed. I’ve calculated the probability at higher than ninety-two percent.”
My right hand twitched and tightened on my laser pistol. I had no shielding, no autoshades to protect my eyes. But if I aimed it at him at this close range and simply slapped my left hand over my eyes, I figured I could burn him down without losing my vision. It was hard to think of doing anything else. But I knew I needed information more than I needed revenge, so I pressed ahead.
“So, let’s assume they have allies. They’ve aligned themselves with a foreign power, such as the Macros.”
Marvin rustled and slid his bulk closer. I saw three cameras now. A fourth wandered, looking in various directions down the tubes. I hoped this indicated only a natural curiosity rather than a search for an escape route.
“It could be the Macros,” Marvin said. “But the signal didn’t travel in that direction.”
I frowned. “What signal?”
“The one they sent through the rings recently. I’d been meaning to tell you about it, but I was worried you would suspect I’d caused it somehow and remove me from my passion.”
“Your passion? You’re passionately interested in fooling with the rings as communications relays now?”
“Of course. Imagine the possibilities! The rings go on and on for an unknowable distance in every direction, a chain of new worlds, peoples, cultures. I find them fascinating.”
Some months ago, Marvin had figured out how to use the rings to transmit messages. It didn’t seem surprising they could do so, after all, they were capable of transmitting something as bulky as a spaceship, so why not a use them as a repeater for a radio signal that could hop from system to system? The application of the technology seemed so obvious that it was staggering we hadn’t seen it before.
At the time, however, I had no time for experimentation with the ring-to-ring transmissions. Every hand had been needed working on getting the battle station operational. If an enemy fleet had arrived in the meantime, everything else we’d done would have been a complete waste of time.
But facts had caught up with me. Apparently, as best I could gather from Marvin’s hinting, my enemies had been using the rings to transmit messages and Marvin hadn’t seen fit to tell me about it.
“So, let me see if I have this scenario hammered down in my mind,” I said, changing position so my butt and back curved with the wall of the tube behind me. It wasn’t as comfortable as sitting a chair, but it was better than hunkering forward or crouching on my knees. “You overheard messages between the Crustaceans and the Macros—which you monitored but did not report. Then, when the Crustacean Ambassador came in to dock, you feared for your safety, and fled to this region of the station where an EMP blast couldn’t destroy your nanite-packed brain.”
Marvin’s cameras studied me. “There are occasional truths in your account, but as a whole, it is peppered with falsehoods. I didn’t know it was the Crustaceans and the Macros who were conversing via the rings, therefore I’m not guilty of consorting with the enemy in any way. I believed I’d detected some kind of traffic, and was performing a detailed analysis when the crisis came to a head.”
“You deny that you knew this attack was coming, and the form it would take?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then why did you retreat to the one area that would be immune to this form of attack and hide here, telling us nothing of your suspicions about the origins of the messages? Telling us nothing, in fact, about the existence of these messages.”
“My actions were based upon concerns that were very likely false. They were merely precautions that turned out to be accurate by chance. I had no desire to trouble you, my human allies, with my idle fantasies. There was no gain in doing so for me. If I’d been wrong, you would have lowered your estimate of my usefulness as a Star Force officer.”
“But you turned out to be right, and you could have prevented a lot of damage!”
“Really? What would you have done, Colonel Riggs, if I had warned you? What if I’d explained the threat as the Crustacean Ambassador approached? Would you have shot him down? Based on a hunch from a single officer?”
I thought about it and shrugged. “Probably not,” I admitted. “I would have let them come in, hoping for peace.”
“Exactly.”
“So, that’s why you’re hiding down here, to avoid the blast? If so, you can come out now. The enemy ship has been destroyed.”
“You misunderstand my actions. I have a cache of valuables down here. Could you help me retrieve them? I’m having difficulties.”
I scooted forward warily. Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if Marvin had changed sides. He’d done so in the past, and I knew I could never fully trust him. But what I saw him struggling with when I rounded the T section of the tube and stared downward made me smile.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
There were barrels of fresh nanites down there, jammed into the tubes. There were at least two dozen large containers. The nanites were alive and well, I could tell by looking into the glittering mass of them pressed up against the tiny observation window. I grabbed a handle, and together, Marvin and I pulled the first one loose and dragged it up into the unshielded portions of the station.
As we worked together, I pondered Marvin and his alien patterns of thought. I considered lecturing him on working together with one’s allies, on the necessity of honorable dealings and honesty. But would such a lecture sink in? Was it even a good idea to try? He’d always had his own way of dealing with humanity, and he’d always been invaluable in a fight.
Perhaps, I thought to myself, I would just have to accept the kind of friendship I had with him and not try to turn him into a human companion. If there was one thing the universe had taught me over the years, it was that sometimes it was best to take what you could get.
-4-
When I returned to the bridge hours later, two key elements of our strategic situation had changed. For one, the battle station was about eleven percent operational due in large part to the judicious use of Marvin’s stash of living nanites. We’d poured them into every essential piece of equipment, starting with weapons, communications and power systems. The tiny robots did their duty with relentless efficiency, removing dead nanites and replacing them with new, living chains. Silvery streams of them flowed down the roof of every corridor leading from the bridge, working like bucket-brigades to take the dead nanites below decks for reprocessing. There was only one factory aboard the ship we could get running again. This single factory ate up a significant portion of Marvin’s precious nanite supply, but I knew it would pay back very quickly as it generated fresh equipment. The moment we got it operating, I programmed it to churn out more nanites. After that, it was simply a
matter of distributing the products. Every hour that passed, the station rebuilt itself and became increasingly viable. Like liquid metal ant trails, the nanites stretched deeper into the station’s structure every hour, slowly repairing the damage.
The second critical detail that had changed was the disposition of my scout ships. Becker, the pilot of the first ship, had returned to our side of the ring. She didn’t have good news to report to us.
“Colonel Riggs? We’ve sighted a large formation of enemy ships. We don’t have much information on them yet, but they match the engine signatures of Macro ships, sir. They’re crossing the Thor system toward the Eden ring. Repeat, the ships are on an attack approach and appear to match enemy configurations. In addition, squadrons of small vessels are gathering in high orbit over one of the inhabited water-moons.”
“Which moon is fielding a fleet?”
“Yale, sir,” the pilot responded. “They’re all coming up from Yale.”
As the Crustaceans had an academic hierarchy for a social structure and seemed to value knowledge above all else, we’d named their water-moons after universities. Harvard was the largest, while Princeton and Yale were smaller and orbited more tightly around the gas giant.
“Is it your assessment that these squadrons are hostile to Star Force?” I asked.
“I would bet on it, sir. They could be flying the force to give the Macros a warning show, but I don’t think so. The Macros are bypassing them completely. Their current course won’t take them anywhere near Yale, so why launch and risk provoking them?”
“Why indeed?” I asked thoughtfully.
“Because they are working with the Macros,” Sandra said angrily. “They have sold us out—their fellow biotics.”
“They wouldn’t be the first to do so,” I said, thinking of our own truce with the Macros some years earlier. We’d worked with them and done a lot of damage on Helios, killing Worms who really hadn’t deserved it.
“You think the Macros threatened them?” Sandra asked. “You think they’ve been forced to do this?”