by B. V. Larson
I sighed. “I know that. Who built it? Damn…” I realized I’d asked a question.
“Tell me who built the ring,” I said.
“The ring was created by powerful beings that are unknown to us. We’ve never encountered them and have no measurements by which to judge them. We suspect they’re inorganic in nature.”
I frowned. “Inorganic meaning they’re machines…that’s great. Tell me why you believe this to be the case.”
“Artificial constructs are superior forms of self-mobile creatures. As these beings are clearly superior to all other known civilizations, we’ve reasoned them to be inorganic.”
I chuckled. The Macros always had been stuck-up bastards.
“All right, let’s just say you have no idea who built them. Tell me how the ring was destroyed.”
“It appears to have collided with the central star in the system. The resulting release of energy was sufficient to damage both the ring and the star system itself.”
I looked around me, startled by this concept. Could it be true? Falling into a burning star—I could imagine that breaking the ring. Even if it was built of stardust, it had to be damaged by experiencing such rough treatment. Gravity, heat, radiation. If anything could destroy a ring, falling into a star would do it.
But that wasn’t the part that surprised me. The other concept they’d put forward was even more alarming to me. Could the destruction of a ring be so cataclysmic that it could snuff out a star? More than that, it seemed to have caused the star to go nova in an unusual way, leaving burnt husks of planets orbiting the rotten core.
I wasn’t sure how the Macros had come to this conclusion, but to me it wasn’t worth the effort of playing ‘twenty-demands’ to get the information out of them. It was believable enough without confirmation. It made too much sense. Marvin had destroyed the surface of a moon to make small, relatively unimpressive devices of this kind. A ring of the size required to transport physical objects over vast distances had to require enormous amounts of mass and energy to create.
I wondered when this star had shined its last light upon the planets that circled it. Were these burnt hulks once green, jewel-like worlds? Had they teemed with life, even perhaps an extinct species of civilized beings?
Frowning, I moved on to my next question—framed as a demand, naturally.
“Macro Command, tell me what would be required to create a ring. Tell me how the Ancients did it.”
“Reference unclear: Ancients.”
“We call the unknown beings that created the rings in the first place ‘Ancients’.”
“Understood. We cannot report precisely. However, in any star system the only source of power capable of enabling the process would be the star itself. And the only available mass would be the planets.”
I narrowed my eyes, nodding. It was obvious, when I thought about it. They had to be right. When Marvin had built his mini-ring, he’d used the star Loki to power his efforts and he’d stripped the crust off a planet-sized moon to feed the furnace he’d built.
I thought about my home system. From what I’d learned between the Blues and the Macros, I was beginning to get a picture in my mind. About a hundred thousand years ago, the Ancients had reached the Solar System. It was near the end of the chain, in fact, along this branch of their interstellar highway. They’d only made one more connection past Sol, the one that reached the blue giant.
At that time on Earth, the most recent glacial period had started. We’d been locked in an Ice Age that lasted many thousands of years. Could it have been caused by a dimming of our sun’s output? Could they have damaged our sun or drained it to create their highway of rings?
The idea was shocking. My thoughts drifted to consider what the local source of mass might have been. The answer in that case was equally disturbing. I knew that the asteroid belt in our home system had once been a large planet that had been broken up by an unknown disaster. It felt odd to think I might have stumbled upon such critical details of our own star system’s history, way out here.
I looked up at the stars and the dead system around me. Could it be that this system had been the brightest star in the heavens of old Earth? Had my ancestors in the hunter-gatherer days looked up and seen a single star that was more brilliant than any of the others riding across the sky every night, so bright it was like a second moon?
One day it had gone dark, probably after producing a kaleidoscope of plasma and radiation. They would have been frightened—and their instincts would have been right in that case.
“Macro Command,” I said, “tell me who destroyed the ring.”
“Unknown.”
Fair enough, I thought. “Tell me why you put a dome over it and placed your factories here. There are other more suitable mining spots in this dead system.”
“You are correct. There are superior locations, but we were attempting to repair the ring.”
I perked up at this. I hadn’t realized their technology was capable of such a thing.
“I assume, then, that you have the technology to perform this feat.”
“You assume incorrectly. We have failed.”
I frowned thoughtfully. Why make the attempt in the first place if they weren’t sure they could do it? What had driven them to such a folly?
“Tell me why you made the attempt.”
There was a pause. A longish one. I could only assume they were pondering their answer.
“We will not tell you that.”
“I demand it, in accordance with our agreement.”
“Our agreement is at an end.”
“Look,” I said, suddenly wanting to know the truth. “I will make this the last thing you have to tell me. For this final piece of data, you can have your insurance. That is the price and then your part of the bargain will be fulfilled. If it is sensitive data, it will probably not leave this planet anyway. I’m not likely to survive much longer.”
Another long pause ensued. Just when I was getting up to walk out of the dome, they finally responded. There was less than a minute to go on the timer.
“We wanted to escape.”
“Escape? To complete the bargain, you must make a clear statement.”
“We wanted to escape this system. We wanted to escape Star Force. We wanted to escape Kyle Riggs.”
I smiled. I was at the very edge of the dome now, and I reached out to touch it.
“You’ve made my day, Macro Command.”
“Statement meaningless.”
How could I not be pleased? We’d scared them off and made them fear for their safety—if you could call such behavior in a machine “fear”. Just knowing that made a lot of my sacrifices worthwhile.
I caught a metallic gleam off to my right. The machines had been hunting for me as I knew they would. They’d finally located me. I’d known all along that that was part of this deadly game. I’d spoken with them in an attempt to get information, and they’d cooperated. But, all the while, they’d been maneuvering into position to ambush me. I’d expected nothing less from them.
I took my first step into the shimmering dome.
-30-
While I’d contemplated dramatic, millennia-old events, the Macros themselves hadn’t been idle. They’d been stalking me.
I’d suspected they would, of course. But it was a demonstration of their respect for me that when they did come, they did it with overkill. A rush of machines charged in unison.
They’d been as stealthy as large robots could be—which was to say, not terribly stealthy. When they came on in their final rush, I couldn’t miss it.
Dozens of flat, crab-like machines scuttled forward. I was up off my butt and heading into the wall of the dome the second I saw they were near.
Whiteout. That was what I’d always thought when I stepped into the dome walls. You couldn’t really see anything, and all your sensors cut out. There wasn’t much in the way of sound, and as no signals could penetrate it, I couldn’t even tell if I was heading in the
right direction.
Normally, this wasn’t much of a problem. I’d walked through Macro domes on a number of occasions in the past. All you had to do was keep your wits about you, remember where you were headed, and keep putting one foot in front of the other in as straight a line as you could. The energy field was only about ten yards thick, a dozen sweeping strides for me.
But this dome shell was different. It was thicker than any I’d ever encountered. It didn’t house a single factory, but every factory they had left. It was huge, thick and powerful.
Ten steps went by, then another ten. I knew if I hadn’t gotten turned around somehow I should be reaching the far edge soon. I also knew that the bomb was due to go off at any moment.
With these concepts foremost in my mind, I tried to hurry up. But the field didn’t let me. It only allowed slow movement through it. That was how it kept missiles from penetrating, among other things.
Something hooked me at around step twenty-one. I’m pretty sure it was the twenty-first step as I’d been counting to keep track. If I’d reached thirty without exiting the dome, I’d know that I’d gotten off-course and would have to change directions.
Whatever it was, it grabbed the generator on my back and lifted me up—slowly. Not even the Macros could move quickly inside their own force walls.
I was pretty sure a claw had me, lifting me up. Even if the dome was only a single step farther ahead, it was a step too far. I’d never make it.
I reached for my projector reflexively, but I knew it wouldn’t work. An energy beam such as the kind it emitted wouldn’t penetrate a millimeter of this field around me.
I released my projector, letting my laser carbine fall and dangle by the nanite cord. I reached back with my gauntlets—but I couldn’t get a grip on anything.
Whatever had me was either smart or lucky. It had chosen to grip me by the one piece of equipment that I couldn’t easily reach. Like a kitten in its mother’s mouth, I was hefted up higher and higher.
I was now certain I was in the grip of a machine’s claw. The claws were trying to close, crushing my generator, and they would puncture my exoskeleton in time.
A sense of doom came over me. The chronometer displayed six red zeros. I had run out of time.
An instant after this realization came over me, my sense of sight and sound blanked out. Then something kicked me from behind. My first impression was that the Macro that carried me had thrown me as far and hard as it could.
In my faceplate, the stars came back. They flickered, dimmed, then brightened again.
I was falling. It didn’t take long, but every fall when you’re expecting death seems to be a lengthy experience.
Landing was one of the more painful experiences I’d had in the last year. Only fighting Crow and suffering his hammering blows had been worse. The dusty black surface of the dead sun came up and smashed into me. My faceplate starred and emergency warning symbols lit up everywhere inside my helmet.
Falls from ten feet or more in high gravity are serious matters. No human beings had ever experienced gravity like I was feeling right now.
I didn’t lose consciousness, but I wanted to. I was in agony. Bones cracked and skin tore open such was the force of my fall. It was like smashing a hammer onto your thumb—but there were about a hundred hammers hitting a dozen of my ribs, both my kneecaps and my right ear.
Lights flashed in my skull, and I honestly wasn’t sure if they were from the blow my head took or from the dome itself.
The dome. I painfully cranked my head to the right. The dome should be there—but it wasn’t.
I saw the last flickering orange death of the dome. It was lovely, in an alien way. Like my own private display of aurora borealis.
Then I remembered as my wits seeped back into me that when a nuke went off inside a dome, it couldn’t get out. But since it destroyed the power source the dome relied on, the dome itself always died moments later.
I tried to get up, but everything fought me: My damaged body, my damaged suit, and especially the portion of a claw that still lay clamped to my midsection.
This last impediment had to go, so I focused my energies on removing it. I could hardly be expected to drag this monstrously heavy appendage across the surface of the dead sun.
The claw wouldn’t release me. I tried, oh God how I tried, but I could not get the damned thing off me.
I thought of my projector, got it out and put it against the claw. But it wouldn’t fire. Possibly, it had been damaged in the explosion or the fall.
I stood up despite the claw. Getting up was a lengthy process that required roaring, straining and hissing my breath through my teeth. But at last, I was on my feet.
I wasn’t able to stand up normally. I had to lean forward to counterbalance the huge weight of the claw wrapped around my belly.
Briefly, I toyed with the idea of abandoning the generator on my back, but I passed on that one. I knew that if I lost my power source, I’d be dead in an hour on this unforgiving chunk of crushed matter.
Getting my bearings as best I could with the few systems that still worked in my suit, I headed toward Andoria. Hopefully, Nomura hadn’t taken off without me. I doubted she would, but one never knew.
I could have broken radio silence and called the ship, but I didn’t want to. I was sure all the Macros inside the dome had been destroyed, but any left on the outside were going to be hunting for invaders. I’d just given them a fresh reason to want me dead, and I was sure they wouldn’t hesitate if they got the chance to zero in on my position.
Trudging for ten minutes or more, I topped a rise. The dust cloud that had arisen behind me had settled down. The explosion had kicked up a lot of debris, and there was a smoky atmosphere on this rock; but there was also tremendous gravity. Dust tended to float down and hug the ground again much faster than it did on Earth.
When I topped the rise, I looked for the ship. It should be here. I frowned, panting, looking this way and that. Had I gotten lost somehow? Disoriented?
Then, I realized what was ahead at the bottom of the crater. I stood on the lip, looking down on what had to be Andoria—but it looked drastically different.
It was covered by Macros. The robots themselves had taken a different form, just as our ships had upon landing here. The Macros were long, low and built like scuttling cockroaches. They crawled over the ship like beetles on a rotting carcass. I could see holes in the hull—they were mining machines, after all, and they’d drilled their way in. I was horrified.
I knew now why I’d seen so few machines during my travels inside the dome. They’d been out here, tearing up my grounded ships—killing the crews. Although I knew it might be a fatal error, I broke radio silence.
“Nomura!” I shouted. “Captain Nomura, do you read me?”
Dead air met my straining ears.
“Does any member of Andoria’s crew read this transmission? I order you to respond.”
Nothing came back. I was left with an inescapable conclusion: They were all dead. The hull had been punctured in a dozen spots. The crew had been almost helpless when I’d left them in any case. I couldn’t imagine they could fight off an invasion involving thousands of machines while lying on their backs hardly able to breathe.
Knowing I couldn’t have much time left, I increased the gain on my radio and beamed an SOS into space.
I switched off my radio after that and moved away from the spot where I’d last transmitted. I found a gully to lie down in. It was a quiet spot and from here I stared upward and studied the stars. I knew I only had enough power to keep myself breathing for another few hours—maybe less if I moved around.
I kept my radio switched to receive-only after that. I could still receive signals, and soon messages did filter down from the cold stars.
“We think we have a solution, and we have volunteers to come get you, Colonel,” Jasmine’s voice buzzed in my ear.
I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to insist that she not be among these v
olunteers. But I didn’t dare open a channel and talk to her. To do so would be to invite discovery.
As it was, there was evidence that the machines were looking for me. I knew they’d been too busy dismantling my ships, probably figuring they’d lucked into a treasure trove of raw materials. But then I’d destroyed their domes and the factories they were trying to feed. Like ants that’d had their hill kicked over, they’d begun to race around angrily, looking for the threat that must be destroyed.
So I laid there in the cool dark, and occasionally a metallic shadow passed overhead and caused grit to sift down onto my faceplate. I held my breath each time until they left.
An hour passed. I’d pretty much given up hope. I knew they were trying to rescue me, but they didn’t know how little power I had remaining. Soon, I would have enough oxygen to breathe, but the exoskeleton would die. Without the exoskeleton, I wouldn’t be able to get up.
I lay there anyway, waiting. I knew I could last for quite a while if I did nothing other than breathe.
At the third hour, the suit became my tomb. It was down to emergency power only, running on the red. Now and then, it shut itself off, and the generator pumped just enough juice to charge it up for another few minutes—then it shut down again. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t want to risk it anyway.
Six hours after the dome came down, I saw a light. It was bluish, and bright. I knew what it was instantly: a ship’s engine. The vessel came down nearby, but not right on top of me.
I tried to get up on one elbow but failed. It felt like I was lifting six tons—because I was. I let myself sag down after holding myself aloft for a few moments. It was strange, being so helpless.
“Colonel Riggs?” a voice came into my helmet. It was scratchy and distant. But I recognized it immediately.
“Can you give us a directional ping? We know the area is dangerous, but we haven’t found you at your last known location. We’ll do our best to be as quick as possible.”
I keyed open the channel. I’d been hoarding a little reserve power in the batteries for this moment. Besides, I couldn’t help it. Despite everything, I was pissed off.