Rebellion Ebook Full

by B. V. Larson

  My mouth hung open. “I told you, I wasn’t there. I left Marvin in charge.”

  Sandra stared at me, eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I told him to fix you. I think I said something like: do whatever it takes. Maybe I should have been more specific.”

  She closed her eyes and sagged against me. I put my arms around her and soothed her gently.

  Sandra ripped loose from me suddenly, and her face had utterly changed. Instead of horror and sorrow, it was filled with rage. “We have to kill Marvin,” she said. “We have to turn him off. He’s a monster—and he’s made me into one, too!”

  I looked at her seriously. The way she had moved, the power in her limbs…I could feel it. She was stronger than nanotized men. It was like soothing a wild gorilla that could rip a man’s face off.

  “Marvin is cooperating right now,” I said. “He’s like all these machines—very literal-minded. But if he really killed Ning to empower you…that’s just not acceptable. I think you’re right. I’m going to have to disable him.”

  Sandra came close, looking at me intently. “No,” she said, whispering. “Not disable, destroy.”

  “I understand your passion,” I said. “But he’s too valuable. He can talk to these alien species. Remember when we transferred him from the Centaurs? He came across as an incomplete download. Maybe there were elements of his reasoning that are twisted up because of that.”

  She stared at me in disgust. “What are you doing? Copping an insanity plea for a robot?”

  “I’m telling you he knows too much to destroy. If we can get the knowledge he has—just the ability to speak the Centaur language, for example, would be invaluable to Earth.”

  “I’m talking about a human life, Kyle.”

  “I’m talking about billions of human lives,” I said.

  We stared at each other hotly for a long time. Finally, she kissed me again, so hard it hurt my lips. It felt good, just the same.

  “All right,” she said. “You do what you think you have to. But if he does anything weird, I’m pulling his plug myself.”

  Anything weird? I thought. Not Marvin! His thinking was so far out of the box that he didn’t even know where the box was. I didn’t say any of these things, however. They wouldn’t have helped Sandra’s mood.

  “Okay,” I said. “Check up on him. Don’t let him kill anyone else. Especially not you.”

  Sandra snorted as if she didn’t think Marvin had a chance against her. I wasn’t so sure. He kept surprising me. But then again, so did she.

  “All right, Colonel,” she said.

  We kissed again and parted ways. My lips were burning, but I figured I might have gotten back in the loop with her somehow. I realized as I headed to the bridge that she hadn’t even mentioned Major Sarin. She’d been distracted by Marvin and Ning. Her hard kisses were punishing, and made me wonder what actual sex with her was going to be like—should I be so lucky as to find out.

  -43-

  Even with the work Marvin had already done to gather the pieces and with Welter’s expert piloting, it took us a while to collect everything we could salvage. We picked up every marine, dead or alive, and brought them back aboard for transport home.

  All the while we watched space around us carefully for signs of a Macro incursion. We knew about the ring orbiting Helios, and the one further out which connected to the Eden system, but there might be others. For all we knew, the Macros were massing up and planning to come after us in force.

  Once I had my factories back from Marvin, I immediately switched them over to producing sensor array units. We needed eyes now more than weapons systems. I tried to keep the cruiser as close to the Helios ring as possible for a quick exit in case the Macros did show up. I also posted men on flying dishes as sentries on the far side of the ring, in the Alpha Centauri system. They were scouts, using instruments to watch our backs. They couldn’t transmit a signal through the ring, so I had them come back through every hour to report. If they saw any ships, they were to return immediately with the news.

  Keeping observers in the tri-star system did have one side benefit: we became convinced the tri-star system was indeed comprised of Alpha, Beta and Proxima Centauri. This was somehow comforting to everyone. We weren’t lost in some distant galaxy. We were only four short lightyears away, practically within shouting distance of home. We even grew to feel territorial about the system. After all, it was very close to Earth whether you were using the rings or mundane spaceflight. I’d already decided in the future we would use it as a no-man’s land buffer zone between ourselves and the Worms should both species be lucky enough to survive this war. I could see a trading post out here, maybe we’d be able to talk to them.

  I knew what I should be doing next, and it involved cajoling Marvin into helping me communicate with the Worms. This was a critical mission, but I just wasn’t up to it. I had no idea how many hours it had been since I’d had a good rest, but I was sure it had been more than a day. Even with nanites removing the toxins from my blood brought on by fatigue and repairing cells that needed it, I was still coming close to a crash. The human brain needed rest and sleep with dreams to reorganize our thoughts. Without that downtime, anyone would begin to lose effectiveness and eventually go mad. I couldn’t afford to be delusional, so I began looking for a place to sleep. I found the sleeping bricks were full of like-minded marines. Disappointed, I turned around and found Sandra with her arms crossed, half-smiling at me.

  I cursed and staggered in surprise. “Didn’t hear you following me,” I said.

  “You weren’t supposed to,” she said.

  I could tell she was proud of herself.

  “How long have you been following me around?” I asked.

  “For quite a while. I finally got bored tracking Marvin. He’s just a floating brain box with one skinny arm now. All he does is look at everything and poke at Macro control systems all over the ship, wherever he finds them.”

  I frowned. “Does he make the boards do anything?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. He just taps at them and stares. Sometimes he talks to himself. But I’m not completely taken in by his act. All serial killers seem like harmless eccentrics early on, you know.”

  “You do sound like the neighbor after the crime,” I said. “The one who talks about how he always mowed his lawn, kept to himself and waved hello like a normal robot.”

  She almost laughed, but not quite. I could tell Ning’s nasty passing was still fresh in her mind. I decided to change the topic. “I’ve been looking for a place to get some sleep,” I said. “Any ideas?”

  She gave her head a small tilt to the left, considering it. I’d always liked that affectation. After a short pause, she crooked her finger in my direction. I followed her like a puppy. Despite my fatigue I admired her shapely figure as she walked through the halls. She’d gotten rid of the vacc suit now that most of the ship was pressurized and heated. It was much more comfortable for everyone. Wearing a vacc suit continuously was like living in a sleeping bag with holes cut out for your eyes.

  I wanted to reach for her, but stopped myself. I knew that much about make-ups, you had to time things perfectly. She led me to one of the countless chambers on the ship that served no obvious purpose. This one was full of tubes. Metal tubes, fabric tubes, tubes that looked like they were made of rubber or graphite—but weren’t. The trick was, the tubes that ran over the floor and the walls had two wonderful properties: they were soft and slightly warm. I was sure they carried power or data or both. In fact, this looked like the Macro equivalent of a networking data-closet. We spread out some blankets that were kind of like tarps on top of the thick, flexy tubes. With a little rearranging and plumping, they made a firm but livable bed.

  “This isn’t bad,” I was saying, admiring our handiwork. I was about to go on, but she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down on top of her. And I do mean pulled. I was yanked off my feet, and forcibly kissed once again.

>   I turned my head as she began to run her hands over my back.

  “What’s wrong?” she growled.

  “I didn’t think we’d made up yet,” I said.

  “Since when did you care?”

  “A man’s got to have some self-respect,” I said, straining away and giving her my best poker-face.

  Sandra stared at me for a confused second, and then burst out laughing. I joined in. Both of us knew I had no self-respect what-so-ever when it came to getting into bed with her. She was a weakness of mine—an addiction.

  “We haven’t made up,” she said after we were finished.

  “Why did we do it then?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want you thinking about Jasmine Sarin for one more second,” she said.

  I laughed with my eyes closed. “You’re a succubus.”

  Overall I’d found her body to be familiar, but more firm and energetic. I didn’t mind the change. The tubes were still soft under me, and I was falling asleep the moment she climbed off me. She’d taken the last ounce of energy out of my tired form.

  I passed out for a long time.

  -44-

  I awakened with Sandra standing over me, shaking me. I opened gluey eyes and peered up. “Morning already?”

  “We’re in trouble,” she said.

  I took one look at her face and stood up with a grunt. I dragged my vacc suit back on while she explained. She was already dressed. I got the feeling she had been for some time.

  “Everyone was looking for you,” she said. “Calling over the com-link—then I realized I was the only one who knew where you were. So I sprinted down here to get you.”

  I picked up my helmet and saw it was indeed full of flashing lights. “I must not have heard the buzzer,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “It’s the Worms,” she said.

  I snapped my head around to stare at her.

  “They have ships,” she said. “They are small ones, but they are coming up here.”

  “Up here?”

  “Yeah, heading right toward us.”

  “Are they firing? Are they in range yet? How long do we have?” While I asked these questions, she shook her head and we hustled together along corridors and access tubes to the bridge. When we arrived, everyone looked up. I realized we’d made a grand, hurried entrance together. Every eye in the place stared at us. A few smirked.

  Only Major Sarin avoided looking at us. She kept her eyes down on her computer. Internally, I felt a twist. More discord. I couldn’t seem to stop messing up my staff. It was obvious Sandra and I had been together, and Jasmine felt hurt.

  I decided to go commander on them. No apologies. No explanations. Nothing. When I wanted to get the minds of my marines off gossip and hurt feelings, nothing worked like a pile of snappy orders.

  “Have we got a big situational screen hooked up yet?”I demanded.

  Heads shook.

  “No?” I asked. “Sarin, you are on screen ops. Feed the data to my tablet, clone our screens. Gorski, give me verbal numbers on the situation. Enemy strength and range first.”

  We soon stood in a group that resembled a football huddle, with everyone tapping at small portable computers. The situation was not yet dire. We had no sign of Macro ships in the Helios system or Alpha Centauri. Instead, we had exactly fourteen small vessels coming up from Helios. The unusual configuration of the ships and the fact they’d come from Helios led us to believe they were Worm ships. They looked vaguely like the old NASA shuttlecrafts to me, but a bit larger. They had stubby wings and a pointed snout. They were clearly designed for atmospheric travel.

  “It looks like fourteen frigate class ships against one cruiser,” I said, “and we aren’t fully operational. I don’t like the odds. Where did this Worm fleet come from?”

  “As far as we can tell, Colonel,” Gorski said, “they’ve been hiding them underwater. They lifted off from beneath those muddy seas of theirs.”

  “Makes sense. I’m not surprised they’ve been hiding them. They aren’t very big. I would bet two Macro cruisers could take all of them out. I suppose whatever fleet they may have had in the past was wiped out by the Macros. So they hid what they had left—or built new ones in secret.”

  I’d never been able to say I liked the Worms, but I did find them worthy of admiration at times. They were the beaten down people in this game. But they were determined, and never seemed to give up. I suspected their population was even lower than the Centaur herds had been. They could be snuffed out after another few bad battles. Everywhere we went, it looked as if the machines had already won. We were still struggling, but like the Worms we’d really been beaten long ago.

  “Should we fight or run, sir?” Gorski asked.

  I ignored him. I could feel every eye on the bridge on me. I didn’t look at my crew, but instead studied the small Worm fleet, knowing it was all they had. I sighed as I looked at the screen. Fourteen Worm ships, coming up to do battle with what they must have figured was a single, damaged Macro cruiser. I couldn’t blame them. I could imagine they’d argued hard amongst themselves whether this was the time to make a counterstrike. If they were anything like human commanders, some had wanted to keep hiding and building. Others had urged action, taking the position that they must act. If they didn’t take the chance to win this small battle, how could they ever going to take the initiative?

  “We’re not going to fight them,” I said. “But we’re not going to run right away, either. What have we got if we are forced to fight?”

  Everyone stared at me for a second before turning back to their screens.

  “We’ve got an operable main battery,” Gorski said. “Unlike our last ship. And we’ve managed to build a number of missiles that will fit the tubes on this cruiser.”

  I looked at him with my eyebrows raised high. “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  He nodded proudly. I looked around the group. Welter was standing at the helm with his fingers uplifted, twitching almost. He wanted to work that board in combat, I could tell. Gorski wanted to fire his new missiles. The fact he’d put them into the Macro tubes showed he’d gained some level of control over the ship’s weapons system. I suspected he only knew enough to open the external ports and allow our brainbox-driven missiles to launch on their self-guided path.

  Major Sarin was looking at me now, waiting calmly for my next order. She didn’t look anxious to do any killing—but it was hard to tell with her. She guarded her feelings, rarely letting them show on her face.

  Sandra just looked worried. She didn’t like any of this. I could hardly blame her, she’d already died in combat twice that I was aware of. Maybe she wasn’t certain I could pull off a third miracle and find some new alien technology to put her cells back together today.

  “How long do we have until they get in firing range?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” Gorski replied. “That depends on their armament, which we haven’t seen yet.”

  “Assume they have the equivalent of two Nano-ship lasers each.”

  Gorski tapped for a half-minute. “I’d say we have three hours in that case.”

  I nodded. “We’ve got every marine living or dead we could find aboard now, correct?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “In three hours,” I said, “we’ll be out of here. I’m not going to destroy another biotic people’s fleet just because we can’t talk to one another. They are naturally assuming we are a damaged Macro vessel. I’ll try to convince them we aren’t, but if it comes down to it, we’ll run rather than fire on them.”

  Gorski raised his hand with his palm open. “Hold on, sir,” he said. “I didn’t say we had three hours to sit around. They are building velocity. They could follow us through the ring. We have to start moving much sooner if you want to avoid a fight.”

  “How long?”

  “Less than an hour.”

  I sighed. “All right. Has anyone seen Marvin?”

  Sandra had seen him, of course. She knew exactly where
he was. She had, in fact, belled him like a cat. I realized I should have done that sooner, but just hadn’t gotten around to thinking of it. She had put one of the transponders on him she’d put on me long ago in happier times—back before the Worms, Centaurs and Macros had managed to kill ninety percent of my marines.

  I followed Sandra through the ship. To my surprise, I had to struggle to keep up. Even wearing my powerful exoskeletal battle suit over my vacc suit, enhancing my muscle contractions and magnifying them, I found it hard to keep her behind in my range of vision. She leapt and sprang like a cat. I recalled watching a documentary on red kangaroos once. At full gallop—or whatever you called a kangaroo’s gait when it was hopping like mad—each bound took them a good thirty feet. Sandra reminded me of a kangaroo moving through steel passages in flying leaps.

  We found Marvin pretty fast, and I had to smile grimly at his reaction. He was definitely disturbed by our approach. We found him in a data closet full of flexible hosing—similar to the one we’d made into a love-nest so recently. His primary arm was probing the tubes. He had one open, and looked to be doing some kind of exploratory surgery on the glowing contents. Liquid spilled on the decks like oily blood. Three of his four cameras were canted at various angles, staring at the open tube. But the fourth eye was on lookout, staring at the hatch behind him as we crashed it open.

  The dish his brainbox floated upon spun around and all the cameras came up to look at us. Two focused on Sandra and two on me. He dropped the cable and snaked his probing arm back into his brainbox with surprising speed. It definitely reminded me of a guilty start. I was sure we’d caught him red-handed at something, but I simply didn’t have time to waste finding out what it was.

  “Marvin,” I said. “We require your help.”

  “What assistance do you require?”

  “Come with us to the bridge, Marvin,” I ordered. “Now.”

  One of Marvin’s camera eyes drifted first to my sidearm, then to Sandra’s. The second and third cameras stared at our faces simultaneously. The fourth camera squirmed around behind him now, looking at the tubes he’d been cutting into. He hesitated and seemed reluctant to leave his work.