Annihilation (Star Force Series)

by B. V. Larson

  Marvin was my science officer. He was also a robot. He’d built himself, and he liked to fiddle with things—including his own structure. Sometimes, he could fly. On other occasions, he slithered and dragged himself with whipping nanite arms. Usually, whatever form he took, he was large and had a dozen or so tentacles. Some of them held cameras at various angles, sending input into his amazing nanite-chain brain. Others propelled him by dragging his body around. A few were reserved for directly manipulating his surroundings, like human hands.

  Today, he was in a floating configuration, gliding around on gravity repellers. I paused in concern to inspect his propulsion systems, making sure they weren’t powerful enough for full flight. He’d been forbidden to outfit himself as a ship. He’d gotten into serious trouble every time I’d allowed him that luxury. Flitting around the station was one thing, but having full run of the star system was quite another. I’d made the mistake of giving him flight permission in the past and he’d provided me a large number of sleepless nights in return.

  The trouble with Marvin wasn’t that he was an enemy. He was definitely on our side—but he got ideas. These ideas were things that no human could ever come up with, much less put into action. He was brilliant and useful, but also easily fascinated and obsessed. When I assigned him a critical task, often something no one else could do, it would get done eventually. But along the way he might become distracted by some idea of his own. He might want to grow a culture of intelligent microbes, for example, or explore a neighboring star system without permission.

  “Marvin!” I said, stepping forward and saluting him.

  He returned the gesture by slapping a tentacle to his brainbox. It wasn’t even close to a real salute, but it was the best I was going to get, so I didn’t complain.

  “Greetings, Colonel Riggs.”

  I did a quick count on the number of cameras he had following me. Often, Marvin gave away his true intentions by focusing more or fewer cameras on a subject. Things that bored him were covered by one drifting electronic eye. Things that fascinated him received the attention of multiple panning, zooming cameras.

  This time, to my surprise, Marvin had several eyes on Sandra. I frowned, not understanding what he had in mind. Deciding I didn’t have time to try to figure it out, I shrugged and pressed ahead.

  “I’ve got a new project for you, Marvin. I want a carrier ship produced quickly, with minimum downtime. Here are Miklos’ initial plans. Go over those, make adjustments for performance and faster production times. When you’re done, oversee the production.”

  By the end of this little speech, I’d gained the attention of four more of his cameras.

  “I’m surprised by these instructions, Colonel,” he said. “I’ve been working on the sensory data incoming from the Thor system. I’ve—”

  “Yes, I know that was your prior assignment. Do you have any new datum to report?”

  “No, Colonel. I—”

  “Then perhaps you’ve come up with a hypothesis to explain the situation?”

  “No, sir. However, I haven’t been allowed to make direct contact with the Crustaceans. If I were allowed to converse with them myself, I’m sure—”

  “Not going to happen, Marvin,” I said. “But I’m here now, and if it makes you any happier, you’ll be the first to know what is discussed between Star Force and the Crustaceans.”

  “Ah,” Marvin said. “I see. I’m to serve as a translator-bot again?”

  “You’re still better at it than the other brainboxes. So, yes.”

  I could tell Marvin was miffed. He wanted to be given diplomatic tasks to complete. I’d long since decided that was never going to happen. The mere suggestion gave my command staff fits. But I hardly needed their cautioning. Marvin could do the job, certainly. He understood the languages of the various races in our local space better than any being in existence. He was also very good at manipulation and getting what he wanted out of a conversation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t trust him to take such a conversation in the direction I wanted it to go. If he came up with any idea of his own, which he no doubt would consider extremely interesting, the entire diplomatic exchange might well transform into one of Marvin’s crusades to gain some tidbit of information the rest of us found useless.

  The group proceeded up to the center of the station, into the primary control center. Marvin was watching all of us, but mostly me and Sandra. I knew he was thinking about something, but I simply didn’t have time to play games with him.

  When we reached the center and began going over reports, Miklos got my attention.

  “Yes, what is it, Commodore?” I asked.

  “Sir, I could not help but notice you’ve already altered my blueprints.”

  He thrust a tablet at me. I glanced at the tablet in his hands, but didn’t take it.

  “The design is essentially unchanged,” I said.

  “I know that, sir, but I’m talking about the number of carriers to be produced. I see only one listed here. The Defiant. You’ve typed in that name at the top.”

  “You don’t approve of the name? Don’t worry, it’s only a placeholder. The new captain will rename her as per our traditions. Maybe you want me to call it Barbarossa again?”

  Twice in the recent past, we’d built ships named Barbarossa, the first of which had been Miklos’ command. Both ships had been destroyed within months of their construction. It had become something of a joke among the enlisted men. They often told one another they’d just been assigned to the third version of Barbarossa, and were therefore certain to die soon.

  Miklos looked pained for a moment. “Defiant is a fine name, sir. But my original plans called for three carriers, not one.”

  “Ah, I see,” I said, nodding my head. I’d known what he was getting at all along, but I hadn’t felt like making this easy for him. “It is quite possible the second and third ships will be constructed. We’ll do them one at a time. If the first one proves itself, there will be more.”

  Miklos thought about that. I could tell he didn’t like it.

  “Building components for all three, then assembling all three, would be faster, sir.”

  “Only by a few hours. I checked. Also, if we do it my way, we’ll have a working ship up in a few days. That gives us something to deploy right away if needed.”

  Miklos nodded in defeat. “Yes sir. I understand your logic.”

  He turned away and began a surprise inspection of the gunnery crews. I could tell he was in a bad mood. The crews were going to have a long day.

  Sandra stepped close to me and spoke quietly. “He really want’s those ships.”

  “He’s Fleet,” I said. “He can’t get enough ships. Never.”

  “What kind of hardware do you like best, Kyle?”

  I looked at her, bemused by the question. “I like whatever destroys the enemy most effectively. Watching them blow up gives me a surge of joy. It really does.”

  “I believe you.”

  I began going over the latest reports while Miklos eyed his tablet in frustration.

  There was no intel coming in from the Thor system. Nothing. We’d sent a number of requests to the Crustaceans and they’d all been ignored. I was increasingly curious and annoyed at the same time. Somehow, the Crustaceans always managed to irritate me. They just had that kind of personality. Every interaction we’d had with them had resulted in us being surprised at the result—and not in good way.

  My staff transferred themselves to the battle station, merging with the regular crew on the command deck. It was an impressive affair. When building a station the size of a small moon with nearly limitless supplies of materials, you can afford to go big.

  After having the station nearly knocked out due to losing the bridge area in previous engagements, I’d overhauled the design and drilled deep into the bedrock of the asteroid the station encompassed. The command deck could no longer be easily taken out, not without destroying the entire structure. It was at the very center of the aste
roid itself.

  The primary chamber of the command deck was a good ten thousand square feet in size and enclosed by four foot-thick walls of steel laced with self-repairing smart metals. Beyond those walls was a belt-like corridor that connected staff living chambers and specialized command equipment rooms. A spray of corridors radiated out from the beltway corridor like spokes on a wheel. Under the command deck was the cavernous main hold, full of ordnance and supplies. Above us was the troop barracks and armory. Beyond all of these was a wall of dense rock about two hundred feet thick. Outside the rock wall was the saucer-shaped superstructure, encrusted with weaponry. The new fighter bays were located in the superstructure.

  I reviewed our state of readiness carefully. We were tight and ready for action.

  It was galling. I’d built this entire monstrosity to face the last threat—an attack by the Macros via the Thor system. Once again, I’d failed to anticipate our next need, which now appeared to be providing support for the inhabitants of the Thor system.

  “Colonel?” asked Miklos.

  I turned to him, almost startled.

  “You’re back?” I asked. “Are you sneaking up on me?”

  Miklos smiled faintly. “I’ve been standing right here looking at your screen. Am I right in assuming the station is in an excellent state of readiness?”

  “You are absolutely right on that point. Where’s Major Sloan? I want to congratulate him on his accomplishments here. He’s gone beyond what I thought was possible in six months.”

  “He’s inspecting the fighter bays,” Miklos said.

  I looked at him questioningly.

  Miklos cleared his throat. “I took the liberty of telling him about the carriers we’re building. He’s deciding which wings to send, which pilots are best suited to the task.”

  I laughed. “One carrier, Miklos! Just one for now. If it proves itself, we’ll talk about building more.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I shook my head and turned my attention back to my screens. Miklos was my executive officer, and we had made a decision together. But somehow I’d expected to bring it up at a general staff meeting. Apparently, things weren’t happening fast enough for Miklos’ taste.

  Miklos didn’t wander off. He lingered at my side.

  “What’s on your mind, Commodore?”

  “May I show you something, sir?”

  I frowned at him, then I caught on. “You’ve got another design, don’t you?”

  “Just a few ideas. You can pull up the file there.”

  He pointed to a blinking icon on my desktop. It hadn’t been there a moment ago. I tapped on it and frowned as a schematic unfolded. There were layers and decks and details—my frown deepened.

  “You’ve been working on this for months. No one could come up with it so fast.”

  “My staff is very efficient, sir,” he murmured.

  “Don’t bullshit me. I’ve got a lot of experience designing ships—and with bullshitting.”

  “Just so, sir.”

  I heaved a breath and began going over the plans. They were very detailed. I liked them immediately, except for one thing: they weren’t simple. There was no way this ship could be slapped together with existing parts.

  “Hold on,” I said, interrupting Miklos’ pitch. “This isn’t what we agreed to.”

  “Are the designs flawed?”

  “No, of course not. This ship will be a magnificent addition to the fleet when we build it. But I’m not ready to commit so much material and specialized components. I want something we can slap together like a Macro cruiser. These point-defense systems, for example—elaborate and expensive.”

  “The mothership must be protected from missiles.”

  “Right, well, you told me the ship would be protected by its fighters. You said it would operate as a simple garage for a mass of smaller ships. This is much more than that. This is a miniature version of this battle station.”

  “A mobile version, sir.”

  “And the primary guns? What the hell were you thinking? I don’t want this ship anywhere near a battle that requires heavy railguns.”

  Miklos’ expression was a combination of chagrin and stubbornness. “The fighters aren’t able to bombard a world themselves, sir. They lack heavy weapons.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s the whole bloody point of a fighter.”

  We both stared at the designs for another minute in silence. I knew I had some hard decisions to make, and Miklos wasn’t going to like them. I figured that was just too bad.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll keep your designs—for later. When we have the time and resources to build a showboat. But for now, I’m going to make a copy of this whole thing and do some serious editing for the first prototype ship.”

  I closed the project file and tapped at the screen. I copied the entire folder of data and renamed the new copy: “Showboat”. Then I brought up the original file and began deleting things.

  The first thing I did was tear out generators. Big ships the size of a Macro cruiser normally had three generators, two to run the engines and one to run the weapons batteries. Miklos had no less than six power systems in his design, overkill in my opinion. I deleted all but two.

  Miklos looked physically ill. “Colonel,” he protested, “the vessel can’t possibly—”

  “Hold on, I’m not done,” I said. I brought up the forward batteries and removed all the heavy railguns and laser turrets. I left only six small point-defense lasers. At each of these scattered emplacements, I added a garbage-can sized generator. I did this by dragging and dropping components with my fingers.

  “See?” I said. “Those power-consumption meters are already out of the red and into the yellow.”

  “The ship won’t have the capacity for most mission assignments with these changes. And the power usage is still overloaded.”

  “That’s because I’m not done editing yet,” I said.

  He looked horrified.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve taken into consideration your concern about missiles. These little turrets are the only armament this ship is going to have, but they’ll stop a mild missile assault. With independent power for all the PD turrets, they can’t be knocked out at once. Even if the ship’s main power is gone, they’ll still function.”

  “But the engines, sir. Two primary generators won’t carry the load.”

  I swiped the screen rapidly, paging through the decks until I had the engine rooms displayed. There were three primary engines. I removed one.

  “That’ll fix it.”

  “She’ll be slow. She won’t be able to keep up with the rest of the fleet.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “She’ll be slow. Remember the design goals: this vessel is a strategic platform. We’ll only move it into regions we consider to be safe. Once it gets into position, it will set up camp. It’s not designed to fly into battle as a front line ship. And I know how I can speed it up even more.”

  I brought up the hull specifications next, and began thinning down the outer shielding. Miklos tugged at his beard in distress, but said nothing. By the time I was done, the ship looked something like what I’d envisioned when Miklos had originally sold me on this idea.

  I saved the design and mailed him a copy. Then I turned to him.

  “Two days,” I told him.

  “What, sir?”

  “To build this thing from scratch would take six days,” I said, tapping the indicated estimate at the upper left corner of the design screen. “But you don’t have six days. You’ve got two. That’s all.”

  Miklos looked at me in bewilderment. I turned to face him and straightened my spine. He did the same. All my people understood the body language and the look I gave him next. They knew when they saw that stare, I meant business. In this case, Miklos knew he was about to get an order he didn’t like. He wasn’t wrong about that.

  “You have two days to build this thing, Commodore,” I said, jabbing my finger at the image on the scre
en. “After that, I’m flying out to see what’s heating up Yale’s oceans. I don’t care if the Lobsters answer us or not in the meantime. I don’t care if your ship, fighters and pilots aren’t ready yet. We’re leaving in two days.”

  “But we don’t have the production capacity...” Miklos began, then trailed off. “Most of the factories and materials are back on Eden-8, sir. We can’t even fly them out here that soon.”

  I could tell that my pronouncement had shocked him. He was a hard man to rattle, but I think I’d managed it this time.

  “We have many of these components in storage,” I said. “You’ll use the stores aboard the battle station first, then build new elements second. If you have to strip a few pieces out of this station, I’ll approve it. The only thing you have to build fresh is the bones of the ship, and then do the assembly. I’ll talk to Sloan about that, don’t worry about him giving you the run-around. You’ll have his entire crew to help out. A thousand of them, suited up and ready to do the assembly by hand.”

  Miklos raised his eyebrows at this offer of support and nodded. “May I ask a question, Colonel?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why two days?”

  “Number one, because I’ve calculated it can be done in that amount of time, if you work around the clock. Number two, because I already ordered a complement of ships to meet us here from the Helios ring garrison. We’ll form up a fleet and fly when they get here.”

  “And the need for speed is…?”

  “Because I don’t like what I’m seeing in the Thor system. I don’t like watching something strange happening just beyond our borders. I’m going to go out there and find out what it’s all about. And I’m flying two days from now.”

  “Two days,” said Miklos, his eyes looking unfocussed. He nodded a moment later, then turned around and ran out of the command center.

  Everyone on duty swiveled their heads in surprise. When a nanotized member of Star Force decides to really kick it into gear, it’s a startling thing to watch. One second he was standing and calmly deliberating over plans with me, and the next second he bounded over tables, pushed off from the ceiling twelve feet over our heads, then slammed down on his feet and sprinted to the doors. He surprised the doors themselves, even though they were made of fresh smart metal. He slipped through them the moment they flashed open widely enough to allow him to pass, folding his body and causing a spray of droplets like mercury to shower the beltway corridor beyond.