by B. V. Larson
We ran the course again with nothing but knives. This time, we were overwhelmed. We killed only about a dozen attackers with jewel-like eyes and snapping mandibles before the computer judged us as pulled down and dismembered. Sandra had been the weak link in this fight, and it showed.
When we exited the training brick and let the next fireteam shuffle in behind us, Sandra pinched my butt.
I turned around with a half-smile. “Is that a proposition?” I asked.
“You did that on purpose. You put us in there with nothing but knives because you wanted to beat me.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I wanted you to understand your limitations. You are quick and accurate. You know how to use a gun. But you don’t know anything about close fighting. Your muscles, while enhanced, are not comparable to any marine in this unit.”
“Thanks for the lesson,” she said.
“No charge.”
“I want another shot at it,” she said.
I knew that stubborn look in her eye. I’d seen it often enough. “Okay. We’ll go again when these guys are done.”
We ended up running each of the simulations six times. We beat the shooting match every time except for the last one. The hand-to-hand matches were all losses. We got better at first, but after the fourth round I could tell Sandra was slowing. Our score for the sixth round was the worst yet, only eight kills before the enemy pulled us down.
“I’m tired,” Sandra finally admitted.
“I know.”
“I’m not used to this.”
“You did very well,” I told her. “You might be better than the very worst marine in my outfit.”
“Really?”
“Nah. I was just trying to make you feel better.”
Sandra hissed and slashed at me with her plastic knife. I caught her wrist and kissed her. We half-wrestled and half-made out until the duty Sergeant cleared his throat. I looked up.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting these,” I said, handing over the practice weaponry.
“Thank you, sir,” the Sergeant said, trying not to smile at us. He failed and grinned hugely. I couldn’t blame him.
— 42-
The next ring surprised us. We’d been floating along for nearly a week, crossing the breadth of the Alpha Centauri system-if that’s where we truly were. Suddenly a new contact appeared on the big table, a tiny flickering oval shape on our projection of the star system. It wasn’t near any planet. It could have been a station, or a larger ship. I was summoned to the command brick the minute the staffers saw the anomaly.
The first thing I noticed was the binary star clump was on the opposite side of the table. The second thing was that the velocity meter on the board was half what it had been the last time I was in the command brick. We’d been taking measurements of distance and position continually to every celestial body we had contact with. By measuring their relative distances to our position, we could tell we were now moving more slowly.
“We’ve changed our attitude?” I asked.
“The Macros flipped the ship around, sir. They did a one-eighty and they have the engines pointed in the opposite direction. We’re decelerating hard,” Major Robinson confirmed.
I put my hands on the big screen and drew them apart with a spreading motion. I zoomed in as closely as I was able with our imperfect sensory apparatus.
“It could be a ring,” I said, staring at the oval thing.
The rest of the command staff huddled around us. “What should we do, sir?” asked Major Robinson.
I looked at him. “Do? We aren’t flying this ship.”
“I mean, should we ask the Macros if that’s a ring?”
I thought about it and shook my head. I figured the Macros were only good for so many questions disguised as demands per day-per year, maybe. I’d never gotten the feeling they liked us, and they certainly didn’t like talking to us.
“To the Macros, we are wild beasts, Major,” I said.
“Sir?”
“I mean, we are something they plan to let loose upon their enemies. But they don’t want to pal around with us. They aren’t our friends, our teammates. Every time I communicate with them, I increase the relative cost and risk of associating with them. They think of us as cargo, remember? I plan to be good cargo for the rest of this trip. Good, quiet cargo.”
“That doesn’t seem like your style, sir,” remarked Captain Sarin.
I looked at her with raised eyebrows and she looked down, embarrassed.
I nodded and grinned. “You’ve got a point there, Captain. But I want to make it home again. The only way we’re going to achieve that, I figure, is by keeping the Macros happy.”
No one offered any more arguments. We approached what we calculated must be the next ring. Over the next three hours, a slight curve began shaping our course. We continued to decelerate.
“It looks like we are going to fly right by it,” I said.
“The opening in the center of the ring isn’t quite lined up with our angle of approach,” said our navigator. He was another fellow who had had little to do on this trip. Finally, his hour had come. “You see, to shoot through the ring, we have to change our trajectory, curving into it at an angle. That’s probably why we are slowing down, too.”
“We might be slowing down because there’s an atmosphere on the far side,” suggested Captain Sarin.
“I doubt that,” I said. “We are still going too fast to hit a planetary atmosphere. We’d burn up if there was a wall of gas to run into on the far side. What’s our current velocity? About two hundred thousand knots?”
“More than that, sir. Even after many hours of braking,” Major Robinson confirmed.
The braking and the gentle curving of our course continued for another hour. It was hard to leave the bridge. I had my staff calculate the point when we’d hit the ring and they put a timer up on the boards. I had them relay that timer to every screen in every brick. When we had less than half an hour left, I got out on the PA system and spoke to my troops.
“Marines, this is Colonel Riggs. You might have noticed the timer on the overheads. In twenty-eight minutes, we believe we will blink to another star system. That star system may well be our destination. I want everyone safely strapped into their assigned brick with every stick of equipment stowed and secured by the time that timer hits zero. Riggs out.”
The twenty-eight minutes crawled like twenty-eight hours. But finally, the last seconds ticked away. I felt a tiny shudder. I knew, before the screen in front of me went blank, that we were in a different place now. We were somewhere new.
A big star grew to my left on the screen. It kept growing as the computers measured its gravitational pull and radiation emissions, adjusting their estimates. It was a huge star, bigger than the blue giant had been. The circle looked the size of a hubcab lying on the computer table. There was only one of them, at least. As we watched, more contacts swam into place. Planets. The first ones to appear were the largest of them. The gas giants, I figured. The planets kept popping up like bubbles as they were sensed and positioned. Things kept moving on the table, too, reshuffling. I knew that part of our sensory algorithms required the ship to move, so we could take readings from multiple locations and thus have a better conception of the environment.
“It’s a red giant, sir,” said the navigator in a hushed voice. “Another new system. If only I could see where we are. I wish I could just get someplace and look out a window.”
I chuckled. I looked at the navigator in sympathy. He was a tall, thin fellow with hair that was naturally brown at the roots and the color of honey at the tips.
“Flying blind in these ships can be maddening,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of it.”
“Sir, look,” said Captain Sarin, pointing to the screen. There was a small planet growing there as the sensors worked out its location and mass.
“We’re almost in the planet’s far orbit now,” said Major Robinson.
We felt something new then. So
mething we’d never felt on this long journey, something we’d always expected, but never experienced. The ship itself vibrated and a deep thrumming sound could be heard.
Everyone looked at the walls.
“Crash-straps, deploy!” I ordered. Almost immediately, nanite arms reached down from the ceiling and grabbed each of us by the hooks that ringed our belts. More arms looped down and attached to our wrists and ankles. These arms would allow us to move freely, but not suddenly. Any sudden motion would be instantly restrained by the thin, black arms, preventing injury. They were scripted to react to shocks the way a shoulder harness did in a car back home, tightening when forces were applied that might throw us off-balance.
“Report, Major. What was that impact?”
“Felt like something big, sir. Sensors, Raphim?”
“Ah…” said the sensory officer, flustered. “It wasn’t the Macro engines, sir. Something hit us.”
“I think this is it, gentlemen,” I said, raising my voice. “We have reached a hot enemy system. Sensors, zoom us in. I don’t care about the red giant or whatever else is floating around farther than a million miles out. Give us only local contacts.”
“Working on it, sir,” Raphim said.
The image on the screen wavered, then faded away. The planet loomed now, large and to my right. Behind us was the ring. It slid away astern quietly, gently. Five smaller contacts surrounded us, they had to be the cruiser escorts.
“I don’t see any enemy ships,” I said.
“Maybe the planet is firing at us, sir,” suggested Captain Sarin.
“How are we getting hit by the planet?” I asked. “A missile couldn’t get up here this fast. We just arrived in the system.”
Another shudder rocked the ship. This one was much worse. The nanite restraints tightened to keep me from being thrown across the computer table.
“Sensors? Talk to me, Raphim.”
“No enemy ships. No enemy missiles. I’m not sensing anything moving or emitting, other than the Macro vessels.”
“What hit us then? Replay that strike recording. Where was the energy released? Is there any radiation?”
Raphim was quiet for a second. I would have yelled at him again, but I could see his long fingers working swiftly on his board. “Radiation, yes. Gamma. And it was pretty close, sir. I’d say it was a nuclear warhead.”
“Missiles, then,” said Captain Sarin.
There was another less violent rocking sensation. One of the escort cruisers blew apart. The contact separated and flickered out. Everyone watched and breathed hard.
“Any incoming missiles?”
“Nothing sir,” Raphim said. “No heat signatures. No motion sensors are being tripped. If they are missiles, they might be too small to detect, or they might be coasting in, cold. I don’t know sir.”
“Mines,” said Captain Sarin suddenly.
I looked at her and nodded. “Makes sense. The enemy laid mines in front of the ring. They knew the Macros had to come this way, so they set up a trap for them-for us.”
“The Macros are adjusting their formation, sir,” said Raphim.
I watched the screen. The Macros seemed to have figured out the mines, too. They put every cruiser in a column, with us at the rear. The ships now followed one another in single file.
“At least we know they care about us,” I said.
We all watched tensely as we arced down closer to the planet, decelerating into orbit. Two more cruisers vanished by the time we reached a stable orbit.
“Contingency plans?” I demanded.
“What plan, sir? What can we do?” Major Robinson asked.
“I want you to tell me,” I said.
“You mean in case this vessel is hit? I don’t know. We could try to bail out.”
I stared at him. “We’d have to blast the rear doors down.”
He nodded. “We could do that, then release the magnetic clamps on the bricks, letting them fall out the rear of the ship.”
I pointed at him. “Good idea,” I said. “We can get out a few of the tanks and take out the back door when the last cruiser is destroyed.”
“Won’t work,” said the navigator.
“Why not?” I snapped.
“We are still decelerating, sir-flying backward,” said the navigator. “With our engines forward and our noses aft. Even if we blast the doors wide open, we won’t fall out. The G-forces will push us back into the Macro transport, not out of it.”
“We could pump gas into the hold,” Captain Sarin suggested. “Then there would be a pressure release when we blast the doors. Wouldn’t the escaping gas propel us out the back?”
“Maybe it would at first,” the navigator said, tapping out calculations. “But as long as the ship’s engines are firing we’ll be thrown back into it.”
I heaved a sigh. “Set it up anyway. Deploy two hovertanks for the job. Maybe the ship will swing around into an attack posture soon. I at least want the option.”
“If we are hit while the men are rolling out hovertanks…” said Major Robinson, shaking his head.
“Marines aren’t people who want to live forever,” I said. “Besides, I’d rather lose ten men than thousands. Relay the order.”
Over the next hour, we reached a stable orbit and watched as the cruisers steadily fired those big belly-cannons we’d spotted back on Earth. Whatever they used for ammo, each salvo went down as a radiation-emitting fireball, pounding the planet. For the most part, they shot at the mountains. I suspected enemy bases were in those areas. Strangely, no counterfire came back to greet us.
We’d almost relaxed when one more cruiser was destroyed by what appeared to be a mine. The last cruiser survived, however. We breathed more easily after we’d made two full orbits around the target world without being hit. We figured that by then, the Macro ships had cut a path around the planet that was free of mines-even if they’d done it by hitting every mine in orbit. The cruiser had stopped firing by then. I suspected it had run out of targets. In the end, I never had to give the order to blast down the hold doors-or the order to take the Macro ship by storm.
“You know,” I said to Major Robinson, “the mines were a pretty good idea. Very effective against the Macros. They tend to fight to the death once they decide to go for it. That’s a weakness in my opinion. After losing the majority of a force, most human commanders would pull out. But the Macros don’t like to retreat once they engage.”
“The Macros are our allies, sir,” said Major Robinson with mock severity. “Didn’t you get the memo?”
“I wrote the memo,” I said, smiling with half my mouth. “I’m just thinking of the future… I’m thinking we could lay a few of our own near the rings to keep out intruders. We could nail a lot of them early without losses.”
Robinson stared at me and grinned. “One more piece of critical intel gathered on this mission.”
I nodded. “One more reason to make it home.”
We stared at the planet’s surface which showed some details now. With our passive sensors, it took several passes to piece together the landscape, to determine what was land and what was sea. The world looked huge, rocky and dry. There were oceans, but they were small and deeply sunken into holes-like dried-up mud puddles. I imagined the Earth might look like that if had been punched a few times to puff up some higher crags and to make the deeper holes. Then, if you dried up about half the oceans and drained the rest down into the craters… it might look something like this place.
“Inviting, isn’t it?” I asked no one in particular.
“Maybe it’s green and idyllic on the surface,” suggested Captain Sarin. “It’s hard to tell from up here with nothing more than a relief map to go by.”
“An optimist, huh?” I said. “But let’s hope you’re right. We’ll find out soon enough.”
We spent three more hours orbiting. Occasionally, the big belly-cannon fired. This became increasingly infrequent, but always seemed to happen at the same point of our orbit.
“They are down to pounding that one spot, the base of that triple-peaked mountain,” I said.
“It could be a major base,” said Robinson. “One of their seas comes up to the root of the peaks. Let me check something.”
He put both hands on the screen and worked with the image, turning it and zooming in. He put a scale graphic up next to it and whistled. “Look at this, from sea-level to the tallest peak-that’s measuring over fifteen miles. It’s eighty-thousand feet high.”
I nodded, impressed. “That’s taller than our system’s highest, Olympus Mons back home on Mars.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to climb it,” Major Robinson said.
I looked at him sharply. “Are we descending?”
Robinson nodded. He adjusted the visuals, allowing the screen to snap back into normal mode. I could tell immediately we were lower. We were coming down, and we were going to land.
— 43-
Klaxons sounded. I ordered all my marines to prepare for ground assault. I ordered the crashstraps to resecure everyone in the command brick who’d escaped them over the last few hours. Outside our brick, hundreds of marines loaded into hovertanks near the big rear doors. They would be our first wave, rushing out when the doors opened. We had no idea how hot the landing zone would be. We hoped we’d be granted a safe LZ, but who knew how the Macros thought these things should go? The tanks would sweep the area, supported by infantry. Once they had given the all-clear, we would begin unloading the bricks.
I looked at my com-link thoughtfully. I hadn’t spoken to the Macros since I’d placed the passive sensor array and fried one of their test subjects. I’d not wanted to push my luck. But specific information on our mission goals was required now.
“Command module,” I said aloud, “open channel with Macro Command.”
