by B. V. Larson
Explosions rippled up and down the line. The fighters melted, as did the Centaur companies. Thousands of brave troops died in less than a minute.
“Are they blowing themselves up?” Sandra asked me quietly.
I turned around and looked at her, then back to the screen. “They’re following their orders,” I said. “Sloan?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“That was grim, but well-played. I don’t think I could have come up with a better solution. Please release more marines from our transports. The enemy will recognize the threat now. They’ll target the transports, and I don’t want an entire battalion taken out by one lucky missile. Get them into space.”
“All of them, sir?”
“Hold back a reserve—five thousand troops. Pull them back. Pull everything back, but push the marines forward.”
He relayed the orders and I stared at the walls and the helmsman’s navigational screen. There was so much going on out there, and I didn’t have a proper command and control unit set up. The more I thought about it, the more I figured Kerr’s opening move had been a good one. He’d almost won right there, by knocking out my command ship. Fortunately, Sloan had played it pretty well.
Examining what Kerr had managed to wriggle through the ring by this time, I decided it was indeed time to retreat. He had more battleships now, at least thirty of them. He was forming up at the ring before pushing forward with his big ships. There were more of those sleek missile ships too—more than fifty of them. Altogether, his fleet completely outweighed mine. We’d given them a hard blow, but hadn’t stopped their advance.
The surviving fighters turned and began retreating to the main fleet. I watched as a few of my Centaurs ran them down and blew them up.
“Kyle, you have to stop that,” Sandra said, “They’re broken and running. Show mercy. We might need it later ourselves.”
I nodded. “Right.” I called Sloan and our Centaurs broke off the pursuit. They turned around and retreated to our own small line of gunships.
There was a lull in the battle, during which Kerr’s fleet kept trickling in through the ring. How many ships did that bastard have? I realized now that I couldn’t possibly hold them all back—except for my ace in the hole, my space marines. They were suicidal, especially the Centaurs. The enemy had prepared carefully, but they hadn’t counted on twenty thousand crazy mountain goats with nukes on their backs.
“Sir?” Sloan called over the command channel. “I’ve got a channel request from the enemy fleet. I think Kerr wants to talk.”
I allowed myself a tight smile. “Open the channel and patch it through to my destroyer. Don’t let him know where it’s going, hide it in the ship-to-ship traffic. Let’s hear what the good General has to say now.”
There was a crackling, followed by a loud, unhappy voice. “Riggs? You crazy fuck, are you still alive?”
“Naturally,” I said, “I didn’t think you cared, General.”
Our two fleets hung in space, at a range of about a hundred thousand miles, eyeing one another. Like two brawlers that have landed heavy blows on one another and stopped for a breather, we were both feeling new respect for our opponents.
“Oh, I care, you slippery devil. You’re like a cockroach dipped in axel grease.”
“The feeling is mutual, sir,” I assured him. I keyed off my mike and turned to Sandra: “Try to figure out which ship he’s on. He has to be in the system now.”
She nodded and went to work on her console.
“What’s this bullshit with blowing up your own troops, Riggs?” Kerr demanded. “Not only that, but you’re using Macro weapons. Those big guns aren’t human, Riggs. Have you signed on with the enemy?”
“Have you, sir?” I asked.
“That question leads me to another point: we’re now monitoring our system. It appears that your entire force is right here at this ring, arrayed against your rightful commanders. I cry foul, Riggs. What about the battle station? What about those Macro hordes you’ve been whining about for months that are supposedly out there in the next system?”
“What about them, sir?”
“Why are you facing off with loyal Earth fleets, destroying over a hundred of my ships, instead of fighting the real enemy?”
Kerr was almost screaming now, and I could tell I’d rattled him. He’d expected losses, but nothing like what I’d inflicted upon him in the opening stages of the battle. I tried to look at the situation from his point of view. So far, I’d lost about three thousand marines and a dozen ships. In comparison, he’d lost a hundred fighters and another hundred heavier ships. At this rate, he’d have nothing left soon. Worse, I was sure that when he went back to Emperor Crow, there were going to be some harsh words, even if he did win the battle. I knew Crow loved his ships, and didn’t want to see them trashed for any reason.
“I take issue with your terms, General,” I said calmly. “We are the loyalists—loyal to Star Force and loyal to a free, independent Earth. You have signed on with a usurper, a tyrant—”
“Enough of that shit. We need to talk terms.”
“Terms?” I asked. “Very well. If you will fly your command ship forward, we can meet and sign a treaty. All your vessels will, of course, have to be individually searched and abandoned as we accept their surrender—”
A foul tirade of curses erupted from the speakers. I waved at Sandra, who turned the General’s voice down until he’d regained control of himself.
“Always full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you, boy?” Kerr asked at last, when he’d run out of profane things to call me.
“You sound tired, General. Maybe you should stop destroying Earth ships and reconsider another course of action.”
There was a silent period over the channel. Then he came back on. “You’ll break off the attack? All right. Let’s call it a ceasefire. We’ll stand down. We’ll sit at the ring and I’ll meet with my command staff. Possibly, we’ve made a mistake by coming here.”
I grinned. “I agree to your ceasefire terms. Let’s consider our options carefully.”
We closed the channel, and Sandra was all over me the second the connection was broken.
“He’s playing you, Kyle,” she said intently. “He’s hoping the Macros hit our backdoor while we’re facing off with him. He figures we might surrender then, and he wins without losing any more ships against us.”
I looked at her and gave her my most confident smile. “Exactly,” I said, “in some ways Sandra, the good General and I have the same endgame goals. He wants us to fight under a single command against the Macros. The only trouble we’re having is how to decide who is in overall command.”
She walked up to me, and stared up into my face. “You should stop this then,” she said. “Let him win. Who cares, Kyle? Let us fight as an Empire, or whatever they want to call it. As long as we all are united against the machines, I don’t care.”
My smile faded. “Don’t give up on all your freedoms so quickly. I don’t think you know what you’re saying. Men have died for centuries to provide the life you’ve lived up until now. Under Crow—everything could be different. A police state is nothing to contemplate lightly.”
“It’s all about pride,” she said. “Dominance and pride. It’s a pissing-contest between alpha-dogs, deciding who will hump who. You’re just like any of them—the great killers in history. Too wrapped up in the moment to see the bigger picture. You’ll get us all killed for an ideal, and for your pride.”
Sandra did a U-turn and went back to her station. She didn’t say anything more, but I could tell she was upset.
I looked after her, troubled. I wasn’t sure if she was right or not. I’d wrecked a lot of hardware today—but had I fought for the right cause? If I could destroy Kerr’s entire fleet, was that the right thing to do?
For the first time all day, I was filled with ambivalence.
-29-
Kerr waited. Our two fleets moved very little. We both shuffled our forces, forming two flatt
ened clouds of metallic matter, each facing the other. I ordered the transports to come forward, retrieve troops in groups of a few thousand a time, while releasing another few thousand. At all times, about a quarter of my marines were outside their ships, ready for action. The rest slept, ate and recuperated inside the transports.
Everyone was tense, but for now the ceasefire was holding. We’d used the breather to put together a new command setup on my personal destroyer Actium. The command center now occupied the region normally reserved for troop pods. The ship itself was hidden in plain sight, trying to act just like every other destroyer in the fleet. This wasn’t difficult, as I’d distributed my destroyers evenly amongst the gunships.
Kerr had used the time wisely as well. He’d gathered his ships, repaired them as best he could, and retrieved every floating body he could find. Some of them were no doubt survivors as well. I hoped and prayed for them all. I didn’t want one more human life lost than was absolutely necessary.
“This reminds me of aircraft carrier operations,” Miklos said, coming up beside me.
I glanced at him in surprise. I hadn’t seen him enter the command deck. He looked like hell. His jaw was still broken and his speech was slower than usual, but I could understand him. The rest of his face was pretty badly banged up too, but he was ignoring it.
“Aircraft carriers? How so?” I asked.
“We’re both using smaller ships to fly CAP and protect our core fleets. The enemy is matching us, keeping a portion of their fighters up, buzzing them around on patrol.”
“You’re right,” I said, looking the situation over. “Both sides are using small units to support the larger vessels. It does look like a standoff between two carrier groups.”
Miklos raised a finger stiffly, aiming it at the tabletop command screen. It was an old unit that resembled a pool table. He tapped at a contact that was brighter green than the rest. “That is Actium, I assume? The ship we’re on now?”
“Exactly.”
Actium was the new command ship, but it didn’t stand out from the crowd on the command screen. In fact, it looked like one more floating vessel in a long line of ships. Actium had taken her place in the sunward wing, about half-way to the edge of the fleet’s overall formation. I’d placed it in the lineup with the rest of the ships, trying to give no hint that my command ship was anything special.
“You’ve gone to great lengths to hide this ship, sir,” Miklos said.
“Yes,” I said, looking him over. “Are you sure you’re fit to serve, Captain? I don’t like the way the right side of your head has swollen.”
Miklos shrugged. “I’m fine, sir. My internal nanites are itching terribly, but they’re working their magic on me even now.”
“All right, resume your duties.”
With a crooked smile, Miklos shuffled to a seat and sank into it. He logged into the workstation and tapped at the console stiffly. Jasmine and Sandra both eyed him with concern, but said nothing. Jasmine’s injuries were minor compared to his, and she’d already returned to duty. I could tell Miklos was in pain, but he didn’t want to be seen as the weakest of my senior staff. When the warhead had detonated, some trick of physics had caught him with the hardest blow. Fortunately, his suit hadn’t depressurized completely. He’d lived. I wasn’t surprised, as it was very hard to permanently kill one of my people.
Miklos waved to me after a few minutes at his workstation. I came over to see what he’d found.
“The Macros are attacking, sir,” he said.
“What?” I rushed to the big table, tapped until the tactical display of the Thor system came up. My eyes searched the scene, but I didn’t see anything special. Sure, the Macros were closer to our ring than they had been, but not much closer. Their engines were cold and silent. They drifted out there, as quiet as death itself. They hadn’t even reached the half-way point yet. The Lobsters were quiet too, seemingly content to remain on their three water-moons, sitting this one out. I couldn’t blame them for that.
“Are you impaired, Captain?” I asked him. “The Macros are just drifting out there.”
I frowned at him, wondering if his fear and loathing for the machines had become pathological.
“No sir,” he said. “Let me display my analysis on the main screen.”
He took control of the primary display and the image changed. Dotted lines now traced the Macros’ path across the star system. Blue dashes showed where they’d been, and yellow dashes showed their projected path.
“They are on a curving course that will lead them around the star and down to the ring.”
“All right,” I said, “but at this rate, it will take them a week to get here. Maybe longer.”
“No,” he said confidently.
Numbers flashed up under the largest ships, the dreadnaughts. As I watched, they increased slowly.
“They are accelerating, sir,” Miklos said. “Not by much, but they’re doing it. I would presume they are using repellers for propulsion, not their main engines. It is a much gentler, more stealthy mode of advance. Projecting on the basis of their increasing speed, they’ll reach the ring in four days. Maybe five, if they reduce their speed when they come close.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t like the Macros. They aren’t known for subtlety, or half-measures.”
“I’m not proposing any analysis of their motives, just alerting you to their actions, sir.”
I found a chair and fell back into it. I stared at the gunmetal gray ceiling and wondered what it was like to be a nanite. The ceiling positively teemed with them, I knew. Their existences had to be less fulfilling, but at least they probably didn’t feel stress.
“That’s it then,” I said aloud. “As you say, it doesn’t matter why they’re moving, what matters is that they’re doing it. We have to end the standoff with Kerr. We can’t face them both at once.”
After that statement, everyone in the command module fixed their eyes on me. Miklos was the first to speak.
“End the standoff, sir?” he asked. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“It means we can’t let Kerr’s gambit succeed. He’s sitting here, wondering where the Macros are. They were supposed to show up to this party and tear up our rear. Instead, he’s been forced to face me on his own, and I hurt him badly. Now he’s waiting for his ally to show up and force me to act.”
“What can you do, Kyle?” Sandra asked quietly. “I mean, if the Macros were to nose their way into the system right now, what options would we have?”
I shrugged. “There are several. I could try to fight both sides.”
“Suicide,” Miklos said.
I glanced at him unhappily, then finally sighed and admitted he was right. “Probably, yes,” I said. “Short of fighting them all at once, I could try to set up some kind of deal with Kerr.”
“That’s what he wants,” Jasmine said suddenly. “That’s it. He wants you to crawl to him, to ask for his help, to place yourself back under his command. He’d be the hero then, using the combined fleet to stop the Macro invasion of Eden.”
“I have to agree. Afterward, we’d be under his thumb. Crow will have won, and the Empire will have saved the day.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment. “Would that be so bad, Kyle?” Sandra asked. “I know it’s not what any of us want, but it’s better than allowing the machines to win. I don’t want them to own the Eden system again. They’ll exterminate the Centaurs—and us.”
“Oh sure,” I said, “if I had no other options, I’d go with such a deal. I’d have no choice. Life under a dictatorship is better than the annihilation of the species.”
Another silence. Finally, Miklos broke it.
“Your words suggest you plan to try another path, Colonel. Am I correct in this assumption?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve got another card to play first. Kerr doesn’t know the Macro fleets are coming. He can’t see that system, and he can’t transmit to them via the rings. He knows they’re la
te, but not why. We’ll use that to our advantage. Sandra, kindly open a channel to the Imperial Fleet.”
When it was done, Kerr’s face appeared on my screen within two minutes. I smiled slightly, knowing he’d scrambled to take my call. I remembered from my dating days that when a girl rushed to the phone after a single ring—well, that was always a good sign.
“Riggs?” he barked, looking at my face and peering at those around me. “What do you want now?”
“Good morning, General,” I said. “I hope you’ve enjoyed a good rest in the Eden system, and I hope you’ve rescued every crewman possible. We’ve been monitoring your recovery efforts, and as far as we can tell, you finished some hours ago.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“Well sir, at every point during a visit, there comes an awkward moment when the last guest realizes it’s time to leave. As your hosts, we’re politely showing you the door. You’ll find it directly behind your lines. The ring is fully functional—we checked. If you’re polite enough to the Worms on your way out, I’m sure they won’t do you any harm.”
“What the hell are you—are you crazy Riggs? You think we’re going to turn tail and run now, after coming out here a thousand light years?”
“Distance is immaterial when dealing with the rings, sir. You can be home in two weeks if you maintain a steady burn. If some of your casualties are too injured to make the journey now, we’d be glad to take them and care for them for you. I only mention this in case—”
“—out of your chicken-fried mind!” Kerr was shouting. “I’m not standing down, and I’m not withdrawing. I’m calling here and now for your surrender. No, I’m demanding it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”
“Are you threatening me? Are you going to attack? You’ve got barely a hundred ships in the system. We’ve searched every inch of it.”
“Wrong, sir,” I said. “We have over seventeen thousand independently-operable combat systems. Most of ours are small, but you can’t deny their effectiveness. During our last conflict, you lost nearly a third of your force. I lost less than fifteen percent. At this rate, you will be annihilated and I’ll be left with over fifty percent of my force. You can’t win, General.”
