The Dead Sun

by B. V. Larson

  I’d put him in command of the ship as a diplomatic gesture. It had seemed rude to everyone that the Centaurs were included in our alliance, and were integrated into our ranks, but weren’t given commanding roles. To show we weren’t prejudiced—when, of course, we really were—I’d placed Captain Grass in command of the biggest ship in the quietest system in the Empire. And then, I’d promptly forgotten about him.

  “Captain Grass,” I said, putting on a welcoming tone. “This is Colonel Kyle Riggs.”

  “I stand ready to charge, Colonel!” came the reply.

  I paused with my mouth open for a full second. “Charge? Charge where?”

  “Toward the enemy on your flank! The enemy is right behind you, sir!”

  I heaved a sigh. Centaurs weren’t subtle warriors. Most of what we called “tactics”, they saw as dishonorable trickery. Honor, to them, was a straight out charge into the teeth of the enemy. By dint of superior numbers and ferocity, the best would win. They understood the concept of being beaten and driven into submission, but only after a bloody defeat. To them, my retreat in the face of the enemy without a fight was baffling.

  “I haven’t given the order to charge yet,” I said.

  There was a moment of delay, probably due to confusion on the part of Captain Grass.

  “Are your engines operating properly, Colonel?” he asked finally. “I see that they are…you’re under power… I can only imagine that your sensors are out of operation. I will render assistance transmitting the coordinates of their fleet to your systems. You’re headed in the wrong direction, sir!”

  This was exactly why I’d never promoted any other Centaur officers to the rank of captain. I’d done so in Captain Grass’ case, assuming he’d remain stationed in the Eden System indefinitely, to fight the Blues if they dared to reappear, or to blunt the attack of a new fleet of Macros. His ship was old and unimportant, so if he blew it up, it didn’t really matter.

  But today was different. I had to win this fight, if only to stay breathing. And here was Captain Grass, doing exactly what I’d imagined he would do when faced by a real live enemy: revving himself up to charge against overwhelming odds. He naturally expected me to join the charge with him, hell-bent on death and glory. The only problem was I didn’t want to kill myself just to look tough in his eyes.

  How does one explain tactical actions to a being that barely comprehends them? I opted for my usual approach: I’d give him stern orders, and then do whatever I needed to do. I decided to play on his defensive instincts as part of the home guard. In Centaur herds, when a war band took to the fields they always left behind a few rams to protect the young in springtime.

  “Captain Grass, you will stay at your position guarding the ring to Eden. The machines know nothing of honor. Do not let them slip past you and slaughter our young as they frolic under an open sky!”

  “Don’t worry, Colonel! We will paint the skies with our blood as if it were grass. We will never allow the machines to sneak past us like burrowing creatures in the night. If the honor of the river were between the two of us, Colonel, I would drink with you in this moment!”

  The exact meaning of his words was lost on me, but he seemed happy so I went with the spirit of things.

  “Right!” I shouted enthusiastically. “Hold your ground as if it were the highest hill under the blazing sun! Riggs out.”

  I made slashing motions to Jasmine, who quickly disconnected the channel. Even as she did so, the Centaur began a new windy speech about honor and rivers. Captain Grass seemed to be big on rivers.

  “Are they holding at the ring as they said they would?” I asked.

  She tapped up a closer image, and I could see the carrier task force was slowing and retreating back toward the ring.

  “They’re taking up their position as ordered,” she said.

  “They were about to charge, weren’t they? Without orders, as usual.”

  “To them, orders are subservient to honor,” she said.

  “Yeah, great,” I said. “Where’s Marvin now?”

  “He’s in orbit around the white star. He’s been there for a couple of hours. We have no emission readings from the sun station. I don’t know what he’s doing. For all we know, he’s hiding in there.”

  I frowned, eyeing the screens and the holotank. There was no information there, but I had a hunch.

  “No,” I said. “He’s a sneaky robot. He’s up to something. If we’re lucky, it will be something helpful.”

  After the Centaurs had settled down, we only had the enemy to watch. The contacts crawled after us on the screens. Each was a tiny triangle of red light trailed by a gently fading contrail that glimmered away to nothing. There were a lot of red triangles converging upon our position—far too many of them.

  When there was less than an hour to go something good finally happened.

  “Sir?” Jasmine asked suddenly. “I think—I think one of the enemy ships has suffered a malfunction.”

  My eyes glazed over from staring at the creeping doom for so long.

  There had been things to do, of course. I’d ordered additional anti-missile turrets to be installed all over our fantails. The enemy missiles were only a few minutes behind us. I wasn’t too worried about them as there were only seventy-four of them left, and they were coming in pretty slowly in relative speed. They’d been cruising for hours, and we’d been accelerating trying to outrun them. I was confident our ship-based anti-missile systems would take them all out.

  What worried me were the enemy main gun turrets. They were going to be in range an hour from now, and we didn’t have any effective defense against them.

  Jasmine’s comment woke me up, however, and I eyed the screens closely. There were so many hundreds of triangles it took me a moment to figure out what she was trying to show me. Jasmine had helpfully popped a pulsing circle around the spot.

  As I watched, the contact’s movement slowed, falling behind the rest.

  “Maybe that new engine of theirs can run out of gas,” I said excitedly. “Let’s keep an eye on—where’d it go?”

  What had been a slowing triangle now became an arc of fading light. It vanished from my screen.

  “It’s gone, sir,” Jasmine said. “It just isn’t there anymore, according to our sensors. I have several probes out there relaying data to us from multiple angles. I’m certain that ship just disappeared.”

  I began to grin. “Put Marvin’s position up on the screens,” I said.

  “Marvin’s position?”

  “The sun factory near Loki. Put it up.”

  She tapped away, and after a few seconds a new contact appeared. It was green and circular, and it was right where I thought it was.

  “Another ship has been destroyed just now…I think,” Jasmine said.

  I watched as a second red triangle winked out.

  “What’s going on, Colonel?” Newcome asked me. He’d come over from the defensive operations team to join us at the command table.

  “Marvin is what’s going on,” I said with confidence. “See his position relative to the Macros? They’re too far away and going too fast at this point to turn on him. He knows they can’t change course now. They’ve been pursuing us for too long.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Newcome said, frowning at the screen. “Are you saying your robot is destroying their ships?”

  “Yes, of course. He’s held his fire until this moment, probably for hours, waiting until they were too far past him to turn around and take him out. Now he’s zapping them, taking them out one at a time.”

  Before I’d finished explaining it, another ship vanished.

  “I see!” Newcome said, his big blue eyes brightening. “This is excellent news.”

  Newcome began poring over the data intensely. I had to like him for one thing: the man understood numbers. He knew that rates of fire, ranges and relative velocities often meant the difference between life and death in any space battle. He had a calculator up on the sc
reen and was tapping at the numbers and connecting a small program to various changing data points by swiping and moving them.

  “He’s knocking them out very fast,” Newcome said. “That first salvo must have been a near miss. The first ship struck was hit in the engine region. After that, every strike has been amidships, destroying the target. He’s taking out a ship every forty-nine seconds, by my estimates.”

  “Recharge and retargeting time,” I said, nodding. “Gravity weapons always take time to cycle and fire again.”

  “The enemy is taking evasive action, Colonel,” Jasmine warned me.

  I could see them now, splitting apart and dodging.

  “It won’t save them, but it may buy them more time,” I said. “What I want to know is whether Marvin can destroy them all before they reach firing range on this fleet?”

  Newcome and Jasmine worked on this. I was surprised that Newcome came up with a definitive answer first.

  “Negative, Colonel. They will lose at least two thirds of their ships, but not all of them. They will come within range with…I’d say about a hundred and thirty vessels.”

  I frowned. We only had thirty, even if one of them was a carrier.

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. “Launch every missile we have. Put them out in pulses, but give them a dozen targets each. If one blows up, they should be programmed to automatically target the next one without too much overkill.”

  Almost before I finished explaining what I wanted, I felt the ship shudder under me. I knew that our birds were flying. Every few seconds, the ship shuddered again.

  Admiral Newcome gave me a crooked smile. “Not conserving your ammo today, eh sir?”

  I smiled back. “This is our chance. They don’t even know what’s hitting them. If we can chew them up all at once, slamming them from every angle, we might pull this little fleet out of the system without losing a single ship.”

  Newcome’s expression indicated he thought the odds of that were slim, but he did look a lot happier than he had ten minutes earlier. Hell, we all did.

  “Unload the transports and form up the fighters into strike groups,” I ordered. “The marines and fighters will go in right after the missile strikes. Set up the timing on that, Jasmine. Don’t let our missiles blow up our attacking troops.”

  “Working on it, sir.”

  The next hour zoomed by. When you’re doing something effective in battle, and you think your odds of winning are pretty good, time flies. Their ships kept winking out, one at a time. When half of them had been destroyed, we were all smiles. Sure, it was still two hundred to thirty, but they were being annihilated at a horrific rate.

  Jasmine caught my attention with a frown at that point, however. “Sir…I don’t understand it, but the rings are back online. They’ve stopped jamming them. We’re in connection with Star Force again.”

  I hooted. “We must have gotten their jamming ship.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. They were all jamming. Every last one of them. But for some reason…”

  She trailed off and put her hand to her headset. Her frown deepened.

  “I’m getting a channel request,” she said. “They’re asking for you, sir.”

  “What? The Macros are calling me begging to surrender? Request denied!”

  I said these words with glee in my heart and a grin on my face. For years, the Macros had been slamming the phone down on my calls and pleas for mercy and diplomacy. It felt great to give them the finger for once. They were all going to burn this time.

  But Jasmine was still frowning; she still had her hand cupped over her earpiece. She shook her pretty head.

  “No sir,” she said. “It’s not the Macros calling us. It’s the Blues.”

  I stared at her for a second, and my face fell. I turned my gaze back to the screens. Yes, we were winning. Yes, we were tearing apart the Macro ships like toys. And apparently, someone had heard about it, and didn’t like it. The Macros had called up their collective mommies begging for help against the big bad man.

  The question was: what could the Blues do to stop me?

  -13-

  I opened the channel with the Blues reluctantly. My first instinct was to ignore them. I wanted to simply churn and burn on the Macro fleet, ripping apart every one of their mindless vessels without mercy or compunction.

  But I still feared the Blues in the back of my mind. They’d launched a ship less than a year ago that had shown us new technology we’d been unable to beat. If it hadn’t been for Crow’s cyborgs, we would never have defeated Phobos. Now, I had to ask myself: What else did they have up their sleeves?

  “Colonel Kyle Riggs,” said a ghostly voice after the channel was established. “Why am I not surprised that we have been forced to lower ourselves into conversing with your species yet again? Without fail, your savage life form has irritated…”

  It was at about this point during the windbag’s speech that it occurred to me that the guardian ships I’d place in orbit over the Blue’s homeworld were now out of position. Instead of squatting just above the atmosphere, ready to bomb them if they did anything funny, Captain Grass had come to my rescue on his own initiative. That meant the Blues were back in the Eden system with nothing to keep them from launching an attack against our colony worlds, and it had probably prompted this noisy cloud to call me up to talk big.

  Mind racing, I muted the Blue on the line and turned to Jasmine. “Order Captain Grass back into the Eden System,” I said.

  “He won’t like retreating from a battle. You know them. They’re dying to charge right now. They can see us attacking, and it must be driving them mad.”

  I glared. “I don’t care! This isn’t about glory and honor. Tell him the sneaky Blues are threatening his homeworld, and he’s out of position. Tell him anything, but get him back to his station!”

  “Sir,” Newcome said, stepping up. “Let me do it. I’m experienced in the art of talking reluctant commanders into following orders.”

  I glanced at him, and nodded. “Okay. Jasmine, stay on ops. Newcome, get into communication with those damned goats and send them back home.”

  I unmuted the Blue. Unsurprisingly, he was still lecturing me about what a bastard I was.

  “…and without provocation, your barbaric species has repeatedly assaulted our gaseous oceans, polluting them with—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Let’s get on with it. Who are you, and why are you calling me now?”

  “I am the being known as Mercy,” the Blue said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Mercy, huh? Okay, ‘Mercy’. Have a little compassion and get to the point. I’m busy.”

  “You have indeed been working industriously. We know all about your violations. You have stepped too far over the bounds this time, Colonel Riggs. Really, we did not think you were capable of—”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m about to break this connection and put you on permanent hold. If you have something pertinent to say, this will be your last chance.”

  “No, you are incorrect. It is your last chance, fleck of solid matter which plagues us. You have broken the edicts of the Ancients. They will not tolerate your transgressions. They will come, and they will eradicate you like the vermin you truly are.”

  He finally had me frowning. I had to admit, he’d managed to worry me. I gnashed my teeth, wanting with all my heart to disconnect him. Hell, I wanted to order Captain Grass to carpet bomb their annoying world once and for all.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. All around me people were launching fighters, relaying orders and giving one another reports. This was a bubbling hive of activity, the heart of a command post in the midst of battle. I had to rise above all that excitement and try to figure out what Mercy was hinting at.

  “I’m listening,” I said. “I’m grateful for this opportunity to hear your wisdom. Let us share a moment of peace in the middle of chaos. Tell me, merciful one, why you have lowered yourself to speaking with one so unworthy
as I?”

  “Your attitude has improved,” the Blue said. “I will reward you with clarity, for it is in my nature to be generous with unfortunates such as yourself. I’m speaking of the Ancients who created the transport network you call ‘the rings’. The Ancients have moved on, but they are ever vigilant. You have attempted to duplicate their work, which is an act of sacrilege they will never permit.”

  “Are you talking about the gravity weapons? You built them first.”

  “No, not at all. I’m referring to your creation of new rings. You have managed to connect two points that are light years apart, and that is forbidden.”

  I was finally beginning to catch on.

  “You detected our activity?” I asked.

  “Obviously. I can’t believe it took you this long to comprehend the nature of a discussion in which you are personally involved. I was informed, before I made this merciful gesture, that you would not understand my attempt at communication. It was predicted that you would be argumentative even when facing the doom of your species. That you would—”

  “Okay, yeah,” I said, becoming irritated all over again. “I’m a real asshole. I get that. Now, explain how these Ancients who made the rings are going to be a problem.”

  “If we have detected your transgressions, they will have done the same. They will not tolerate a threat to their dominion.”

  “What is their dominion? How many systems do they have?”

  “Your question is almost without meaning.”

  “How many systems are connected by rings of their making?”

  “You have been told this before. Some two hundred known linked points exist. They are not all operational, however.”

  “And why’s that? Why haven’t we seen these Ancients for so long? Where are they, and why aren’t they patrolling their territory? I mean, it would only take a year or so for one of my ships to traverse two hundred linked systems. Where have they all gone? Are they all dead? Or maybe fighting a war of their own?”

  There was a moment of quiet after my question was translated and relayed to the Blues. I almost asked again when he suddenly replied.