The Dead Sun

by B. V. Larson

  “Superior species?” I asked, angry again. I decided to hit him where it hurt. “Just how many graduates did you manage to pass this last season, Hoon?”

  He worked his clacking legs and rotated his body to face mine.

  “You know very well our universities have all been lost!” the translator shouted.

  “Oh right, of course! A painful memory, no doubt. Sorry I brought it up.”

  Newcome stepped to my elbow and cleared his throat.

  I glanced at him.

  “Colonel? Perhaps you’d like me to continue guiding our honorable guest on this tour?”

  I mumbled something unintelligible about snooty crabs and waved Newcome forward. The Admiral made a big show of saluting Hoon, then led him around to show him various pieces of equipment. Newcome listened attentively and mouthed diplomatic platitudes every minute or so. The strange thing was, it seemed to be working. Hoon was calming down.

  Jasmine sidled up to me, and we watched the two of them.

  “He’s pulling it off,” she said. “I’ve never seen a Crustacean so happy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They should give Newcome an honorary degree in kissing ass.”

  “That was very rude what you said—about their university. That must hurt him deeply. He may be irritating, but his people have suffered so much.”

  I scratched my neck and sighed. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m not well-suited to blowing sunshine around. If you want that, you need to find another guy.”

  “Well, apparently Hoon’s found his man.”

  Newcome laughed, and even though Hoon didn’t reciprocate, I could tell he was excited to have someone who understood his alien jokes and at least pretended to enjoy them.

  At the end of the tour, they came back to us. Hoon’s mood had improved. He studied the data displayed on the map with difficulty. He had to rear up and put his claws on the table so that his eyestalks could see the screen.

  “Are those our planets—over there?” he asked suddenly.

  “Yes, Professor,” Jasmine said.

  I winced, suspecting what was coming next.

  “Could you bring them into tight focus? I’m having trouble manipulating this image with my foreclaws.”

  “We’re kind of in the middle of something, Hoon,” I said.

  Hoon’s eyestalks regarded me. I had no idea if he was glaring or just curious.

  “I can do it,” Jasmine said helpfully.

  My eyes squeezed almost shut as she made spreading motions, bringing the images into sharp relief.

  There they were, three moons circling a gas giant. Two of them were blue with liquid water while the third was shrouded in deep clouds.

  “Odd. One is still overheated?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Now, if you will please—”

  “Ah,” Hoon said. “I’ve found the focus button.”

  The scene zoomed sickeningly. Hoon’s claws couldn’t seem to make multiple contacts easily, but he was able to touch a single active point and effectively select an option or push a virtual button.

  The moon we called Harvard swam into view in close-up. The atmosphere filled the screen.

  “Can we remove the cloud layer?”

  Jasmine had finally figured out what he was looking for. She looked at me with a worried expression.

  I nodded to her. We’d gone this far. He might as well see what we’d done.

  She tapped a control, and the system graphically bypassed the cloud layer.

  Huge furrows, miles across, were revealed. These furrows ran from pole to pole and were filled with muddy, bubbling liquids. Marvin had really ripped into Harvard. He’d chosen this world over the others due to its relatively greater percentage of land masses. The seas didn’t cover this moon as they did the others.

  Hoon’s eyestalks swept over the scene. He didn’t say anything for several long seconds.

  “Such a grand crime,” Hoon said at last. “I had not fathomed it fully until now.”

  I felt a pang, a real, honest moment of sympathy for Hoon. Sure, he was an arrogant bastard who wore a shell and had strange, bluish blood, but he was hurting. I knew that if Earth had looked like that, I’d be crushed as well.

  “We didn’t do it for nothing, Hoon,” I said. “We’re here for the final push to take out the Macros once and for all. All living species will benefit. We’ll have peace once this mission is over.”

  His eyestalks drifted up to see me. “I understand that the Macros have the same idea. Two beasts now charge at one another, but I don’t know who I would rather see succeed. Perhaps you will both gut one another and be left dying.”

  “You forget yourself,” I said. “We count your people as allies now.”

  “Yes,” Hoon said, “allies of convenience—but let’s not equivocate. You’re my conqueror, and that reality is my greatest humiliation. I request permission to retire to my quarters, my simplistic overlord. My suit is a burden, and I don’t wish to remove it here. I would be forced to taste your foulness with my exposed membranes.”

  “Yeah, good. I don’t want to smell you anymore, either. You have permission to get off my bridge.”

  When he’d humped away, Newcome heaved a big sigh. “I thought I had him in a better mood. Sorry, sir.”

  “Not your fault,” I said. “You didn’t tear up his dead world.”

  When Newcome went back to his team, Jasmine came close to me.

  “You could have been a little more compassionate,” she said. “Hoon is bitter about his losses. Anyone would be.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “If Earth looked like that, I’d be complaining, too. But something about him irritates the hell out of me. He wanted me to give him an entire planet. Can you believe that?”

  “There’s something else,” she said. “Marvin’s been trying to reach you. He keeps talking about testing a dead man—something like that.”

  I frowned at her for a moment then rushed for the main passageway. We had a null gravity field active in the passage to make freight easier to transport, and I had to use the handles lining the walls. I propelled myself down the spine of the ship, hand over hand.

  “Marvin?” I shouted into my com-link when he finally responded to my channel requests. “Don’t do anything until I get down to the lab.”

  “Do anything?” Marvin said. “I’ve been working steadily to achieve my command-approved goals. These new instructions are nonsensical.”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t launch anything until I get there. I want to see what you’re planning.”

  “Oh, are you referencing the test? The bomb is already underway. I wouldn’t worry about it, Colonel. Although it is fully functional, the test device is quite small in size compared to the one—”

  “Where did you send it, Marvin? Where’s the bomb headed?”

  “Fortunately, we’re passing near an appropriate testing site now. Harvard is quite close and as the world has already been devastated by—”

  “No, no, no! Don’t bomb Harvard! Don’t you have any compassion? We have Professor Hoon aboard.”

  “Compassion? Is Hoon visiting Harvard? I’m not quite sure I understand—”

  “Just turn off the test. I want it stopped now!”

  “But Colonel—”

  “No arguments. Just send the kill signal this instant.”

  “Done.”

  I sighed in relief, and soon after I reached Marvin’s lab module. I touched the membrane of nanites and stepped inside as they retreated away. Marvin loomed on the ceiling again, and he seemed quite cheery.

  “Can we retrieve your test bomb?” I asked him.

  “Certainly not. The conversion of mass to energy is nearly one hundred percent when a gravity device detonates. I thought I’d made that point clear when—”

  “Marvin,” I said, stalking forward. “Are you saying the bomb already went off?”

  “Detonation occurred an estimated forty seconds ago.”
<
br />   “What about the kill-signal? Didn’t you send it?”

  “Of course.”

  I stared at him for a second before I realized what he meant.

  “You sent the signal, but it was too late. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes. We are now about a light-minute from the target. The signal could not catch the device. I sent the signal as ordered, but there was never enough time to stop the bomb.”

  I sighed and sat on a pump. The pump vibrated my suit. I saw tubes leading from it to the massive, shivering, sweating tank of Microbes that hung from the back wall of the lab.

  “Marvin, don’t send any more bombs anywhere without asking my permission?”

  “I feel compelled to point out that, in this case, I already had your implicit approval due to your previous orders.”

  “I know that. Just don’t bomb anything else without checking with me, will you?”

  “Absolutely, Colonel. Now, I must ask that you allow me to leave the ship. I need to go to the sun factory orbiting the star Loki and manufacture a new, much larger bomb.”

  “Permission granted. Just don’t blow anything up or launch anything until I give you explicit instructions to do so.”

  “Protocol updated.”

  I left him then and headed back up the passageway. I moved much more slowly this time, wondering if Hoon knew yet that we’d dropped an experimental bomb on his torn-up ex-planet. If he did, I knew he’d take it as an insult, a final stick-in-the-eye, and probably relate it to our earlier discussion.

  I was left with an inescapable conclusion: robots made terrible diplomats.

  -24-

  Professor Hoon never learned about the bomb. He hadn’t been on the bridge at the time, and he didn’t have a lot of close friends among my crewmen. No one had made the special effort it would take to inform him. Probably no one wanted to hear another of his windy complaints any more than I did.

  We cruised warily up to the last ring in the Thor System. It was strange eyeing a ring without knowing where it went. On several previous occasions, I’d explored rings like this one. Sometimes, it was a dangerous experience.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Jasmine suddenly.

  I turned in surprise. We were on the bridge, but I’d moved away from the command tables and stood gazing out into the endless night we call space. I hadn’t heard her approach.

  But my surprise was due to more than her quiet movement. It was due to the fact that she’d followed me at all. She was watching me closely, I realized. She was becoming more possessive and watchful of my behavior. I was immediately reminded of Sandra who’d been jealous and possessive to a fault.

  Jasmine wasn’t like that. She was still low-key in her approach to life. She didn’t make a show and rarely raised her voice, but she was definitely paying closer attention to my actions.

  I smiled at her and reached out a hand. I touched her stomach, and she let me. She smiled shyly back up at me.

  “Sometimes I think it feels different,” she said, “but I’m not really sure. Not yet.”

  I nodded. “It will take another month. Then you’ll notice the difference.”

  She seemed pleased, but then her face dropped. “I was late to my shift this morning. Did you notice?”

  I froze for a second, searching for the right answer. I hadn’t noticed a thing. I decided to go with my gut on this one.

  “Oh sure, I was wondering about that. You’re never late. Not even a minute late.”

  She smiled.

  Bingo, I thought. I’d chosen wisely.

  “I didn’t know what was wrong,” she said. “After you left our quarters, I felt sick. Then I realized what it must be, and I felt better.”

  My face was a blank, and I almost blew it, but then I understood.

  “Morning sickness? Already?”

  She nodded.

  I felt a bit nervous then. I don’t know what it is, but often when a male is faced with the physical results of his actions, he feels like he’s been caught doing something bad. It’s kind of like the feeling you get when you see a cop car with whirling lights in your rearview mirror, and you realize that yes, you were speeding—seriously speeding.

  I forced a wider smile. “That’s what’s supposed to happen,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I know. I wish my family were closer, though.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “I tried to leave you behind.”

  “This won’t interfere with my duties,” she said quickly. “It’s a small thing. Really, I was surprised I felt the effect at all. I thought the nanites were supposed to remove all the toxins from our bodies.”

  “Well, I don’t think a hormone surge counts as a toxin.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding. “You should take your hand off me now, Kyle. People are starting to notice we’re stargazing and whispering over here.”

  I slowly let my hand drop and took a sweeping look around. Sure enough, people turned away avoiding my eyes. The staffers had been staring at us, especially the women. The rumors must fly thickly whenever I left this deck. In this case, the rumors were right.

  We headed back for the command circle, but before we reached the main table the com-link was blinking. Jasmine took over from a commander who’d been manning her station and read the data.

  “Incoming message from Marvin, sir,” she said.

  I nodded and tapped open the channel.

  “Good news I hope, Marvin?”

  “I believe it is, Colonel,” he said. “I’m ready to launch the weapon.”

  I frowned. “What? How can that be? You only just got there.”

  “That is correct, Colonel. The weapon was easy to assemble from the leftover materials I’d not used during the previous experiment.”

  I frowned at the boards, staring at the white-hot sphere that represented Loki in 3d. Marvin was out there, and he was lying.

  “That’s impossible, Marvin,” I said. “You couldn’t have built the bomb from scratch that fast. Not unless…” I felt a moment of perfect clarity come over me. The answer was obvious. I would have had to have been a fool not to know it. “You already built the bomb, didn’t you Marvin? The last time you were out there.”

  “That’s a large assumption on your part, Colonel.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it isn’t. You needed an unbelievable amount of mass to build that probe. I should have known that something else was going on. Now, I finally know the truth.”

  “You sound upset, Colonel. Perhaps this would be a good time to drink an alcoholic beverage.”

  I glowered at the screen and realized my voice had been rising steadily. I was almost into the shouting-zone already. Around me, the staffers had fallen silent. They could only follow half the conversation, but that was probably good enough to figure out what was going on. They were listening in, but I didn’t care.

  With an effort, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and continued speaking to my crazy robot.

  “Marvin, why did you build a huge gravity bomb the first time we came out here?”

  “For the precise purpose we intend to use it now, Colonel. I calculated a seventy-one percent chance that you would order another test after our probe got through successfully. The second time, you’d want to send something bigger than a probe. I thought that a bomb would take care of the enemy’s defensive measures, so I built one in advance. The Macros attacked, and we defeated them—but you didn’t order the next step. It took you far longer to reach the conclusion I’d reached before the initial probe was launched. Happily, we are well-prepared for the current situation, and you aided in solving the problem of near-instantaneous detonation.”

  I rubbed my forehead. I suddenly had a headache.

  “You can’t just do things like that. You stripped more mass from the moon than was absolutely necessary. That caused a diplomatic breach with the Crustaceans, not to mention being disrespectful of the dead.”

  “I’m surprised at your poor a
ttitude, Colonel. Usually, superiors praise subordinates who think ahead and make the correct call.”

  “But you didn’t make the correct call! We left here and didn’t come back for weeks.”

  “Clearly, I made the correct assumptions, even if I was a little ahead of schedule. We’re now ready to proceed without further delay. I understand it’s customary to reward subordinates for anticipating orders long before they’re given.”

  “Well, you’re not going to receive any special rewards from me today. You tore an extra chunk from a planet without authorization for a project you hadn’t even received approval for yet.”

  “Anticipating future requirements is a desirable trait in any underling, isn’t it, Colonel?”

  “Stop fishing for compliments. You’re not getting any out of me for this.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. I think Marvin was pouting.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “I feel confident that you’ll come to understand my efficiency in this matter and respond more appropriately soon.”

  When Hell freezes over, robot, I thought to myself, but didn’t say it. I was irritated with him. It wasn’t just for him doing extra fun projects like building gravity bombs without permission. It was for predicting my next move so accurately, so far in advance. I didn’t like to be predictable—especially not to Marvin.

  “So, moving on,” I said. “When can you release the weapon?”

  “Immediately. I took the liberty of building a second missile platform for a second probe, should one be required. A backup, if you will. By lucky happenstance, the missile platform is an exact fit for the bomb and can deliver the device to the ring shortly after you give the order.”

  I tapped at the screen. I couldn’t get a new contact up that looked right so I told Jasmine what I wanted, and she added an item to the system.

  “There’s a bomb? Our sensors don’t show anything.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s probably hidden it somewhere.”

  “I don’t understand, sir. How could he have assembled it so quickly?”

  “He’s magic,” I said irritably. I opened Marvin’s channel again and took a deep breath.

  “Launch your weapon, Marvin. You’ve got the detonator ready with the continuous signal and all?”