Annihilation (Star Force Series) (3 page)

We went back to watching the station swell as we rapidly drew closer. The last time I’d been out here the station’s primary characteristic had been the asteroid rock that armored the central torus. That had drastically changed. I’d captured and added a new asteroid to the station to create more mass. This new section was hollowed-out; we’d leached the metals from it and left the stone as armor. The surface of the entire thing was dotted by equipment embedded into the natural rock. Instead of occasional battlements and sensor arrays that resembled outcroppings of metal, I’d added an entirely new superstructure that formed a thick band around the center of the station. The structure was vaguely disk-shaped, and the crewmen had come to call it “the saucer”.

The new battlements were anything but fragile, however. They were built with heavy structural components, mostly steel and yard-thick polymers.

Inside the saucer, clusters of weaponry were closely massed and capable of incredible firepower. The saucer was encrusted with missile batteries, beam turrets, railgun emplacements and more.

I broke the silence with Miklos first. “You should learn more about what this station can do, Commodore, before you scoff at it.”

“I do not recall making any scoffing sounds.”

“No, but your tone makes your opinions self-evident. Please turn your attention to the most innovative of the additions: the new fighter bays. From each of seven bays, a wing of fighters can be launched within minutes of identifying a threat.”

Miklos nodded thoughtfully, arching his eyebrows. “I’ve read the reports on the fighter bays, but the technology is unproven.”

“We’ve seen them in action, on the side of the Empire,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “My fighters are based on their designs.”

“What is the strategic advantage of these fighters?”

“After the Lobsters disabled this base with a single well-place bomb, I decided that a localized mobile defense was a good idea. The fighter wings are under orders to scramble with paranoid regularity. A squadron or two is always on orbital patrol. Even if we do get sucker-punched again, all our eggs won’t be in a single basket. The fighters are there to harass any approaching enemy. If the station is disabled again, they will provide some defensive capability.”

Miklos looked interested, but far from pleased. I knew he considered a fighter to be a type of ship, even if they had a limited range. To Miklos, any ship was a good ship. But he would rather have a more mobile force.

“May I suggest something, Colonel?”

I nodded, knowing I was going to hear his ideas eventually, whether I wanted to or not.

“I’m thinking about the current situation,” he said. “In the coming days, we might want to move to the Crustacean homeworlds to help them. We have a lot of new armament here at the battle station, but the water-moons are out of range. Perhaps we could produce carrier vessels to transport the new fighter wings.”

“You’re proposing that we strip the fighter wings from the station and use them as a mobile force assigned to these carriers?” I asked.

“Temporarily, yes. We could put the carriers into production immediately. We would not have to build the fighters, only the carriers. We could do that fairly quickly, as they would only have to have a large structure and engines.”

“What about armament?” I asked.

“No weapons would be required on a carrier. The fighters would be their weapons.”

I considered his idea. I glared at the growing image of the battle station. It bristled with weaponry and appeared invincible from space. Despite its strength, I wasn’t excited about the idea of weakening this monster I’d built. As it was, it was an absolute barrier to entry into the Eden system. With it standing here on watch, I felt one of my flanks was secure. On the other hand, if I was going to have to send my ships out into a hostile system, I would want those fighters to cover my fleet.

Miklos seemed to sense my indecision. He sidled closer to me and continued with his arguments.

“We could use standard cruiser engines and structure. No redesign necessary. They would probably be slower-moving, but they could serve as strategic platforms. Think of them as flying bases, able to move in and provide an anchor for the fleet wherever you wish. In this situation, they could orbit the Thor gas giant and cover all three inhabited moons.”

I thought about it. Really, it did make sense.

“All right,” I said at last. “I’ll go talk to Marvin and discuss a design and how long it would take to assemble such a vessel. I’m not sure we’ll have time to pull it off, however. If we’re going to save these Lobsters from whatever is killing them, we’ll have to move fast.”

Miklos handed me a computer tablet. I glanced down at it.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“I took the liberty of running some numbers. Also, key components are already in preproduction. As we’ve moved some of the duplicators to the battle station, I thought we might as well get a head start.”

I glared at the tablet. I was angry, but at the same time I didn’t want to quell initiative taken by my staff. I reminded myself that delegation of authority was part of successful leadership. That part had never come easily for me.

I calmed down with an act of will and looked at what he’d given me. The numbers were not too presumptive. He’d changed standing production orders, but only directed the duplicators to construct components that were useful as spare parts or for any fleet-support ship we might care to build. Even if I’d shot down his ideas, the production wouldn’t be wasted.

I nodded and handed the tablet back. “I’m surprised you put this into motion so quickly. And without full approval. But, I can see that you’ve done it in a way that does not disrupt standing orders. I approve of the action. Continue.”

Miklos beamed. It was rare his bearded face smiled, and I was glad to see the expression. I realized he’d been sweating my decision and fearing a possible reprimand. I was glad I didn’t have to chew him out. As a top leader, I had to be careful. A few words from me could crush a spirit. I wasn’t really worried about having that effect on Miklos, but I knew I’d done it to others in the past.

I left the bridge and went to my private quarters. Sandra was there, already strapped onto an acceleration couch. I grunted and strained as I got into place beside her. In order to maximize our speed we’d applied most of the ship’s power to the engines, rather than niceties such as the gravity stabilizers. I was really feeling the Gs today.

Sandra worked her tablet controls as I got into place for the final burn. The ship had to go to full thrust to slow us down enough for docking. There were always jarring, last second adjustments.

Sandra caused the forward screens over our acceleration couches to light up. The battle station loomed. It was a dark hulk in space, sprinkled with gleaming lights. It resembled a bristling sea anemone as much as anything else I could think of. Batteries of railguns, beam turrets and missile silos dotted the uneven surface.

“Why did you rebuild this thing, Kyle?” Sandra asked me.

I made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a grunt. I felt I’d answered this sort of question enough today already.

“I’m a sucker for big, cheap defenses,” I said. “I looked at it, and I just couldn’t come up with a better way to expend our resources and get more firepower out of each nut and bolt.”

She nodded, unsurprised. “It failed the first time, but you still believe in it?”

“Absolutely.”

“But what if the enemy comes from the other direction next time—from Earth?”

“Earth was trashed less than a year ago. So was every player in this game. But I know one thing about the Macros: they can rebuild amazingly fast. I decided to put most of our resources into stopping them first.”

“Are you sure they’re the greater threat?”

I nodded. “Those alien machines would exterminate us all if they could. Crow would only enslave us.”

Sandra gave me a flickering smile. “Encouraging,” she said.

I guess she didn’t like the fact that we were surrounded by enemies. We held Eden, and had a foothold in the Helios system. But that was the extent of our influence. I’d stopped patrolling the Lobster system and Alpha Centauri long ago due to lack of resources.

“I hope you’ve done it right this time,” she said sincerely.

“So do I.”

After this short conversation, I went back to rechecking data I’d already rechecked, scanning for new details that I might have missed, and which I pretty much knew weren’t there. It was agonizing going into a conflict without intel. I’d done it before, but I hated it just as much today as I had the first time. How do you plan and prepare for the unknown?

I guessed that recent military leaders back on Earth over the last century had had it pretty good. Back in the days of planet-wide satellite coverage and Cold War intel, there were years of research and planning to back up anything you encountered. When the Soviets made a move, NATO was rarely surprised. They’d gamed out everything. Orders were already in a vault, ready to be distributed within hours.

Those days were gone. Out here on the frontier of space, meeting new species and new threats every few months, I had to fly by the seat of my pants most of the time. My military decisions were based on guesswork as much as anything else. I’d never even seen the next system in the chain of rings, the one the Macros appeared to be coming from. We’d sent in probes of course, stealthy robotic things that we’d been sure would evade detection long enough to employ passive sensors and scan the environment.

None of these probes had ever returned. The Macro system beyond the ring in the Thor system remained to this day a mysterious black hole in our knowledge. Because of this, we had to operate as if an attack was coming from that sector at any moment. We had to assume the worst, because we had no idea what the truth was.

I was reminded historically of the colonial period in Earth’s history. I felt akin to the explorers and colonial governors of centuries past. They had small garrisons on wild coastlands. All around them local native populations simmered with resentment. Worse, other colonial powers or out-and-out pirates might arrive on any given day to raid their settlements or even conquer them. Back then, there weren’t any satellites or instantaneous transmissions, and the distances were comparably huge. It took months to voyage home, possibly a year between requesting assistance and getting it from your home country. I was in a similar situation. Effectively, we were on our own, and we had no idea what was going to come over the horizon.

By the time we docked, I was ready for action. I jumped off the couch and suited up. Sandra was right behind me when I hit the airlock. I was unsurprised to find Miklos already there, waiting for us.

The door swished open, and another familiar sight met my eyes. It was Marvin in all his unholy, metallic glory.

-3-

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.”