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I realized belatedly she was talking about abandoning any survivors and spare equipment in the Helios system. I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I can’t leave them out there, floating around, hoping for pickup as they die one at a time. Hell, the Worms might come up and capture them. Or even another Macro ship.”

Sarin nodded rapidly, then winced and rubbed at the back of her head. “That’s another consideration,” she said. “For all we know, this is our one chance to escape. The enemy might have sent more ships after us than the four we took out.”

“Gorski,” I said, “run me some numbers. If a ship came in from the Eden system and flew all the way across the Helios system to the nearest ring, how long would we have before they could reach us?”

“Well,” he said, tapping at his tablet. “Assuming that they are flying cruisers with similar performance stats…and that they came through the moment after we left, because we would have seen them if they’d shown up earlier…I would say we have three days, sir.”

I nodded. “Three days. That will do it. We will be in and out of the Helios system and back here in a maximum of three days.”

Sarin didn’t look happy. I turned back to Gorski. “Watch the helm for me,” I told him. “Report anything.”

When I turned to do a ship inspection and a check on all the repair crews, Sandra put her hand on my wrist. She did it lightly.

“I want to talk,” she said quietly

Sarin was busy with a cracked tablet. We didn’t have much hardware left, and no way to build new stuff.

“Right,” I said, “we do need to talk. Both of you come along with me.”

Major Sarin glanced up, surprised. Sandra looked irritated.

“Come on,” I said, and walked off the bridge. Both the women followed me. I could feel the mutual hostility behind me, like heat emanating from a furnace. I had to put out this fire now, while I could. Either that, or one of these two was going to have to be kicked off the bridge.

We met in a side chamber that had possibly served the Macros as a repair center. Broken leg joints, springs, automated drill-presses and a selection of replacement head-sections for Macros were stored here. We’d not been able to get much use out of the workshop—with our nanite technology, we hadn’t really needed to. I thought that if we couldn’t recover our factories that would change soon. We would have to learn to control this equipment and rebuild elements of the cruiser.

“You see this room?” I asked the two women. They looked at me in surprise. They’d expected a lecture on civil treatment of your fellow officer. I didn’t like to give anyone exactly what they were expecting, however, it wasn’t my style.

They looked around, but didn’t say anything. I realized then that I did know something about women: when they were real quiet, that was a bad sign.

“Do either of you know how to use this stuff?” I asked. I didn’t really expect an answer, and I didn’t get one. I picked up a piece of outer plating and banged it on a slanted surface with beveled edges. It felt weird to hold a piece of an enemy body in my hands.

Major Sarin finally answered me. I supposed she couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “We have no idea how to use most of this stuff—or even what it does,” she said.

“Exactly,” I said, pointing at her. I tapped a machine’s control board. It whirred as if trying to start up, but then the sound died away. “These devices were built for Macro technicians who had a dozen fast-moving metal arms. You don’t just touch a single button and start one up. All the options are chosen at the moment the system starts. The helm works like that, which is why we’re having such a hard time with it. Imagine a car that has to know where you are going before you start it. You have to input your destination even as you hit the gas, hold down the clutch and start the ignition. Everything at once.”

I had their attention, but they still didn’t look happy. They had no idea where I was going with all this, but they were beginning to suspect a speech was coming. There had to be one in here somewhere. I decided to give it to them.

“This is just a sample of the technology this ship represents. High-grade Macro technology. A thousand secrets Earth can use to improve our forces, and to learn how to defeat the enemy.”

“So we should both shut up and be good girls, is that it?” Sandra asked.

My face darkened, but I fought not to be baited into a shouting match. “There’s only one way we can help Earth now. We can’t fight anymore, not in the condition this unit is in. But we have a lot of intel. Critical information Earth must have. For example: they don’t even know yet the Macros are shooting at us again.”

That got their attention. They looked worried. Everyone knew what had happened the last time the Macros had become annoyed. They’d come and blown away half of China.

“I’ve been hoping the Macros will react the way they did when the Chinese fired on them. I hope they’ll only try to kill
us
. But maybe they won’t. It’s hard to say.”

Sandra sighed explosively. “Okay, I can’t take anymore,” she said. “Yes, the stakes are high. Yes, we should all cooperate. And yes, I’m sorry I conked you on the head, Jasmine.”

Major Sarin studied the floor with a fierce frown. “I’m sorry if I intruded on your relationship.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t have to apologize, I was the one who weakened.”

“I don’t know why you have to
weaken
,” Sandra said. “If you really want her, then just be with her, and be happy.” Sandra did a pretty good job of keeping her face neutral as she said this. She really did look like she didn’t care, but her shaky hands and voice gave her away.

“It’s not like that!” I said.

“No, no,” Major Sarin said, her face suddenly horrified. “I wasn’t trying to take your man.”

Sandra opened her mouth. In my mind, I expected her to shout:
then why did you let him kiss you, you slut?
Or other words to that effect, but it didn’t happen. She controlled herself. Everybody knew Jasmine Sarin was a rules-follower. She abhorred personal messes in her life. Maybe she had a thing for her commander, but that tended to happen in mixed-sex armed forces.

“I accept your apology,” Sandra said. They still weren’t looking at each other.

“I too, accept yours,” Jasmine said.

“Okay!” I said, deciding to end on an up-note. “Let’s get this boat flying, then. We have a minefield to detect and sneak past. We have people to pick up.”

Major Sarin exited first, but Sandra lingered. I stepped toward her, hesitantly. She took a step toward me as well. I eyed her, trying to figure my next move. I wanted to go for a hug, but a kiss—I figured that was pushing too far.

Sandra let me hug her, briefly. But she was as stiff as a board to my touch. It was like hugging a Macro.

“Still mad?” I whispered in her ear.

“It’s going to be a looong time for you,” she whispered back.

She pulled away with her lips tight. The expression of disappointment on my face made her face shift, however. She snorted, then smiled and laughed. She flounced out of the workshop and I watched her shapely form as she exited. I heaved a sigh. I was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be any make-up loving tonight.

I realized then that with the nature of warfare in space, things like this were bound to be a problem. The navy had struggled with sexual relationships on ships for years, I knew. My Star Force marines were in an even worse situation. We’d been removed from the rest of humanity for long periods and then put under great stress. It wasn’t like the old days in the U. S. military on deployment. I’d done a reservist’s tour in the Mideast myself, so I understood the comparison. The sort of duty I was doing now was harsh. We were more like conquistadores than peace-keepers on a mission to some third-world country. We were facing alien machines determined to exterminate us. We fought in unknown star systems lightyears away from Earth. We couldn’t even figure out most of the time where in the heavens we were, much less know when we would get back. People became desperate under such circumstances and did things they might regret later. It was only natural, and I would have to think about what we should do about it to maximize our effectiveness.

-40-

We were scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as equipment went. I was short of everything except laser rifles and packs—so many marines had died, we had extra light weapons. I used these together with our last dozen or so brainboxes, most of them cannibalized from other equipment, to operate as laser turrets on the cruiser’s nose. We were down to a crawling speed as we approached the ring. I knew there were mines there, but I didn’t know what we have to face until we got close.

 When we did finally arrive, we found thousands of the little buggers. They were laid out in a tight pattern all over the mouth of the ring. They hadn’t been there when we’d come through to invade the Worm planet in the belly of the Macro invasion ship, but they sure as hell were there now. I could only figure the Worms had been busy setting up their defenses while the Macro cruisers were out of their system. I had to give them big points for persistence. I had the feeling the Worms wouldn’t give up until the last of their kind was dead.

It was weird, but after fighting both the herd peoples we called Centaurs and the Worms, I felt I understood the Worms better. They were more individualistic. They were warriors, and although they attacked as a horde often, they didn’t do it massed in a herd formation that made you think of a plain full of angry sheep. I sensed each Worm had pride as an individual, and that the oldest among them, being the largest, were the most revered. I could understand a social system like that, even admire it. They valued self-sacrifice, but seemed to have a sense of bravado. The Centaurs were much more into group-think and were willing to die just standing around contemplating things. I’d never seen a Worm go down doing anything other than fighting to the last.

We nosed our way through the minefield, my tiny, rigged-up laser turrets popping the mines like metal balloons as we went. We must have blown up hundreds before we had a big enough hole to feel safe. Gorski and I lit up the Macro control board then, putting every finger we had onto it at once to get the ship flying straight and fast through the ring. The mines moved to intercept. I wasn’t sure if they were magnetic or if they had some kind of smart guidance system, but we squeezed through. The laser turrets never stopped firing and the video we got from outside the hull showed dozens of orange fireballs as they shot down incoming mines one after another.

Then we were through the ring, the firing and the exploding mines all stopped. We slowed down again as fast as we could. One of my chief worries had been that my men would have tried to come through the ring after us on their flying dishes and activate the mines as they did so.

They hadn’t come through, which presented a new worry: why had they not at least tried? Had they all died out here, exposed in space? Had the Worms given them some other trick, or had the Macros showed up with fresh forces? The fact
none
of them had followed the rest of us didn’t bode well for their survival.

I kept all these thoughts to myself, however, as I felt the ship shiver and the stars changed around us. The big red sun of Helios loomed, swollen and grotesque. The sun filled space as far out as Earth’s own orbit. Only the relative coolness of its radiance allowed the planets around not to be burnt to a crispy dead desert. The Worm planet we’d named Helios orbited fairly close to the ring. It was an arid world with sunken, muddy oceans and hot sands covering much of the surface.

As we came through, I ordered radio silence. I wanted to listen for rescue calls. The ship stuttered as the braking jets kept slowing us down.

Nothing. Nothing at all. There were no signals out there—at least nothing we could pick up.

“Gorski,” I said, craning my neck downward. He was twisted up and squatting near me, his head at about even with my chest. “Can’t we program this board to hold the braking pattern until we are stopped?”

“Yeah,” he said, “we can lock it, but I don’t know how to get it to stop braking when we’ve come to a complete stop. We’ll have to do that manually.”

“Okay,” I said, “just do it. I’m tired of holding my arms in this position.”

He locked it, and we backed away from the control boards warily. The ship kept braking, and didn’t heel over into a spin. I smiled.

“I’m getting the hang of this,” I said. “And I don’t like it one bit. I can’t imagine how Welter figured this thing out and flew it solo.”

“He built his own command sequences—” Gorski began, getting to his feet.

“Yeah, yeah, the programmed hot keys. I know that. I meant getting the basic maneuvers down. They are so complex.”

“Well, he had the autopilot to watch. He was driven.”

I nodded. “Sarin? Anything out there?”

“Metallic debris nearby,” she said. “Lots of it. But it’s all drifting, nothing looks like anyone is steering it. Most of it is our equipment, but I’m not getting any radio signals—wait, sir…”

Major Jasmine Sarin stood with both hands working the console interface. She wore an intense expression. Stray strands of dark hair were caught up in her headset, making loops that hung near her chin.

I looked at her. She had a strange look of concern. Her eyes widened. “I’m getting radio lock-on. Someone is aiming at us.”