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She almost laughed, but not quite. I could tell Ning’s nasty passing was still fresh in her mind. I decided to change the topic. “I’ve been looking for a place to get some sleep,” I said. “Any ideas?”

She gave her head a small tilt to the left, considering it. I’d always liked that affectation. After a short pause, she crooked her finger in my direction. I followed her like a puppy. Despite my fatigue I admired her shapely figure as she walked through the halls. She’d gotten rid of the vacc suit now that most of the ship was pressurized and heated. It was much more comfortable for everyone. Wearing a vacc suit continuously was like living in a sleeping bag with holes cut out for your eyes.

I wanted to reach for her, but stopped myself. I knew that much about make-ups, you had to time things perfectly. She led me to one of the countless chambers on the ship that served no obvious purpose. This one was full of tubes. Metal tubes, fabric tubes, tubes that looked like they were made of rubber or graphite—but weren’t. The trick was, the tubes that ran over the floor and the walls had two wonderful properties: they were soft and slightly warm. I was sure they carried power or data or both. In fact, this looked like the Macro equivalent of a networking data-closet. We spread out some blankets that were kind of like tarps on top of the thick, flexy tubes. With a little rearranging and plumping, they made a firm but livable bed.

“This isn’t bad,” I was saying, admiring our handiwork. I was about to go on, but she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down on top of her. And I do mean
pulled
. I was yanked off my feet, and forcibly kissed once again.

I turned my head as she began to run her hands over my back.

“What’s wrong?” she growled.

“I didn’t think we’d made up yet,” I said.

“Since when did you care?”

“A man’s got to have some self-respect,” I said, straining away and giving her my best poker-face.

Sandra stared at me for a confused second, and then burst out laughing. I joined in. Both of us knew I had no self-respect what-so-ever when it came to getting into bed with her. She was a weakness of mine—an addiction.

“We haven’t made up,” she said after we were finished.

 “Why did we do it then?” I asked.

“I didn’t want you thinking about Jasmine Sarin for one more second,” she said.

I laughed with my eyes closed. “You’re a succubus.”

Overall I’d found her body to be familiar, but more firm and energetic. I didn’t mind the change. The tubes were still soft under me, and I was falling asleep the moment she climbed off me. She’d taken the last ounce of energy out of my tired form.

I passed out for a long time.

-44-

I awakened with Sandra standing over me, shaking me. I opened gluey eyes and peered up. “Morning already?”

“We’re in trouble,” she said.

I took one look at her face and stood up with a grunt. I dragged my vacc suit back on while she explained. She was already dressed. I got the feeling she had been for some time.

“Everyone was looking for you,” she said. “Calling over the com-link—then I realized I was the only one who knew where you were. So I sprinted down here to get you.”

I picked up my helmet and saw it was indeed full of flashing lights. “I must not have heard the buzzer,” I said. “What’s up?”

“It’s the Worms,” she said.

I snapped my head around to stare at her.

“They have ships,” she said. “They are small ones, but they are coming up here.”

“Up
here
?”

“Yeah, heading right toward us.”

“Are they firing? Are they in range yet? How long do we have?” While I asked these questions, she shook her head and we hustled together along corridors and access tubes to the bridge. When we arrived, everyone looked up. I realized we’d made a grand, hurried entrance together. Every eye in the place stared at us. A few smirked.

Only Major Sarin avoided looking at us. She kept her eyes down on her computer. Internally, I felt a twist. More discord. I couldn’t seem to stop messing up my staff. It was obvious Sandra and I had been together, and Jasmine felt hurt.

I decided to go commander on them. No apologies. No explanations. Nothing. When I wanted to get the minds of my marines off gossip and hurt feelings, nothing worked like a pile of snappy orders.

“Have we got a big situational screen hooked up yet?”I demanded.

Heads shook.

“No?” I asked. “Sarin, you are on screen ops. Feed the data to my tablet, clone our screens. Gorski, give me verbal numbers on the situation. Enemy strength and range first.”

We soon stood in a group that resembled a football huddle, with everyone tapping at small portable computers. The situation was not yet dire. We had no sign of Macro ships in the Helios system or Alpha Centauri. Instead, we had exactly fourteen small vessels coming up from Helios. The unusual configuration of the ships and the fact they’d come from Helios led us to believe they were Worm ships. They looked vaguely like the old NASA shuttlecrafts to me, but a bit larger. They had stubby wings and a pointed snout. They were clearly designed for atmospheric travel.

“It looks like fourteen frigate class ships against one cruiser,” I said, “and we aren’t fully operational. I don’t like the odds. Where did this Worm fleet come from?”

“As far as we can tell, Colonel,” Gorski said, “they’ve been hiding them underwater. They lifted off from beneath those muddy seas of theirs.”

“Makes sense. I’m not surprised they’ve been hiding them. They aren’t very big. I would bet two Macro cruisers could take all of them out. I suppose whatever fleet they may have had in the past was wiped out by the Macros. So they hid what they had left—or built new ones in secret.”

I’d never been able to say I
liked
the Worms, but I did find them worthy of admiration at times. They were the beaten down people in this game. But they were determined, and never seemed to give up. I suspected their population was even lower than the Centaur herds had been. They could be snuffed out after another few bad battles. Everywhere we went, it looked as if the machines had already won. We were still struggling, but like the Worms we’d really been beaten long ago.

“Should we fight or run, sir?” Gorski asked.

I ignored him. I could feel every eye on the bridge on me. I didn’t look at my crew, but instead studied the small Worm fleet, knowing it was all they had. I sighed as I looked at the screen. Fourteen Worm ships, coming up to do battle with what they must have figured was a single, damaged Macro cruiser. I couldn’t blame them. I could imagine they’d argued hard amongst themselves whether this was the time to make a counterstrike. If they were anything like human commanders, some had wanted to keep hiding and building. Others had urged action, taking the position that they must act. If they didn’t take the chance to win this small battle, how could they
ever
going to take the initiative?

“We’re not going to fight them,” I said. “But we’re not going to run right away, either. What have we got if we are forced to fight?”

Everyone stared at me for a second before turning back to their screens.

“We’ve got an operable main battery,” Gorski said. “Unlike our last ship. And we’ve managed to build a number of missiles that will fit the tubes on this cruiser.”

I looked at him with my eyebrows raised high. “You’ve been busy,” I said.

He nodded proudly. I looked around the group. Welter was standing at the helm with his fingers uplifted, twitching almost. He wanted to work that board in combat, I could tell. Gorski wanted to fire his new missiles. The fact he’d put them into the Macro tubes showed he’d gained some level of control over the ship’s weapons system. I suspected he only knew enough to open the external ports and allow our brainbox-driven missiles to launch on their self-guided path.

Major Sarin was looking at me now, waiting calmly for my next order. She didn’t look anxious to do any killing—but it was hard to tell with her. She guarded her feelings, rarely letting them show on her face.

Sandra just looked worried. She didn’t like any of this. I could hardly blame her, she’d already died in combat twice that I was aware of. Maybe she wasn’t certain I could pull off a third miracle and find some new alien technology to put her cells back together today.

“How long do we have until they get in firing range?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” Gorski replied. “That depends on their armament, which we haven’t seen yet.”

“Assume they have the equivalent of two Nano-ship lasers each.”

Gorski tapped for a half-minute. “I’d say we have three hours in that case.”

I nodded. “We’ve got every marine living or dead we could find aboard now, correct?”

“Yes sir.”

 “In three hours,” I said, “we’ll be out of here. I’m not going to destroy another biotic people’s fleet just because we can’t talk to one another. They are naturally assuming we are a damaged Macro vessel. I’ll try to convince them we aren’t, but if it comes down to it, we’ll run rather than fire on them.”

Gorski raised his hand with his palm open. “Hold on, sir,” he said. “I didn’t say we had three hours to sit around. They are building velocity. They could follow us through the ring. We have to start moving much sooner if you want to avoid a fight.”

“How long?”

“Less than an hour.”

I sighed. “All right. Has anyone seen Marvin?”

Sandra had seen him, of course. She knew exactly where he was. She had, in fact, belled him like a cat. I realized I should have done that sooner, but just hadn’t gotten around to thinking of it. She had put one of the transponders on him she’d put on me long ago in happier times—back before the Worms, Centaurs and Macros had managed to kill ninety percent of my marines.

I followed Sandra through the ship. To my surprise, I had to struggle to keep up. Even wearing my powerful exoskeletal battle suit over my vacc suit, enhancing my muscle contractions and magnifying them, I found it hard to keep her behind in my range of vision. She leapt and sprang like a cat. I recalled watching a documentary on red kangaroos once. At full gallop—or whatever you called a kangaroo’s gait when it was hopping like mad—each bound took them a good thirty feet. Sandra reminded me of a kangaroo moving through steel passages in flying leaps.

We found Marvin pretty fast, and I had to smile grimly at his reaction. He was definitely disturbed by our approach. We found him in a data closet full of flexible hosing—similar to the one we’d made into a love-nest so recently. His primary arm was probing the tubes. He had one open, and looked to be doing some kind of exploratory surgery on the glowing contents. Liquid spilled on the decks like oily blood. Three of his four cameras were canted at various angles, staring at the open tube. But the fourth eye was on lookout, staring at the hatch behind him as we crashed it open.

The dish his brainbox floated upon spun around and all the cameras came up to look at us. Two focused on Sandra and two on me. He dropped the cable and snaked his probing arm back into his brainbox with surprising speed. It definitely reminded me of a guilty start. I was sure we’d caught him red-handed at something, but I simply didn’t have time to waste finding out what it was.

“Marvin,” I said. “We require your help.”

“What assistance do you require?”

“Come with us to the bridge, Marvin,” I ordered. “Now.”

One of Marvin’s camera eyes drifted first to my sidearm, then to Sandra’s. The second and third cameras stared at our faces simultaneously. The fourth camera squirmed around behind him now, looking at the tubes he’d been cutting into. He hesitated and seemed reluctant to leave his work.

“I require another half-hour to complete my current project.”

I was burning to inquire as to the nature of his
project
, and to give him a sharp order to follow me or else, but I’d learned what worked best with Marvin: cold logic.

“If you do not come immediately, this ship and all of us aboard her face destruction. A new enemy has moved against us. We have very little time.”

This got him moving. His self-preservation circuits were in prime condition. His flying dish tilted and he levitated out of the room. We followed him as he made his way toward the bridge. As we went, three of the four cameras watched us, looking over his shoulder in effect. Only one looked ahead to guide him on his path.

“What is required of me?” Marvin said in a voice that should have had a whiny cadence to it, but I guess he wasn’t programmed for that.

“I need you to translate for me. You can talk to the biotic beings we call the Worms. They are the beings who built the ships approaching us now. We must talk to them, and stop them from attacking this vessel.”

“Few determined enemies can be argued out of their aggression. I would suggest you destroy them instead.”

“There are too many. Your translations must be precise or your continued existence is in jeopardy.”

His manner changed after that. I noticed his extra cameras now studied airlocks, hatches and exits as we passed them. Was he considering bolting on us? I wouldn’t put it past him. I glanced toward Sandra and she nodded back. I could tell she had noticed the same thing. He was clearly storing details of his environment, mapping the ship for purposes of escape.