The Dead Sun(Star Force Series #9)

-30-



While I’d contemplated dramatic, millennia-old events, the Macros themselves hadn’t been idle. They’d been stalking me.

I’d suspected they would, of course. But it was a demonstration of their respect for me that when they did come, they did it with overkill. A rush of machines charged in unison.

They’d been as stealthy as large robots could be—which was to say, not terribly stealthy. When they came on in their final rush, I couldn’t miss it.

Dozens of flat, crab-like machines scuttled forward. I was up off my butt and heading into the wall of the dome the second I saw they were near.

Whiteout. That was what I’d always thought when I stepped into the dome walls. You couldn’t really see anything, and all your sensors cut out. There wasn’t much in the way of sound, and as no signals could penetrate it, I couldn’t even tell if I was heading in the right direction.

Normally, this wasn’t much of a problem. I’d walked through Macro domes on a number of occasions in the past. All you had to do was keep your wits about you, remember where you were headed, and keep putting one foot in front of the other in as straight a line as you could. The energy field was only about ten yards thick, a dozen sweeping strides for me.

But this dome shell was different. It was thicker than any I’d ever encountered. It didn’t house a single factory, but every factory they had left. It was huge, thick and powerful.

Ten steps went by, then another ten. I knew if I hadn’t gotten turned around somehow I should be reaching the far edge soon. I also knew that the bomb was due to go off at any moment.

With these concepts foremost in my mind, I tried to hurry up. But the field didn’t let me. It only allowed slow movement through it. That was how it kept missiles from penetrating, among other things.

Something hooked me at around step twenty-one. I’m pretty sure it was the twenty-first step as I’d been counting to keep track. If I’d reached thirty without exiting the dome, I’d know that I’d gotten off-course and would have to change directions.

Whatever it was, it grabbed the generator on my back and lifted me up—slowly. Not even the Macros could move quickly inside their own force walls.

I was pretty sure a claw had me, lifting me up. Even if the dome was only a single step farther ahead, it was a step too far. I’d never make it.

I reached for my projector reflexively, but I knew it wouldn’t work. An energy beam such as the kind it emitted wouldn’t penetrate a millimeter of this field around me.

I released my projector, letting my laser carbine fall and dangle by the nanite cord. I reached back with my gauntlets—but I couldn’t get a grip on anything.


Whatever had me was either smart or lucky. It had chosen to grip me by the one piece of equipment that I couldn’t easily reach. Like a kitten in its mother’s mouth, I was hefted up higher and higher.

I was now certain I was in the grip of a machine’s claw. The claws were trying to close, crushing my generator, and they would puncture my exoskeleton in time.

A sense of doom came over me. The chronometer displayed six red zeros. I had run out of time.

An instant after this realization came over me, my sense of sight and sound blanked out. Then something kicked me from behind. My first impression was that the Macro that carried me had thrown me as far and hard as it could.

In my faceplate, the stars came back. They flickered, dimmed, then brightened again.

I was falling. It didn’t take long, but every fall when you’re expecting death seems to be a lengthy experience.

Landing was one of the more painful experiences I’d had in the last year. Only fighting Crow and suffering his hammering blows had been worse. The dusty black surface of the dead sun came up and smashed into me. My faceplate starred and emergency warning symbols lit up everywhere inside my helmet.

Falls from ten feet or more in high gravity are serious matters. No human beings had ever experienced gravity like I was feeling right now.

I didn’t lose consciousness, but I wanted to. I was in agony. Bones cracked and skin tore open such was the force of my fall. It was like smashing a hammer onto your thumb—but there were about a hundred hammers hitting a dozen of my ribs, both my kneecaps and my right ear.

Lights flashed in my skull, and I honestly wasn’t sure if they were from the blow my head took or from the dome itself.

The dome. I painfully cranked my head to the right. The dome should be there—but it wasn’t.

I saw the last flickering orange death of the dome. It was lovely, in an alien way. Like my own private display of aurora borealis.

Then I remembered as my wits seeped back into me that when a nuke went off inside a dome, it couldn’t get out. But since it destroyed the power source the dome relied on, the dome itself always died moments later.

I tried to get up, but everything fought me: My damaged body, my damaged suit, and especially the portion of a claw that still lay clamped to my midsection.

This last impediment had to go, so I focused my energies on removing it. I could hardly be expected to drag this monstrously heavy appendage across the surface of the dead sun.

The claw wouldn’t release me. I tried, oh God how I tried, but I could not get the damned thing off me.

I thought of my projector, got it out and put it against the claw. But it wouldn’t fire. Possibly, it had been damaged in the explosion or the fall.

I stood up despite the claw. Getting up was a lengthy process that required roaring, straining and hissing my breath through my teeth. But at last, I was on my feet.

I wasn’t able to stand up normally. I had to lean forward to counterbalance the huge weight of the claw wrapped around my belly.

Briefly, I toyed with the idea of abandoning the generator on my back, but I passed on that one. I knew that if I lost my power source, I’d be dead in an hour on this unforgiving chunk of crushed matter.

Getting my bearings as best I could with the few systems that still worked in my suit, I headed toward Andoria. Hopefully, Nomura hadn’t taken off without me. I doubted she would, but one never knew.

I could have broken radio silence and called the ship, but I didn’t want to. I was sure all the Macros inside the dome had been destroyed, but any left on the outside were going to be hunting for invaders. I’d just given them a fresh reason to want me dead, and I was sure they wouldn’t hesitate if they got the chance to zero in on my position.

Trudging for ten minutes or more, I topped a rise. The dust cloud that had arisen behind me had settled down. The explosion had kicked up a lot of debris, and there was a smoky atmosphere on this rock; but there was also tremendous gravity. Dust tended to float down and hug the ground again much faster than it did on Earth.

When I topped the rise, I looked for the ship. It should be here. I frowned, panting, looking this way and that. Had I gotten lost somehow? Disoriented?

Then, I realized what was ahead at the bottom of the crater. I stood on the lip, looking down on what had to be Andoria—but it looked drastically different.

It was covered by Macros. The robots themselves had taken a different form, just as our ships had upon landing here. The Macros were long, low and built like scuttling cockroaches. They crawled over the ship like beetles on a rotting carcass. I could see holes in the hull—they were mining machines, after all, and they’d drilled their way in. I was horrified.

I knew now why I’d seen so few machines during my travels inside the dome. They’d been out here, tearing up my grounded ships—killing the crews. Although I knew it might be a fatal error, I broke radio silence.

“Nomura!” I shouted. “Captain Nomura, do you read me?”

Dead air met my straining ears.

“Does any member of Andoria’s crew read this transmission? I order you to respond.”

Nothing came back. I was left with an inescapable conclusion: They were all dead. The hull had been punctured in a dozen spots. The crew had been almost helpless when I’d left them in any case. I couldn’t imagine they could fight off an invasion involving thousands of machines while lying on their backs hardly able to breathe.

Knowing I couldn’t have much time left, I increased the gain on my radio and beamed an SOS into space.

I switched off my radio after that and moved away from the spot where I’d last transmitted. I found a gully to lie down in. It was a quiet spot and from here I stared upward and studied the stars. I knew I only had enough power to keep myself breathing for another few hours—maybe less if I moved around.

I kept my radio switched to receive-only after that. I could still receive signals, and soon messages did filter down from the cold stars.

“We think we have a solution, and we have volunteers to come get you, Colonel,” Jasmine’s voice buzzed in my ear.

I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to insist that she not be among these volunteers. But I didn’t dare open a channel and talk to her. To do so would be to invite discovery.

As it was, there was evidence that the machines were looking for me. I knew they’d been too busy dismantling my ships, probably figuring they’d lucked into a treasure trove of raw materials. But then I’d destroyed their domes and the factories they were trying to feed. Like ants that’d had their hill kicked over, they’d begun to race around angrily, looking for the threat that must be destroyed.

So I laid there in the cool dark, and occasionally a metallic shadow passed overhead and caused grit to sift down onto my faceplate. I held my breath each time until they left.

An hour passed. I’d pretty much given up hope. I knew they were trying to rescue me, but they didn’t know how little power I had remaining. Soon, I would have enough oxygen to breathe, but the exoskeleton would die. Without the exoskeleton, I wouldn’t be able to get up.

I lay there anyway, waiting. I knew I could last for quite a while if I did nothing other than breathe.

At the third hour, the suit became my tomb. It was down to emergency power only, running on the red. Now and then, it shut itself off, and the generator pumped just enough juice to charge it up for another few minutes—then it shut down again. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t want to risk it anyway.


Six hours after the dome came down, I saw a light. It was bluish, and bright. I knew what it was instantly: a ship’s engine. The vessel came down nearby, but not right on top of me.

I tried to get up on one elbow but failed. It felt like I was lifting six tons—because I was. I let myself sag down after holding myself aloft for a few moments. It was strange, being so helpless.

“Colonel Riggs?” a voice came into my helmet. It was scratchy and distant. But I recognized it immediately.

“Can you give us a directional ping? We know the area is dangerous, but we haven’t found you at your last known location. We’ll do our best to be as quick as possible.”

I keyed open the channel. I’d been hoarding a little reserve power in the batteries for this moment. Besides, I couldn’t help it. Despite everything, I was pissed off.

“Marvin? What are you doing in this dead system? You’re supposed to be back on Earth, building weapons. I thought we had an understanding, Marvin, damn you.”

“We did have an ‘understanding’, Colonel. In fact, I believe that was the exact term used. I’m surprised, however, that you apparently did not fully comprehend the nature of our ‘understanding’.”





-31-



He had a companion with him, probably the last guy I’d expected to see helping with the rescue effort.

“Professor Hoon?” I asked. “Is that you in that getup?”

“This is a standard-issue high-pressure suit.”

I’d managed to get up into a sitting position in my hole, and Marvin and Hoon were staring down over the edge at me. Grit and sparking rocks tinkled down striking me with surprising force. It was as if they were throwing baseballs at me.

“Get me out of this hole, please. We have to take off right now.”

“There’s a problem, Colonel,” Marvin said, wrapping his tentacles around me. “You’re too heavy.

I made a sound of exasperation. “Look, we haven’t got long until the machines get here.”

Marvin scanned with his cameras. Several of them appeared to spot something.

“Not long at all,” he said. “I can see them now. They aren’t moving quickly, but they do appear to be determined.”

“Right, now scoop me up, and give me some juice, will you?”

Marvin plugged a tentacle into my side and my suit crackled. Lights flickered and systems awoke. I felt air blowing again, and that was possibly the biggest relief. The internal temperature had dropped below freezing inside my suit. Fortunately, my body could survive such hardships—but they weren’t fun.

With my exoskeleton working again, and Marvin’s help, I managed to get onto the surface. I was surprised to find Hoon’s claws trying to help, lifting my limbs.

“Where’s the ship?” I demanded.

“That is another difficulty,” Marvin said. “There is no ship—well, that’s not exactly true. I’m the ship.”

I finally caught on. Marvin was in his flight configuration. He’d been given permission to transfer into a space-mobile shape so he could return home. Of course, it was evident that he hadn’t gone back to Earth at all.

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

“Crawl into this compartment with Professor Hoon.”

I did it. I didn’t have much choice as the machines really were coming. I’d bombarded the area with radio signals to help Marvin find me. Even without that, Marvin’s main engine had given off energy signatures while landing that were enough of a beacon to call them all to the area like a dinner bell.

The compartment was cramped, I had to strip off my exoskeleton and wore only a nanite suit of nanocloth. The cold bit through instantly. It had to be about two hundred below out here, and the lightweight inner suit didn’t have much more heating power than an electric blanket.

Hoon and I were soon crammed into a compartment. Shivering and curled up into a ball, I investigated several shiny rocks that I found stored inside with us. I tried to toss them out, but Marvin shoved them back in and sealed the opening.

Immediately, a horrible crushing pressure came down on my spine. I groaned and was unable to speak.

“It’s amazing to me that your life form defeated mine in the end,” Hoon observed. “My species can withstand much greater pressures along with a thousand other hardships that would kill the toughest of your breed.”

I wanted to tell him his people would taste better with garlic and butter than ours would, but I couldn’t talk under the heavy acceleration. I guess that was for the best.

When the Gs eased and I could talk, I was as full of questions as Marvin and Hoon were. I insisted that they start answering first.

“What I want to know is why I’m being rescued by you two rather than a Star Force cruiser?”

“I should think that was obvious,” Hoon said.

“Colonel,” Marvin said, “we were closer and answered the distress call when it came in. The cruisers won’t be here for at least another day. You are quite fortunate in this detail. I don’t think you would have survived long enough for the fleet to rescue you.”

I knew he was right, but I was still annoyed and confused. What were Hoon and Marvin doing here near the dead sun?

“All right,” I said, “I’m grateful to both of you. I was in enemy territory and with all the radiation, cold, and lack of supplies… Yes, I needed your help.”

“Again, the robot is correct!” Hoon said. “What an astounding machine you have, Riggs.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He’s intelligent…ingenious, in fact. He’s friendly as well—up to a point.”

“I mean, what did you mean about the robot being correct?” I asked.

“Before we landed, he said you’d express gratitude. I argued it hardly matched your barbaric behavior patterns. I believe it’s due to the fact that the robot has been observing your primitive species longer than we have. He understands your psychology and is better able to predict your crude responses to stimuli. I would go so far as to say that if Marvin had been on our side in the Great Conflict, we would have won.”

I privately agreed with him, but I didn’t want to admit it.

“With all due respect, Ambassador,” I said, “we had plenty of great minds on our side besides Marvin.”

“You’ve copied his brainbox, then? How many of these robots do you have?”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not what I meant. Marvin is one of a kind. He likes it that way.”

“Seems like a wasted opportunity.”

“Really? Are you so anxious to create a third race of machines to compete with?”

Hoon seemed to mull that over. “No. You make an excellent point.”

I was surprised to hear Hoon say that. He normally rejected any statement, true or not, that conflicted with his original thesis. In my opinion, he was a terrible scientist for this reason alone.

“All right,” I said, starting over on my quest to figure out how this rescue had been engineered. “I get that you heard the call and came to help. That’s fine. But why were you in this system? Marvin, you were to report back to Earth and start building defenses. On the way, you were supposed to be dropping off Hoon at Eden-6. What happened to the plan?”

“Many plans are altered during actual execution,” Marvin said with typical evasiveness.

“We had a deal, Marvin. You were supposed to go home.”


“That was not my understanding.”

“What?” I demanded, becoming angry. “Don’t try to twist my words and intentions to your liking. You knew what I wanted and blatantly ignored it.”

“I understood you perfectly, Colonel. That’s true.”

“But you disobeyed my orders anyway.”

“Not at all. No orders were specified. We had an understanding. That is not a legally binding command.”

I grumbled, but not too much. After all, he’d come down to this desolate place and saved my butt when quite possibly no one else could have managed it. I decided to drop the matter and be more careful with our mutual “understandings” in the future.

“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s move on. Marvin, why is Hoon here? How did you convince him to stay in this dead system rather than return home?”

“The Ambassador hadn’t yet completed his political goals. I suggested that acquiring information was key to his efforts, and he agreed.”

I mulled that one over for a moment, frowning. I looked at Hoon.

“So, you’re a spy?”

“That is a harsh term. I’m a diplomat. I’m gathering and transferring information to achieve political goals.”

I laughed. “All right, but that sounds like the definition of a spy to me. If I understand you correctly Hoon, you were curious as to what we were really up to out here. I’ll thank you both again for helping me—but you’re still not getting a planet out of it, Hoon.”

“Do you have a planet to give?” Hoon asked me.

I opened my mouth then closed it again. He had me there. If I had the power as an individual to award a world to one species or another, what did that make me? No less of a dictator than Crow, certainly.

The worst part was that he was right. Hoon had put his claw directly upon a sore spot. I was extremely powerful—too powerful in my mind.

“I’ll bring up the issue with Earth’s parliament,” I said. “You’ll have your day to make your case. I don’t know how they’ll decide.”

Hoon bobbled his eyes. I figured out that was his way of nodding. “Just as I thought. You are a political creature in the end. I came to save you in hopes you would be grateful for your life. Gratitude doesn’t appear to move a hard heart so easily.”

I grumbled, unsure as to how to respond, but after a few moments of thought I had an angle.

“Look, Hoon, you don’t want me to have that kind of power,” I said. “What if I decide to exterminate all rival races and take all these planets for Earth tomorrow? Who could stop me?”

Hoon didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And I’m not just talking about me, you have to understand. I’m talking about whoever is in my place in the future, whoever commands Star Force. In an interstellar federation of planets, if that’s what we have going, the guy who runs the fleets runs everything. There’s only one military, and no civilian control over that military, so no one can stop me. That’s not healthy in my opinion.”

“If you defeat the machines, then it is indeed healthy for all of us,” Hoon replied.

He had me there. For the time being, I couldn’t do anything about our political structure. I had to save everyone’s collective hide first. I promised myself things would change afterward.

The next day, I reached Jasmine’s ship. I transferred myself aboard and made my way to the bridge after a shower and a meal. Being inside Marvin’s belly for long hours hadn’t been pleasant for anyone—especially with Hoon as my close-quarters companion.

We went over the search data I’d missed. No further outposts of Macro ships or domes had been found. There were still a few machines crawling around on the surface of the dead sun like cockroaches, but they had no factories to build replacements or ships to escape.

“They’re trapped there,” I said.

“We should wipe them out,” Jasmine suggested.

“I promised I wouldn’t.”

Newcome and Jasmine both stared at me in disbelief as I explained the conversation I’d had with Macro Command. While they found the information about a broken ring on the surface fascinating, they didn’t seem to appreciate my dealing with the enemy.

“You can’t just promise to leave them alive!” Jasmine complained.

“In this instance, Colonel,” Newcome said, “I have to agree with Captain Sarin. We should take the time to burn every last one of them to slag.”

I nodded, understanding their position. Hell, maybe they were right.

“Look,” I said. “The Macros keep their deals when we keep ours. They try to cheat, they bend the rules, but due to some twist in their programming, they do stick to the letter of their deals. I don’t think we should endanger that for the future.”

“I believe I have the perfect solution,” Newcome said. “Let’s destroy everything here, then when we fight it out with their fleets over Earth we can leave the last ship untouched. But now is not the time for half-measures.”

“There is a certain kind of logic to that,” I admitted. “But I want to pull out of here now. As far as we can tell, the enemy has no more domes, no more factories. They are therefore not a threat. Their only viable force is the armada approaching Earth now.”

“What if they’re hiding more domes somewhere?” protested Jasmine.

“They might be. But we’re out of time. The odds we’ll find them now are low. We’ve already scanned every rock in the system. I’m not going to spend another week out here just to make sure. Get the fleet underway, we’re pulling out tonight.”

They wanted to argue but stopped themselves. They knew that when I’d made a firm decision, there was no changing my mind.



* * *



The next ten days were agonizingly slow. I read reports from Earth, but they didn’t give me the full picture. They were building bases and guns, ships and satellites. Everyone on the planet had thrown themselves into the war effort.

When we reached the Solar System, I came to a new decision. I used the ring-phone system to talk to parliament members and told them what I wanted. They hustled to obey.

As much as I liked to pretend they were in charge, they all knew I was. This fact was disconcerting sometimes. I think it was because they feared me. I’d turned my fleet’s guns on the ruling class to bring down Crow less than a year ago. More politicians than soldiers had died in the conflict. Usually, that wasn’t how history played out. In most cases, the men in the trenches did all the dying while the politicians sat at home and gave speeches and orders.

I’d brought the war home to the political class. They’d buckled quickly and hadn’t forgotten the lesson. I’m sure they hated me, but for now, they ran like rats when I barked.

“What’s this?” Jasmine asked me when I slid an open file toward her across the table.

“A new ship design,” I said. “I’ve been working on it with Marvin. I call it a ‘megahab’. It’s kind of like the satellites we encountered when we first met the Centaurs. Do you remember? They were the ones that held their entire population in space.”

“Megahabs? I still don’t understand…but those things were huge!”

“They were huge, yes, but very cheap to build.”

“They’re like giant balloons of thin nanite membranes…” she said. “You can’t intend to put people aboard. A single missile or laser strike would kill them all.”


“Yeah,” I admitted. “But they’ll work. They’ll fit through the rings, too. We’ve accounted for that. We call them megahabs because each one will hold about a million people.”

Jasmine shook her head in wonderment. “What are they for?”

“To evacuate Earth, or at least as many people as I can.”

“Evacuate…where will they go, Kyle?”

“They will go to the Eden system, where else? We’ve got a planet or two to spare out there. The system could use a billion new colonists.”

“What about Eden’s infrastructure? It will be overwhelmed, and people will starve.”

“Life will be hard at first, but I believe in the hard-working spirit of humanity. We’ll only take on able-bodied volunteers—families that want a slice of land and a fresh start.”

Jasmine looked dubious. About then, Newcome arrived and looked over the plans.

“What’s this then?” he asked. “Is it some kind of experimental craft?”

“You could say that,” I said.

“He wants to empty Earth with these things, to transfer millions of citizens out of the home system.”

Newcome laughed. “We’ve got less than a month to go, old chap,” he said. “This sounds a little on the ambitious side.”

“It is,” I admitted. “But I think it’s necessary. We’ll drop one of these down near every major city. They’ll fill up, first-come first-serve. When we’ve taken everyone we can, we’ll stop. I’m hoping to get about ten percent of the population into space over the next month.”

“How will you build them all in time?”

“The engines are already in stock. The nanites are already in stock. All we have to do is give them the program and load them up with a small crew and some supplies. They’ll fly.”

Newcome shook his head. “Engines? Nanites? Those elements are already spoken for. We’ll lose a hundred cruisers worth of production if we do this.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But I’d rather save a hundred million people. Jasmine, do you recall what the Macros did the last time we fought them in an all-out battle over an inhabited world?”

She looked reluctant but nodded. “They killed the population the moment they realized they were going to lose.”

“Exactly,” I said. “We can’t be sure they won’t use that same tactic again this time. Look at it this way: if they win, we’re all dead anyway. But if we win, we could still lose our population. I want to save as many as I can. I’m willing to scrap a hundred cruisers to preserve humanity.”

They had a hard time arguing with my logic. They relayed the orders, and the parliamentary types relayed the message to the public for me. It wasn’t long before Miklos was on my screen, raving.

“Colonel Riggs?” he said, his eyes dark and shining. “What’s going on? I’m getting the most insane change-orders through the computers. Surely this has to be some kind of mistake.”

“It isn’t,” I told him. I proceeded to give him the same speech I’d given the others.

Miklos was even less receptive than they had been. The Fleet was his first love. I honestly thought he was a bit unhinged on the topic. But over the next hour I got him to understand the seriousness of the situation.

“Well, sir…” he said at last, “I’m glad you didn’t lose your temper—at least, not completely.”

I smiled at him tightly. “I’m glad you can see the need for this.”

“I can see your reasoning—and I hope you will be able to understand mine in the future.”

I frowned at him, unsure what he was talking about.

“Colonel,” he said. “Can you excuse me? I have much work to do.”

“Of course,” I said, still frowning. “Carry on.”

I was sick of explaining things to people, so I tapped the connection closed. I was still wondering what he meant about his reasoning and my understanding it in the future, but right now, I had a headache.

About an hour later, Newcome came to me, frowning deeply. His white eyebrows had bunched up in the middle of his face into one long fluffy line.

“What it is, Admiral?”

“Disturbing news from Earth, sir,” he said.

I nodded and waved for him to speak quickly. “I’ve got to figure out the disposition of my forces.”

“That’s just it, sir,” he said. “They aren’t your forces anymore…technically speaking.”

I slowly turned my head to face him. He was avoiding my eyes.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“It came in over the command channels.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“No—no, I’m not surprised. The parliament held a secret, midnight meeting, sir. They deposed you. You’ve been officially removed from your post. I’m sorry, sir.”

I stared at him. I lifted my gaze and stared around at the staffers. The news was traveling as I could see. Already, people were avoiding my gaze. They were murmuring to one another quietly while pretending to work.

“So that’s what Miklos was talking about,” I said. “That man will do anything to build up his damned fleet.”