The Dead Sun(Star Force Series #9)

-36-



A week later, I was standing on the command deck of Potemkin again. We were far out in space, rolling with the gravity swells and trying to look tough. We’d moved without stealth or grace. Wallowing battleships, carriers brimming with fighters and about a thousand smaller vessels trailed behind me—altogether, it was the grandest armada Earth had ever put into the skies.

But it wasn’t going to be enough. Not by a long shot. Marvin had miscalculated. The enemy was now emerging from behind their comets to meet us, flying ahead of their planet-killers. They’d counted our guns and found us contemptible.

They’d thrown far more than the estimated four thousand cruisers at us. They had six thousand cruisers, give or take a few, and had over a hundred dreadnaughts as well—huge ships with point defense weapons and fantastically thick hulls. I recalled that, years back, they’d attacked with just one of these monsters. It had taken all of Earth’s firepower and cunning to bring that single vessel down.

Behind the comets lurked even more ships, including transports. If they had factories, and I assumed they did, they would be hiding there along with thousands of machines built to invade, mine and colonize our worlds with inorganic un-life. If they had their way, the biotic soup of humanity and our supporting ecosystem would be gone forever.

The only solace I had was the drifting stream of balloon-like megahabs behind us. They were still rising through Earth’s clouds and gliding to the Tyche ring. Every day more civilians escaped to colonize Eden. I wished them well and hoped enough of them would survive to rebuild should we fail them.

A klaxon sounded. I flinched out of my reverie.

“What have we got, Jasmine?” I demanded, still looking at the stars.

I don’t know what I’d expected her to say. Maybe something about a false alarm or a coming course adjustment. We’d had a lot of both lately.

“Missiles, sir,” she said. “They’ve launched.”

“So early? Their ships are still out of effective range. The missiles will run out of fuel long before they get here, and we’ll easily dodge them.”

“The ships aren’t launching anything—the comets are.”

I walked over to the command table, frowning. Sure enough, new contacts had appeared: Clouds of them. So many that they looked like a fine mist of roiling pixels.

Staring, I thought about what this meant. I’d assumed the comets were just that—comets. They’d been found in the Oort Cloud and propelled toward our planet like stones thrown across a great distance.

But that view was crumbling now. These weren’t just comets.

“Can they be giant ships of some kind, sir?” Jasmine asked.

Her pretty face was tight and frightened.

“No,” I said, scoffing. “They aren’t ships! They might have put some missile bases on them, but that hardly qualifies them as ships. They can’t change course or even accelerate. They’re just ice-balls with a few weapons aboard—I mean, so they have a few missiles, so what?”

She didn’t look relieved. I knew I’d failed to explain away this surprise. She stared at the screens in obvious worry.

Looking around, I saw that all of them had that same, funny look on their faces. It wasn’t exactly fear. I’d say it was more a stunned look of people who’d just realized they’re doomed.

“Do you have any orders, sir?”

“How long until the missiles reach us?”

“About two days. They’re very far out. New data is coming in now. The missiles are larger than normal Macro design.”

“Damn it,” I muttered. “Who’s giving them new ideas? I don’t think they could come up with this kind of thing on their own. It’s just too different from their traditional path. Remember the Macros that would just roll into a mine field, blowing up one after another without changing course? Those bastards were scary enough—I’m feeling nostalgic for the dumb robots from the good old days.”

Newcome eyed me. “Perhaps they’re smarter because there are so many more of them in this fleet.”

“Hmm,” I said. This idea made sense, but I didn’t like it. I heaved a sigh. “Call up the reserves,” I said.

Jasmine looked at me. “Already?”

I stared at the developing situation on the boards. The plan was simple, we were supposed to divert the enemy at our system’s edge toward the planets. Then, we would surprise them with moon bases firing on them from long range. They’d be faced with a choice at that point: They could either charge after our fleet while being pounded on their flanks, or they could turn on the bases and try to dig them up, one by one.

But the additional ships changed things. We’d already been faced with too many cruisers to begin with. Now that the comets were in the game, acting like missile platforms, at the very least, we were truly outgunned.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure. Call them out. Launch all the marines we have in transports. Fill every assault ship and regular transport—everything except for the megahabs. Then, send them out here. We’re going to have to throw troops at them.”

Newcome sidled up. “Colonel? Those troops were to protect Earth from invaders, were they not?”

“Of course they were.”

“I’m just mentioning that, since the local governments have made it very clear they require guardians in case—”

“Don’t you think I know that, man?” I demanded. “Earth’s local government isn’t going to matter. We’d placed ground forces on Earth to mop up anything that got past us and managed to land. I don’t care about that any longer. I need to win this battle in space. If their entire fleet defeats ours, and our moon bases, it won’t save a single life to have our ground forces on the planet.”


Newcome stepped away from me. He didn’t meet my eye, and I figured that was probably for the best.

The battle crawled for the next forty hours or so. I tried to sleep and only managed to do so in fits and starts. The Earth government types sent me whining messages, naturally. Every dignitary wanted a color guard of Star Force marines to cover their asses back on Earth, but that just wasn’t going to happen this time.

Every transport we had lifted off from their bases. Andros Island was virtually empty. Altogether, two hundred thousand men were suited up and sent into the skies.

That might not sound like a lot of troops, and compared to other great wars, it wasn’t. In World War Two more men had sometimes been deployed to take a single Pacific island. But out in space, each man cost us a lot to put into place. We had to suit him up, train him, arm him with our best equipment, then fly his ass all the way out from Earth to the cold, dark edge of deep space. Each marine in a battle suit was as expensive to produce and get into action as a jet pilot might have been in the old days—including the cost of the jet.

I planned to use my marines like jet pilots, too. They were astronauts with bombs, piloting one-man spacesuits, each of which was more deadly than any aircraft from the previous century. Viewed as two hundred thousand small spacecraft, the troops would be a substantial addition to my forces.

I had my main force retreat, heading sunward. We passed Pluto and headed toward Neptune, which happened to be more or less in line with our route back toward Earth. I wanted to mass up with the extra transports before we fought the enemy.

It was humiliating. We hadn’t fired a weapon yet, and we were already in full flight.

“Let’s angle around Neptune in a decelerating arc,” I said, talking to the navigational people.

“We’ll barely reach Neptune’s orbit before the missiles reach us,” Jasmine told me. “I’m surprised we don’t just stand and shoot them down.”

“We have to assume the worst.”

She met my eyes and frowned. “You mean…that we can’t shoot them down?”

“Remember the last time they unloaded a lot of missiles in our direction at long range?” I asked. “Each of them turned out to be carrying Macro assault troops.”

“Right, that could be the case here—but so many?”

“We can’t afford to make mistakes now,” I said.

I could tell by her expression that my words seemed unfamiliar to her. She was accustomed to a different Kyle Riggs, one full of bravado and self-assurance. Maybe I’d changed. Maybe these damned machines had me rattled. I hated to admit it, but it was a possibility. The stakes were incredibly high.

We ended up making it to Neptune before the Macro missiles reached us. I ordered the bases there on the local moons not to fire. Their weaponry wasn’t much good against small targets, anyway.

Instead, I rolled into battle the one other surprise I had in store for the Macros—Phobos. They’d never met her in open combat before, at least not with a ship that had lived long enough to pass on any data concerning the vessel’s capabilities.

It was spherical and resembled a rogue asteroid at first glance. What gave it away as artificial was its navigational ability and its surface, which was too regular and spherical to be naturally formed. You could identify the actual Phobos by its lopsided, misshapen surface.

For armament, our Phobos had only one weapon with two primary modes: It could reach out a great distance and crush a single target, or it could generate a pulsing field that smashed every small object that came too close. It was this latter ability I wanted to employ now.

I put the ship directly between my retreating fleet and the incoming barrage of missiles. We watched tensely to see if the Macros took the bait.

In typical fashion, the missiles ignored the giant ship. They glided past, adjusting their courses just enough to skim the surface. Their payloads were intended for much richer targets.

“Tell Captain Zhou she can fire at will,” I said.

Jasmine’s finger didn’t even reach the command table to hail the captain before Phobos’ field was activated. Apparently, Zhou had ordered the defensive field to activate on her own initiative. I thought she’d done it a fraction early—but then, I wasn’t the one watching thousands of missiles buzz my hull.

The effects were dramatic. A shockwave burst from the ship, shown on the screens with a bluish ring that puffed away from Phobos like a pulse of electrical power. The missiles were crushed instantly, turning into chunks of debris. Most of them didn’t even explode. They were simply wadded up like paper.

A scattering of applause went up on the command deck, but I didn’t join in. They’d destroyed about a thousand missiles, but that was only a small percentage.

At first, the Macro missiles didn’t seem to comprehend the danger. The missiles kept flying on their original courses, buzzing over Phobos. My jaws ached from gritting my teeth.

“Come on, come on Zhou,” I muttered under my breath. I wanted the ship to fire again. I knew it couldn’t—not immediately.

When we’d originally gained control of Phobos, there’d been a full ten minute span between the first gravity pulse and the next. We’d improved upon that, but we still had to wait several minutes between discharges.

Those were very long minutes. By the time the second pulse went off, an estimated seven hundred missiles had slipped past the hull.

The second discharge, however, was even more impressive than the first. I think they’d done some adjusting, and the missile swarm was at its thickest point.

“Look at that, sir,” Jasmine said excitedly. “Twenty-one hundred kills and counting!”

I dared to smile. We’d wiped out a majority of the enemy barrage, and they still hadn’t laid a finger on us. Unfortunately, that was about to change.

“Sir…I…”

I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. The missiles were changing course. They were no longer skimming over Phobos. Macro Command had come to the belated conclusion that the small moon was a ship and was somehow destroying their missiles. They reacted the way all Macros did—like angry insects. They attacked the big ship despite the absurd size difference.

Not every missile slammed into Phobos’ hull—but most of them did. They kept coming and coming. Fiery flashes ignited in a blinding series, too fast for the eye to follow. It reminded me of a summer fireworks finale. Dust began to rise from Phobos’ wounded side.

“She can’t take that kind of beating!” I shouted. “All ships ahead full, flank speed. Let’s see if we can—”

We were too little, too late. The giant ship, the pride of our fleet, the captured alien vessel we couldn’t begin to construct on our own, exploded in a cascading sheet of flame. The interior was pressurized, and the released gases and fuels went up all at once. There couldn’t be any survivors.

Phobos was no longer a ship, she was a falling star. We stared at our screens, aghast. There were still missiles coming toward us—not many, but enough to be a danger. And our flagship had been blown out of space.