The Dead Sun(Star Force Series #9)

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We reached the first machine with alarming speed. Our line crashed into theirs and passed them. They were chasing Potemkin, and we were flying right into their teeth.

I flipped around and went into a spin.

“Sir?” Kwon shouted. “You okay?”

I controlled the spin with difficulty and zoomed toward the nearest machine.

“We can’t let them get by us, Kwon. They’re going after Potemkin. They’ll release their warheads and destroy the ship if they get in close enough.”

Kwon hadn’t taken such drastic action to slow down. He shot past the Macro. As soon as he realized I was going to be tackling it alone, he hit the brakes hard. I heard him grunt in the proximity-chat channel.

I didn’t wait for him before making my approach. I couldn’t afford to. If just one of these machines made it in close and took Potemkin out—it was unthinkable. Machines like this one had killed two of my children in the past. I wasn’t about to let them finish my unborn baby as well.


At the last second, as I entered the covering mist that surrounded the machine, I think it knew I was coming. I’d hoped the aerogels and chaff it had floating around it in a nimbus of reflective shielding would keep it from sensing me—but it whirled around turning from the ship that was its target.

Its small maneuvering jets stopped firing. The chassis spun and metal appendages extended.

I’d hoped it wouldn’t simply set off its charge to kill me, and now I knew I’d gambled correctly. I wasn’t a big enough target. Why spend its nuclear payload to kill a few marines? The human ships were its true enemy.

Since we were both now in a fog of multi-hued, semi-gel material, our lasers flared but didn’t reach one another. I thought he might have scored a hit, scarring my belly armor, but all my systems were go. I pressed in close, urging the surfboard under my feet to give me a final push.

I hit him going at about fifty miles an hour, if I had to guess. I had the brains to tuck my chin down so I wouldn’t snap my neck on impact. I rammed a shoulder into the machine’s chassis, and we both went into a spin.

Fighting hand-to-hand in space can be an otherworldly experience. I heard the initial crunching collision through my suit, but afterward I only heard my own harsh breathing, the radio chattering in my ear and the metallic straining sounds of my exoskeleton as I moved.

Both of us reached out metal limbs. Mine were thicker but shorter. Both of us were covered in a generous layer of armor. We latched on, and sparks brightened up our tiny portion of space in relative quiet.

I saw the enemy’s central laser cannon. It was swiveling seeking to get a target on any portion of my armor. I knew that if it burned a hole through my suit, I would depressurize and lose a limb at the very least. I struggled to climb over the machine, to crawl onto its back where the gun couldn’t sight on me.

The Macro seemed to sense my purpose and clamped down with a few of its mantis- like limbs. I heard them sawing on my armor, gouging it. I reached for my laser projector and managed to get it at last. I pressed it against the Macro and burned it. The beam punched through the Macro’s skin and a small puff of plasma came out, but it didn’t stop operating. These machines didn’t die easily.

Those arms—they were winning the struggle. I couldn’t get any leverage. It was one thing to be strong, but it was another thing to be unable to push against anything. I found myself being dragged around back to the belly of the beast. It wanted to get me right on top of its laser and burn me through at point blank range.

I struggled and changed tactics. Instead of trying to burn its guts enough to kill it, I put the head of my laser against its projector and depressed the firing stud. As the tip glowed, my visor dimmed, and after a one-second burst the enemy laser popped. The robot’s primary weapon was useless.

Whooping with triumph, I pushed my laser against its body again and burned new holes in it. After a time, one of the limbs holding me drifted away, limp.

“I have you now,” I said.

Not a second later I regretted those words. A huge weight landed on my back. Another Macro.

I tried to move, but I was pinned.

“Sorry, sir,” Kwon’s voice buzzed loudly in my headset.

My com-link was set to pick up platoon chat, automatically increasing the volume for those that were close at hand. Kwon sounded like he was breathing down my back—because he was.

“Get the hell off me, First Sergeant,” I complained.

“I thought you might need some help, but this one is pretty much dead. Didn’t put up much of a fight, huh?”

“Nah,” I said, as he finally climbed off my back. “It went down easy.

“Disappointing.”

We left our first Macro and rode our surfboards to catch the next one. This time things went more smoothly. We worked together and killed it fast. We launched from that floating metal carcass just in time to see a brilliant flash fill space around us.

Three other silent explosions followed in rapid sequence.

“What the hell was that?” Kwon demanded.

“They self-destructed,” I said, breathing hard. “Dammit, they must have realized we were going to win and changed tactics. Take out as many as you can, that’s their motto.”

“That’s my motto, too,” Kwon said.

“Gaines?” I called over platoon chat. “Give me a head count. How many did we lose?”

No one answered me. Kwon and I drifted in silence for a time while I repeated the message. Finally, I contacted Jasmine.

“Have you got us on your sensors?”

“Yes, Colonel,” she said. “We’ve been tracking you from the beginning. Your suit is losing pressure. It’s a slow leak but potentially fatal. Please return to the ship. We’re coming back to pick you up.”

I hadn’t ordered her to reverse course, but I figured she had a better picture of the overall battle than I did at this point, so I didn’t argue.

“How about the fleet? How many ships did we lose?”

“Forty-eight ships were lost or badly damaged. To keep flying at full speed, we’ll have to abandon a few more.”

“Forty-eight…” I said. “How many were carriers?”

“None, sir. But we did lose three battleships and a dozen cruisers. The rest were small ships, most of them fighters.”

“Not bad,” I said. “Not bad at all!”

Jasmine didn’t say anything. I knew that others often had a lower threshold for losses than I did. In my math, I figured that we’d lost about ten percent of our ships, plus Phobos. The big ship was the worst loss. Overall, it had been a bad fight but not a disaster. I still had an effective force, enough to be a credible threat to the Macros. That was what I needed most.

“Jasmine,” I said, “we seem to have lost Major Gaines. Do you have him on track? Or his remains, at least?”

“No sir. We have no transponder from his armor, nothing. His brainbox might be out and his generator dead—if he’s alive at all.”

I knew what she was suggesting. The odds were pretty good that Gaines had been caught up in the midst of one of those nuclear explosions. We all might have died if the enemy hadn’t been spread out to avoid our defensive fire. All the hunter-killer teams of marines were miles apart from each other.

“So the missile attack is over, and they’ve got nothing else coming at us for the time being. Let’s do a little search and rescue.”

Jasmine wasn’t happy about it, and Newcome was even less so, but I held firm. They wanted to run, break out of Neptune’s orbit and flee for Earth. I didn’t want to get too far from the enemy’s main fleet.

“They’re the hounds, and we’re the hares,” I told them as I drifted through space, checking each hunk of cold, dead debris. “The key is to keep them chasing us while our big guns shoot them in the ass. We don’t want to get too far ahead of them. We don’t want the hounds to get bored and wander off.”

“But if they catch us, they’ll chew our backsides off,” Newcome pointed out.

“I’m well aware of that, Admiral. You should see my armor.”

The search continued for another half hour. I was about to give up when I heard a tiny voice in my headset.

“Did you hear something, Kwon?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My belly is growling. When are we going to take a break and get something to eat?”

I squelched his channel and listened again. Stopping my surfboard, I tried to hold my position in space and drift.


My suit hissed. My radio clicked and crackled with background radiation from the massive gas giant below.

Then, I heard it again.

“…mayday…”

I checked my signal finder and pinpointed it. I flew to the position and found a dark spinning object. It looked like a crab going around and around slowly.

I gently touched what looked like a leg. I caught him as gently as I could. The first thing I did was connect my umbilical to his suit, powering it. I was low on oxygen, but I figured I had enough to make it back. I pumped air, heat and power into his suit.

The suit lights glimmered a faint, flickering blue: The color of an officer’s armor.

“Gaines, you shirking bastard,” I said. “I do believe you’ve been absent without leave for damn close to an hour. If I ever catch you smoking weed in the latrine again, I’m busting you down to private, mister.”

“Yes, sir,” he croaked. “F*ck you, sir.”

I smiled and carried him back to the battleship cradled in my arms like a big steel baby.