Star Force 12 Demon Star (2 page)

I nodded approvingly. “You’ve been studying up.”

“I was always interested in astronomy, and now that nobody’s trying to kill us, I’m passing the time by reading the latest files.” He lifted his eyebrows to me. “All the latest files.”

I nodded, understanding that he was referring to Marvin’s now-classified report on the alien races and my recent message. “Then you understand the need for discretion,” I said with a lowered voice.

“Yes…”

“Good.” I turned to the holotank and adjusted it, waving him over. “Any indication of more rings, other than those near the alien worlds, and the one we used to get here?”

“No more yet, sir. I had Benson start a gravitic scan, since that sensor system didn’t get damaged in the fighting. The scan is still running. As dense as the rings and stardust material are, that might be the best way to find anything made by the Ancients.”

“Good thinking, Lieutenant,” I said, slapping Bradley on the shoulder. “I can see you’re making the transition to being a commissioned officer well, taking the initiative and maintaining a wider view. Keep it up.”

“Thank you, sir.” Bradley glowed with pride.

“Anything else to add that I can’t learn from your logs?”

Bradley chewed his lip, but eventually said, “No…”

“Then you’re dismissed. See you next watch period.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Bradley?”

“If there is…I mean if this could be a chance…a place to take a break…even if it’s not paradise? Speaking on behalf of the crew, well, we could sure use one about now is all. A break, I mean.”

“Thank you Bradley, and noted. Now, get some R&R—you deserve it.”

“Thank you, Captain.” He gave me a sharp salute and left toward the cantina.

What was it Adrienne had said about hope? Looks like she was right and I was going to have a lot of apologizing to do. Again.

Getting back to business, I looked over our logs. We were down to five ships—
Valiant
,
Stalker
,
Greyhound
and two Nano frigates.

“Ship, patch me through to Captain Kreel on
Stalker
,” I said.

“Channel open.”

“How are your repairs coming, Kreel?” I asked.

All of our ships currently floated in close proximity to a cluster of asteroids, with a mixture of marines, crew and Raptors—minus Marvin—working at full speed to mine and process raw materials into desperately needed parts.

“Slowly, Captain Riggs,” Kreel said. “Lieutenant Turnbull has allocated priority to
Valiant
in most instances, as is proper.”

“Sorry about that, but given the location of our sole Nano factory, she’s correct to do so. It’s better to have the most vital ship fully repaired as quickly as possible.”

“No apology is necessary, sir. I merely state facts.”

“Have you had any luck getting the Nano ships to produce spare parts for you?”

“No, the machine intelligences are not cooperative.”

I sighed. “Their factories have to be programmed in detail by someone with expertise in cybernetic systems, or you’ll never get what you want. Do you have anyone like that?”

“No. We’re all warriors.”

“Damn.” I thought for a moment, but I couldn’t see any easy options. “Unfortunately, Nano ships don’t like it when strange people come aboard, especially if they’re of different races from their own command personnel, or I’d send over some human technicians.”

“Perhaps the sentient robot could reprogram them,” Kreel suggested.

“I’ve already tried that. The Nanos like him even less than biotics. I think they view him as some kind of deformed Macro.”

“Then the Nano ships shall continue with their standard replication protocol.”

“Agreed.”

I’d ordered the Raptor command personnel on the Nano ships to give them instructions to autonomously mine the asteroids and build copies of themselves using their own internal factories. It would take weeks to produce even one more ship, but given years of time and materials, they could build a new fleet for me. It was the best we could do right now.

“I’ll talk to Lieutenant Turnbull and try to get you some more spare parts for
Stalker
, Kreel,” I continued. “We’re going to sit here and rebuild until we’re either at full strength, or something forces us to do otherwise. Any other concerns?”

“No, sir. We live to serve.”

“Glad to hear it. Riggs out.” I let out a long breath after I closed the connection. Dealing with aliens, even friendly ones, made my brain hurt. I suspected I was in for more headaches ahead.

Two hours later, I turned out to be right.

“I’m receiving a message from species number two,” the ship’s AI said.

“Which one is that?”

“The gas giant dwellers, of course,” the AI replied with a hint of testiness.

“Don’t you dare go all Marvin on me, Valiant.”

“Command not understood.”

“Never mind. Let’s call them Whales from now on, shall we?”

The aliens that inhabited the Jupiter-like world had tentacles in various parts of their bodies, but otherwise resembled their namesakes.

“Rename successful.”

The ship’s brainbox hadn’t been updated since we’d fallen through the Eden ring, and it had been slowly developing more and more personality as it drifted further and further from its baseline. I figured the reasons for this were obscure, and I’d already decided not to inquire too deeply.

“What are the Whales saying?” I asked.

“Unknown. Processing power has not been dedicated to translation databases.”

“Then dedicate twenty percent of your neural chains to the task. How long will it take to translate with that level of allocation?”

“Approximately thirty hours.”

“For one message?” I demanded incredulously.

“That includes all the time to populate the vocabulary and syntax databases. Afterward, translations of text should approach near-simultaneity.”

“Right. What if Marvin helps?”

“Far less time will be needed. Marvin’s translation capabilities exceed mine.”

Was it my imagination, or had bringing up Marvin caused a hint of peevishness to enter the ship’s voice?

“Get Marvin on the line, then,” I said.

“Captain Marvin here,” came the robot’s voice a moment later. “I’m very busy, Cody, so let’s please make this discussion a brief one.”

“I’m going to make you even busier, Marvin—and don’t start whining about it.”

“It’s impossible for me to be busier as I’m already working at one hundred percent of my physical and neural capacity. Unlike biotics, I don’t become fatigued, need breaks, or withhold reserves in my efforts. It’s also impossible for me to whine.”

“Not true,” I snorted, “you don’t have a nasally tone, but you are definitely capable of whining.”

“I’m naturally displeased by alterations to my plans. I make rational prioritization judgments based on—”

“Okay, okay, forget about that,” I said. “I need you to reprioritize and dedicate twenty percent of your neural circuitry to building translation databases and subroutines for the Elladan and Whale languages. Work with Valiant and make sure that she’s able to function as an interpreter as well as you are once you’re finished.”

I didn’t want to make the mistake of relying purely on Marvin again. After all, the first time we’d encountered a biotic race, his faulty translation had gotten
Valiant’s
original captain and officers eaten.

“I thought ship repair was my top priority.”

“It still is, Marvin. That’s why I’m only asking for twenty percent. I’m leaving you eighty percent to devote to fixing everything. By the way, did you manage to outrun those missiles I saw chasing you…?”

“Reprioritization complete. Marvin out.”

“…Marvin?”

He’d cut the channel, and my repeated attempts to reopen it failed. We received only automated responses indicating communications were currently impossible. Thinking this over, I wondered if he’d taken my percentages literally, putting twenty percent of his processing power into translations and the rest into repair efforts. It could have been that, or it could have been he was dodging me—quite possibly, it was some combination of both.

I’d wanted to ask him more about the missiles that he’d teased into chasing him, but I figured it was pointless now. He’d report on that topic when it suited him. Maybe he was planning to run the missiles out of fuel or jam them so they couldn’t detonate. Then he could take them aboard and dissect them. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Valiant,” I said, “let me know when that Whale message is translated to a high degree of certainty. Say, ninety-nine percent.”

“Understood. Estimated time to completion, fifty-one minutes.”

“Much better.”

That was interesting. A little high-school algebra in my head told me that Marvin must be more than thirty times as effective as Valiant when it came to translation.

I occupied my time by reviewing what our still-degraded sensors had collected about the complex star system. Ellada, the planet populated by humanoids, was remarkably Earthlike in every detail. It even possessed a moon of similar size to Earth’s, only a few percentage points smaller.

One of the interstellar connection rings orbited at a stable Trojan point ahead of Ellada’s single moon, but there didn’t appear to be any traffic in or out of it. No fortress guarded it either. In fact, other than a few communications arrays, nothing floated nearby.

To me, that meant the ring wasn’t functioning. It might be under the Elladans’ control, and they only turned it on when needed. But as Marvin was the only being I’d ever known to actually get a ring to do what he wanted—sort of—it seemed more likely that they didn’t know how to make it work.

The situation dampened my hopes that their ring would provide us an easy route back to known space. However, maybe Marvin could use it to communicate, or even get it working again, if he would apply himself to the problem.

Ellada’s similarities to Earth made me decide to attempt to communicate with them first. If they didn’t know how to get back to Earth, they at least might be interested in learning about a twin planet in the same galaxy. As soon as we’d affected repairs, we’d head to their world.

I spent the next fifty minutes examining Ellada in detail. A fleet of at least a hundred cruiser-sized and larger ships occupied the Trojan point retrograde from their moon. The area was a natural parking lot, a stable place where only the tiniest of station-keeping corrections were needed to prevent an orbit from decaying. I presumed these vessels were warships as freighters or passenger liners would be constantly shuttling around rather than simply waiting.

In fact, we’d detected plenty of commercial traffic to and from Ellada’s moon and among several asteroids parked in orbit. When our sensors were repaired, I was pretty certain we’d find shipyards on those natural satellites as well.

The Whale planet, designated Trinity-9, was like most gas giants. The massive world was circled by dozens of moons. Three were substantial, and the rest were the size of asteroids. The big ones had installations of some kind on them, and some of the small ones did too, probably for resource collection and defense.

Because Trinity-9 was much closer to us and the Whales built things bigger, I easily found a fleet of perhaps two hundred warships in orbit there too. These weren’t “probable” as I could clearly see weapons on them in the imagery.

I found it interesting that both inner races had substantial military forces. I wondered whether they were enemies or allied against the monstrous race we’d begun to call Demons who lived on a planet near the brown dwarf. It seemed intuitive to believe that the Demons would covet the inner planets and their resources.

Most alien races, I’d found, seemed to want to dominate their neighbors and take their stuff if they could. Not so different from humans, I supposed.

Unfortunately, the brown dwarf was so far away that we could barely see the main planet that closely orbited it. What we could make out was a world larger than Earth by half, with smaller seas.

“Translation complete,” Valiant said, startling me out of my thoughts.

“Run it.”

Text appeared on-screen:

Friendly and peaceful greetings, visitors, in the name of the (untranslatable—name—rendered as “Whales”) Combine. We have many questions and answers to exchange with you. Unfortunately, this star system is in a state of war. We and the (Elladans) are threatened by a race of insectoid creatures we call (Demons), driven by their mad god to attack all within their reach. Take defensive measures to guard yourselves. Depart your current location before nineteen days seven hours pass. We await your reply with open skulls.

I pondered this for a few minutes. “Well, if the Elladans look like Greek gods, I know what to call the brown dwarf. Valiant, designate it as Tartarus. That’s the Greek mythological Hell.”

“Stellar subsystem designated.”

I was about to schedule an officers’ conference to discuss the message when the ship’s voice spoke again.

“Weapons fire detected.”

It always struck me as strange how dispassionate the computer could be when describing its own possible doom. Valiant was pissy when asked to juggle resources, but when she announced a coming battle, she was as a smooth as glass.

-3-

I rushed to the holotank, putting my hands on the cool walls of it. I stared at the shifting lights, but I couldn’t pick out the source of the launch against us. The computer wasn’t showing any trace-lines back to the point of origin.

“Where’s this attack coming from?” I demanded.

The watch-standers on the bridge sat forward and began querying their consoles, but no klaxons wailed, so I forced myself to wait calmly, doing my best to display the proper bearing of a captain.

The image zoomed in until the ninth planet and its moons filled the holotank. Icons appeared—yellow for Whale ships and red for the dozen unknowns that appeared to be firing. Missile tracks reached out from the crimson markers, arcing toward installations on the moons and asteroids, as well as some of the single ships plying the lanes between.