Star Force 12 Demon Star (39 page)

A lesser man might have been awed. He might have fallen to one knee or begged forgiveness. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to do those things. But I held firm, and I kept my tone breezy.

“Sure thing,” I said. “What can I do for a friend?”

“You and I are not friends, Cody Riggs. You are my nemesis, my sworn enemy.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

“My body is polluted. My being is consumed and turning to waste. I can feel the rot. Have you ever been diseased, Riggs?”

“Not lately,” I admitted. “My people have defeated our diseases.”

“You give me an idea…” Astrolyssos said. “Perhaps, at the end of my long list of vengeances, I shall design and release a microbe capable of exterminating your kind alone.”

Another chill rippled through me, but I refused to be intimidated.

“Suit yourself. I thought you were calling to negotiate. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

There was a pause. That was the hook, sinking in to this giant fish’s mouth.

“What negotiations are possible?” Astrolyssos asked.

I grinned. This time, it wasn’t a smile. My expression was a dirty grin—the look a man wore when he’d cheated at cards and won the jackpot.

“Well,” I said, “come on, Astro. You don’t think I’d release an agent without having a cure for it, do you? But never mind about that. I can tell you’re a creature of conviction. You’re not interested in a cure—you want your righteous revenge.”

“You claim to possess a cure? I’ve not found one…”

“Naturally not. Don’t take that as some kind of slight against your intellect, by the way. It’s easier to make the key when you’re the guy who designed the lock.”

“You didn’t design this plague,” he said, “your robot did. That damnable, evasive machine…”

“You must be talking about Marvin,” I laughed heartily, and crewmen in the primary passages looked at me as if I was insane. “You describe him well. If he wasn’t so useful, I’d have dismantled him myself by now.”

“Let’s discuss this cure…”

“No!” I boomed. “Don’t even go there, Astro. I’m telling you, that’s a bad path. If you let me get the upper hand on you now, who knows where it will lead?”

“You dare to suggest—”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying that when one creature admits their life depends on the actions of another, well, that relationship becomes servile real quick-like. That’s why I’m urging you to avoid the temptation. After all, you’ve had a long, entertaining lifespan. Time to go out in a blaze of glory! Show us measly humans what it means to—”

“Cease your prattle, human!” boomed Astrolyssos. “I demand that you give me the cure!”

For about ten seconds after that, I walked up and down the ship’s central passage, saying nothing. I wanted him to sweat.

“Is your receiver operating?” he said after several seconds.

“I demand an answer, Riggs! I know you’re there, and that you can hear my—”

Grinning so hard my face hurt, I started talking again.

“Oh hey, you still there?” I asked. “I thought you’d made your decision.”

“I have. I want the cure. Immediately.”

“Ah…” I said. “Then let me lay out my terms.”

“Terms?”

“Yes. This is a negotiation. A bargain. A peace treaty with material benefit to both sides.”

“Ancients do not negotiate—”

“Hey, could you hold on for about twenty minutes, Astro?” I asked. “I’ll call you back. I’m kind of hungry, and I need to—”

“The unimaginable insults you heap upon me. To think that a miniscule creature such as you would dare to consume food while the great Astrolyssos dies in space… I can’t think of a being I loathe more than you, Cody Riggs.”

“Uh huh, that’s very interesting, but I’m low on time. Do you want to listen to my terms or not?”

He was quiet for a time, and I started to get worried. What if I’d gone too far? What if I’d tormented this megalomaniac cloud into a wrathful fit?

“Describe the nature of this deal,” Astrolyssos said at last.

My impossibly wide grin returned.

I laid out my terms. He was to leave the three planets in this star system alone, and he was forbidden to harm any human anywhere. In return, we’d give him the antidote to his plague.

“I have an addition to the deal,” Astrolyssos said as I ended my carefully worded proposal. “If I agree to this, I want to consume the creature that I most hate.”

My mind went into overdrive. He could only mean me.

It had all been fun and games, but I’d gone too far. Perhaps old Astro was smarter than I thought he was. Perhaps he’d realized that I was as vulnerable as he was.

How could I say no to self-sacrifice in the face of the loss of billions of lives? After all, I’d awakened Astrolyssos, and I was therefore at least partially responsible for the situation. Could I, in good conscious, refuse his demand to eat me?

Troubled, I heaved a sigh.

“You drive a hard bargain, Astrolyssos,” I said at last. “But I’ll do as you ask. To save twenty billion innocents, I’ll die in their stead.”

“Admirable, but wrong-headed. I want the robot. I yearn, with all my being, to consume that thing you call Marvin.”

“Ah-ha,” I said, blinking and thinking hard. “I understand the sentiment…but that’s going to be a tall order, Astro my boy.”

“You will comply, or I’ll devour this fat planet near me. I have the strength to do so and perhaps the second, hotter world as well. After one planet is gone, perhaps you’ll be more amenable to my terms, slave.”

By this time, my pacing had carried me to the aft observation deck. Any crewmen present had retreated and left me to talk to myself in private.

Beneath the frosted windows in the floor, the coffee-and-cream disk of Trinity-9 floated. I stared at it, pondering my next move.

I’d tormented these Whales so much already, but that was nothing compared to what would happen to them, in their billions, when Astrolyssos drew close. The Ancient would begin sucking the atmosphere right off the gas giant, distorting the world with a fantastic tidal shift.

I began thinking of ways to trick Marvin into Astrolyssos’ grip, and I felt sick doing it.

-33-

“Marvin?” I called out into the void.

I was met with silence.

“Marvin? I know you can hear me. I have something here I don’t understand. Something that needs investigating. Can you help me?”

Nothing came back. Not even static. The ansible systems were eerily silent at times.

“It’s a piece of Astrolyssos, Marvin. A portion separated from the main mass. It’s here, but I can’t get close.”

Marvin had told me he was coming back to Valiant the day before when I’d summoned him—but he hadn’t shown up yet.

I was worried. What if he’d somehow gotten wind of Astrolyssos’ terms? He’d never come close to me again.

“It would be highly inadvisable to come into direct contact with the star-matter, Captain Riggs.”

“There you are,” I replied. “Like I said, I need your help.”

“Where is this star matter, Captain?”

“Right here, near Valiant. If you’d only return—”

“I’m already here.”

I stopped breathing, then resumed again.

“Do you have your stealth system on?” I asked.

“Obviously so.”

“Why have you been so quiet? You didn’t—”

“I know about the enemy’s terms, Captain.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling ashamed. “I’m sorry, Marvin.”

“What was the plan? The plan to get me all the way into Astrolyssos’ grasp, I mean?”

“There wasn’t really any plan,” I said, “he was going to extend part of himself for you to infect with an antidote—you do have an antidote, don’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“Right. I figured as much. He was going to extend part of himself, and when you flew out to administer the dose, he’d grab you.”

“Ah,” Marvin said. “You’re right, that’s not much of a plan. So, what are we going to do now?”

“That’s all up to you. You must make a choice, a moral choice. I’ve made them before and so has my father. You’ve seen us go through these things. In this case, you must weigh your continued existence against the fate of every being in this star system.”

“That’s a difficult decision,” he said.

“Yes, it always is. Do you know what you’re going to do yet?”

“Yes. I extrapolated this outcome. I’ve gamed the scenarios. I know what I must do. Tell Astrolyssos I’m bringing the antidote to him. Ask him to extend his hand.”

“Are you sure about this, Marvin?”

“Yes. Very sure. Oh, and Cody, you’ll find a memento from our past in your quarters later. I hope it pleases you.”

“A gift?” I almost choked. I felt like such a heel. Like a master coaxing his pet closer to the gun barrel. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“But I did. I’m going now. Give your father my best wishes.”

Shaking my head, I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. “Marvin, hold on. I think there must be a way to get out of this without anyone dying. Maybe we can double-down on the venom you injected into Astrolyssos…”

I stopped talking, because the channel had closed.

After several tries to connect again, I gave up. I went to the bridge. Hansen was there, and he shook his head.

“Your crazy robot popped up,” he said, “but he’s off again. Looks like he’s going to play chicken with the cloud.
Greyhound
sure can run fast.”

“He called me Cody,” I said. “He never calls me that.”

I stared at the screen, and Hansen gave me an odd look that I ignored.

We watched as the streak of light that was
Greyhound
flew directly toward Astrolyssos.

“He’s getting too close to that whorl of plasma,” Adrienne said.

When it seemed to be the last moment, Marvin darted away and slid past the monstrous hand. Then instead of escaping, he drove deeply, right into the heart of the mass.

Everyone on the bridge gasped—everyone but me.

There was a wink of light, a flare-up as
Greyhound’s
engine core momentarily brightened the being known as Astrolyssos. Seen in that single, flickering moment, it seemed to me that the Ancient had a shape to it. A shape like that of a humanoid spirit. A ghost of what it had once been, perhaps a million years ago.

But then the impression was gone. There was only stardust and plasma again.

Marvin had been destroyed.

* * *

“You
knew
?” Adrienne demanded for the fourth time. “You knew what he was going to do, and you let him do it anyway?”

“I had no choice,” I said. “I cut a deal with Astrolyssos. Marvin bought everyone’s life with his sacrifice.”

She was disgusted, as were some of the others. She left the bridge in an emotional state.

“The Captain’s job is the hardest,” Hansen said next to me. “For what it’s worth, Cody, I think you made the right call. I’ll miss that crazy robot, but if Astro will keep his deal, it was worth it to the rest of us.”

I nodded tightly, but I didn’t trust myself to speak.

Of all the individuals I’d brought along with me out into space, the ones I’d felt most responsible for were Adrienne, Kwon and Marvin. Now I’d managed to lose one of them. My father, I suspected, would never forgive me. The robot had been like a son to him.

“Uh…sirs?” Bradley said, interrupting the group.

“What is it?” I asked, turning toward him and catching sight of the holotank. I squinted at it in disbelief. “Bradley…is that what I think it is?”

“I believe so, sir,” he said in a hoarse voice. “That’s a ring—the ring we just came through—and it’s moving.”

We stood frozen in place. We’d never seen anything like it. Such velocity, such total impossibility.

“If Astrolyssos could throw a ring at us, why didn’t he do it earlier?” Adrienne asked.

“Maybe he wasn’t strong enough before, when he was dying,” I said in fascination. “Or maybe Marvin’s antidote rewrote his DNA—I don’t know—but he’s doing it somehow.”

The ring, the one that connected this region of space to distant Tartarus, was sweeping toward us. Oddly, it spun as it came. It flashed, reflecting the light of the twin suns every ten seconds or so. Like a twirling coin spinning on its edge, the ring came directly toward us.

“Evasive action!” I shouted. “All engines ahead full, take us toward the suns.”

The helmsman jerked the controls, and we were thrown violently until the inertial dampeners and supporting nano-arms kicked in.

The engines howled as thrust was applied cold. I was dimly aware of this and a dozen other distractions. People were rushing to battle stations. Shields were being deployed.
Stalker
, with less capacity for acceleration, was falling behind
Valiant
.

The ring fell away at first—but then it began to gain.

“It’s changed course!” Hansen shouted.

“This isn’t possible,” I said as I watched.

“But it’s happening,” Hansen said, “you should have let it die, Captain! You sacrificed Marvin for nothing. That monster is breaking the deal!”

His words spurred me into action. I used the ansible to call out to Astrolyssos.

“Traitorous Ancient!” I shouted. “Talk to me, the man you have wronged.”

There was no reply. I fiddled with the gain and tried again.

“Dishonorable dog!” I called. “Don’t you dare to face your victim?”

“I should destroy you for those insults. Be careful, lest I forget myself in my rage. Perhaps that’s your plan…yes, I see it. Subtle and spiteful. You must hate me more than do the stars themselves.”

Frowning, I wasn’t following Astro. Had he gone mad? Taking some kind of injection from Marvin, an untested medicine created by a crazy robot…anything was possible.

“Stop that ring!” I demanded, but it still gained on us.

We flipped from course to course, pouring on every ounce of speed we could we even split apart from Kreel’s slow-moving ship.

“Sir, it’s caught
Stalker
!”

I stared, and it was true. The Raptor ship couldn’t escape. Like a vast maw, the ring swooped down, and the two contacts merged.

Stalker
was gone.

“Was it destroyed?” I demanded.