Star Force 11: Exile Read online

  “MARVIN!” I roared, straining my throat with all the power of my lungs. I couldn’t believe it—Marvin had escaped through a window. He always said entering one would be deadly dangerous. Maybe he was lying. More likely he’d been desperate enough to take the chance.

  I set myself and aimed my beamer at the monster holding the trigger down in one long blast. My rifle got hotter and hotter until its safety system shut it down before it melted.

  Unfortunately this pissed the beetle off and it charged me. I turned and leaped for the top of a low cube, bouncing awkwardly off its slick roof and onto the other side. Checking my HUD, I scrabbled to change direction and turned my hopping run toward the squad. “Help me out, marines. This thing wants me for lunch.”

  “On the way, sir!” I heard Sergeant Moranian’s singsong voice, and a moment later eight or nine bounding figures came in sight. “Pass our lines, sir!” she said.

  I kept moving as fast as I could and didn’t slow down until I had reached the friendlies. As soon as I drew even with them they all opened up on the pursuing critter.

  I skidded to a stop and turned to add my firepower. Our ten weapons converged, staggering it, chopping off legs and burning holes in its shell. It lurched toward us but couldn’t withstand our withering fire. It fell with a ground-shaking crunch.

  “Thanks, Pigs,” I said as we gathered around the whale-sized body. I lasered three feet of the thing’s horn off and grabbed the section as it fell. “A little trophy for the dayroom.” I tossed it to Moranian.

  “Great idea, sir,” she said, catching it and turning it over in her hands admiringly.

  “Everyone spread out and look for Marvin,” I said. “He went in that window there. I presume he wouldn’t have done that unless he thought he had a chance to make it back out again. It must come out somewhere…”

  Moranian saluted. “Aye, aye, sir. All right people, quarter and search by twos.” Her eight marines split up into pairs and headed for the four points of the compass.

  “Bradley,” I said on Valiant’s channel, “use your recon drones to look for Marvin.”

  “Roger wilco, sir,” my CAG replied.

  Moranian and I made our way at an easy pace to Marvin’s “laboratory,” one of the larger plazas where he kept all his instrumentation and analysis equipment. Logically, he would head there or for Greyhound. Of course he should try to com us first, but radio wasn’t always reliable in the Square.

  Kwon joined us soon after reporting that Fuller was in a med-bay and should be all right. “He said to thank you for saving his life, sir.”

  I laughed. “No he didn’t, you hulking liar. With the drugs the suit shot him up with, I’m sure he hasn’t even regained consciousness.”

  Kwon chuckled sheepishly. “He’ll say it when he wakes up. He’s a good kid, and he’ll have a solid future in Star Force if we ever get back home.”

  I slapped Kwon on the shoulder, stinging my armored hand. “When we get home, Sergeant Major, we’ll all have distinguished careers…or more distinguished in your case. You too, Moranian. You did good work today.”

  “It’s easy with such a good captain, sir,” she said with what I was sure was a touch of hero-worship in her voice. Nothing wrong with that, I told myself. We’d all been heroic today…even Marvin, if you counted survival as heroism.

  “Anyone seen Marvin yet?” I called on the general channel. Everyone answered in the negative.

  The Pigs and I searched for five or six hours more until our suits were getting low on power, and I was starting to smell my own sweat. Still, there was no sign of Marvin.

  I got Chief Engineer Sakura to send us out a dozen standard power packs, stable emergency batteries that any machine including Marvin should be able to use. Two of them I tossed through the same window he’d disappeared into, two I left in his lab and the rest I ordered set down at various spots within the Square, beacons attached.

  Then we all went back to the ship. What else could we do? I wasn’t going in after him or ordering anyone else to.

  I had Valiant rotate one scout drone at a time in a holding pattern around and around the area with cameras and detectors aimed at the Square. That was about all we could do right now—that and hope Marvin made it back from wherever he had gone.

  I didn’t let my crew see it, but I was worried. Not just for Marvin—for all of us.

  Out of everyone aboard, I accounted him as the most crucial crewmen I had. Without his engineering skills, I doubted we’d ever see Earth again.

  There was a skylight in the roof of my cabin that I could open at times to examine the exterior world. I did so now and lay on my bed.

  Staring up at the cold hard light of the stars, I wondered where in space and time he was.

  “Damn you, robot,” I sighed, and then I fell asleep.

  -2-

  “Another day in paradise with Captain Cody—the Explorer Riggs,” my girl Adrienne said with irony as she leaned over onto my side of the bed and kissed me. She sighed. “How long are we going to wait for Marvin?”

  I put my hands behind my head and leaned back on my pillows returning her playful tone. “I’m trying to decide, Miss Turnbull. This is the first day I haven’t been up at the crack of dawn running the search. It’s been nearly a week, and the excitement of action is wearing off. People are getting surly again and resentful of Marvin. We can’t wait forever.”

  “I’ll be happy to be moving on,” she said, leaning toward me.

  “You sure?” I asked earnestly as I reached over to run my fingers through her long golden hair and stare into her azure eyes. “Without Marvin we’ll be groping in the dark. Heading back into danger, too. Maybe there will be more killing and dying.”

  Adrienne shuddered, incidentally causing some interesting jiggles. “None of us really like that part—except the marines, maybe. You just like the challenge of pitting yourself against the universe and winning.” She grabbed my hand from off her head and held it tight. “You’re not so good at losing.”

  “I never will be. But losing won’t crush me if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Adrienne shook her head, hair cascading down over her face as she rolled her naked body on top of me with a smile. “No, but I might.”

  We made love then, and it was fantastic as always. One of the perks of being parked on a planet in relative safety was free time and a feeling of security. The lighter gravity made things fun, too.

  There was one bad thing about making love with Adrienne. Most of the time I was able to remember who I was with, but every once in a while her dead sister Olivia’s face seemed to intrude into my mind’s eye.

  Fortunately, that didn’t happen today.

  Afterward, we talked over breakfast. “We’re down to less than a week to repair Valiant,” Adrienne said. “After that, we’ll have nothing to do but wait around.”

  “Excellent work, hon,” I said. “I’m going to do a quick inspection.”

  Adrienne rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why you bother. Everything’s running fine. They all know their jobs. Take a break.”

  “That’s when things go wrong—when the boss starts slacking off. Besides, it helps people to know I’m watching.”

  She shrugged and stretched like a cat. “You sure you don’t want to stick around for another hour or so?”

  I watched as she deliberately tossed her hair and made eyes at me.

  “I’d love to,” I said, “but duty calls.” I finished my coffee, kissed her deeply once more and headed off to take a look at the progress on the ship.

  Three months had passed since Valiant set down on Orn Six next to the city of golden cubes we called the Square. Marvin had made progress understanding the place, at least by his own account, but I hadn’t seen a lot of evidence of it. He hadn’t provided one piece of alien tech in any way useful for helping us to get home or defend ourselves against a hostile universe despite pulling bits of stuff out of the windows. Every week until this last one I’d sat
through a briefing and every week I’d left the table more frustrated.

  The only real benefit we’d had from the Square was a new version of the Star Force game of pool. We’d set up a pool room by building a temporary structure in the Square of roughly the right shape and size. The Pigs had come up with this, not Marvin. The metallic walls returned shots with no loss of speed and several of the windows happened to connect to each other so they could be used to make exotic plays. We’d slapped a roof over the area and covered some of the windows to keep from losing balls. They even had a team version now, which transformed the play-style into a hybrid of lacrosse and dodge ball.

  I needed the pool room as a release for my people. It served to stop the Pigs from killing each other out of boredom. I’d kept them busy at the mining site a mile away digging ore and hauling it to the factory in cargo rovers we’d built, but even with double shifts marines always seem to find ways to cause trouble. Kwon was having to knock heads more and more often as the weeks passed. I knew I’d have to get Valiant going soon or risk a serious breakdown in discipline. The monsters and the search for Marvin had only provided a temporary relief valve.

  Fortunately, we’d found abundant rare earths and radioactive ores so we could rebuild Valiant into whatever we wanted. What I’d decided on was a combination battleship and drone carrier, a battlecarrier instead of a battlecruiser.

  The bigger version of our ship had been born from experience. I’d learned my lesson with fragile frigates. Our factory could make equipment and brainboxes but not more personnel. I couldn’t afford to lose pilots in smaller ships. Therefore, my new strategy had to be prodigal with machines and miserly with human beings. I wasn’t going to put people into flimsy shells again. In that sense, Hansen had been right to protest my old strategy even if he’d misjudged my motives.

  I’d briefly toyed with the idea of trying to get Hoon to hatch some new children and train them as crew—I was willing to bet he had more eggs with him—but they would take years to reach adolescence and the logistics of modifying the ship for them was prohibitive. No, there was simply no way around it. We had to preserve our numbers with an almost paranoid obsession. Every crewmember was precious.

  That’s why working closely with my key staff—Hansen, Adrienne, Sakura, Kwon and Bradley—I’d laboriously reconfigured Valiant. She still looked like a thick manta ray just bigger. Valiant now sported four heavy lasers plus four anti-proton beams alongside them and twenty-four secondary-sized beam pairs. We also had twice as many small point-defense pairs, all of which could depress to nearly touch our own hull, allowing them to target boarders on the skin.

  Combined with drone capability, heavier armor and a system of layered configurable magnetic shields, Valiant was now as tough, flexible and survivable as we could make her.

  Of course, everything comes at a price. The new Valiant was more sluggish than she used to be and even slower than her original form before we were blown through the ring into the Panda system. Also, no matter how configured, Valiant never had enough power. Though we’d installed four times as many generators and capacitor batteries, Valiant could suck at least ten times the juice of the old battlecruiser configuration and when pushed to full capacity she gulped fuel like an American muscle car with a lead-footed teenager at the wheel.

  The improved bridge was my first stop during my tour. The CAG, Chief Bradley, was on duty supervising technicians, who installed the last of his upgraded combat flight director stations. Two watchstanders monitored flights of the new Dagger drones patrolling above. We exchanged salutes.

  “How’s it look?” I asked.

  “All good, sir.” Bradley had gained confidence and was running exercises with his drone directors and growing into his new position. “The Dagger designs are very capable.”

  “What about your people?”

  “Eager for battle, sir,” he said.

  “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Of course, it was easy to be eager for battle when your weapons did the dying for you, but that wasn’t a sentiment I would ever voice.

  “Sorry we haven’t found the robot,” Bradley offered.

  I sighed. “Not your fault. We tried sending sensors and comms packages with cables into the window and even a small flying probe the eggheads made. Nothing. The scientists are still trying, but I’m not risking any lives by sending a live person through.”

  “I understand, sir. No robot is worth a human being.”

  I didn’t comment on that, either. Bradley’s feelings were natural for the average crewman but a leader had to take a broader view. Marvin was a sentient citizen and I couldn’t put him below humans just because he had neural circuitry rather than an organic brain. Besides which, he was more valuable to our overall chances of survival than any other crewmember.

  I took Bradley along as I visited the new flight deck at the top of the ship. It fed two launch chutes that led upward to stern-facing exits on the manta-shaped battle carrier’s wings. We could store sixty-four Daggers internally and service eight at a time.

  The internal bays were heavily automated and required only one controller to supervise the semi-autonomous systems that repaired, refueled and rearmed the drones when they weren’t packed tightly in their storage niches. Black Nano-style tentacles hung from overhead and were set up to move the drones and ordnance from place to place as needed. Bradley took pride in pointing out all the recent improvements. I looked over the hive of activity with approval, waving at the controller in her smart-glass booth. Everything appeared to be in order and even now she loaded another drone into its launcher and ejected it into the airless sky above Orn Six for combat patrol. We’d been keeping drones up continuously the whole time, watching the Raptors and the ring they guarded on the other side of the planet as well as keeping an eye out for Marvin.

  The Dagger currently loaded into the launch bay was a reconnaissance model. I’d directed that Adrienne and Sakura, my engineering specialists, develop and build special drone variants for missions such as scouting, personnel recovery or suicide attacks. The latest drone design was more modular so that, for example, a laser could be quickly pulled off and replaced with a sensor package.

  After stopping by the flight deck, I proceeded to the lowest level, the gun deck, where we could access most of the beam turrets. Unlike Raptor ships, which put big weapons in their sharp noses and densely packed point defense to the rear, Valiant now carried her heavy firepower on her curved lower hull with an even layer of point defense all over. In battle she would angle her nose up slightly, allowing the heavy guns to bear on a target while shielding the more vulnerable flight bays. When retreating she could reverse the process, angling slightly nose-down, which would let most of her firepower aim backward.

  The beam turrets were semi-automated as well, each having a combat brain. From this deck technicians could seal up the outer clamshell armor over one weapon at a time and repair them in relative safety inside the ship even during battle.

  When I entered, I waved the beam tech crew back to their seats around a table. They appeared to be taking a break. Steaming cups of factory-fake coffee competed for space with plates of equally fake donuts on the tabletop. In fact, most of the food we had now was synthesized by our factory. It was nutritious but it never quite tasted right. Still, you got used to it.

  “Looking good, Chief,” I said to Master Chief Cornelius, the senior gunnery noncom, a no-nonsense woman with a permanently furrowed brow and matching frown on her face. She was muscular and fit from maintaining her heavy equipment, and spoke with a mild Austrian accent. She also had a balcony you could do Shakespeare from. I made sure to keep my eyes off her chest after one lingering glance.

  “Thanks, Skipper,” she replied with a sudden sparkle in her eye. Somehow she managed to look both grim and amused at the same time. “We’ll give the bastards hell next time.”

  “Damn right, Chief. Better guns, better armor…old Valiant will get us through with all of your help.
” I snagged a donut and raised it to them, then took a bite. Awful. I was glad I still had some of the dead captain’s stores, including an extensive spice rack. Such luxuries made life bearable for Adrienne and me, privileges of my position.

  The techs saluted me with their coffee cups and I smelled the tang of something alcoholic. Sweeping my eyes over them, none seemed drunk so I decided to let it pass. I made a mental note to have Sakura give the systems a thorough diagnostic. Considering some of the benders I’d been on, I could hardly condemn them for a morning kickoff as long as it didn’t affect their duties.

  Engineering was my next stop. This was the heart of the ship and encompassed the factory room with its manufacturing plant and the engine room. The engine room was a really long, narrow space lined with fusion power plants, reactors, capacitors and huge power flow regulators. While brainboxes had brought computer miniaturization near its limit, some things had to be big. Running terawatts of energy through cables and buses meant lots of heavy alloys laced with exotic elements all thickly insulated and shielded.

  My engineer, Chief Warrant Officer Sakura, stood and greeted me as I entered. I noticed she did seem a bit more relaxed lately. She and Hansen had been a couple for a while now. Obviously getting laid regularly relieved stress. It did for me, anyway. Whatever the cause, her engineering work seemed to be going well.

  “What’s the good word?” I asked.

  Sakura’s face remained unreadable, but that didn’t mean much as her attitude seldom varied. She was always serious and matter-of-fact. “The usual glitches, but nothing we can’t handle,” she said.

  “You’re confident this new design will fly well?”

  “I’m confident, but we should take her up as soon as we can for trials.”

  “And that’s…”

  The engineer pursed her lips. “Four days, maybe five.”