Conquest (Star Force Series) Read online

  “Are we sure it’s the Macros, Kyle?” Crow asked.

  The screen had returned to its previous settings and now displayed the Venus situation in greater detail. Before I could respond, a tiny white spot grew and vanished on the screen.

  “There,” Major Sarin said. “I saw that one wink out. Something took that mine offline.”

  “Was it destroyed, or did it malfunction?” Crow asked.

  “We aren’t sure of anything,” I told him. “But who else would it be, other than the Macros? The Worms and all the other races we’ve encountered are on the other side of our system, reachable via the Oort Cloud ring. The big Macro fleet, when it came calling the last time, came through the Venus ring.”

  Crow nodded. “I remember. We all almost shat our collective pants.” He rubbed his face and eyes, as if trying to wake up.

  “Get the Admiral some coffee. Black and strong,” I ordered.

  Major Barrera relayed my command to the staffers outside.

  Crow flicked his eyes to me. I could tell he was happy to hear me use his rank. I figured it was the least I could do. Star Force couldn’t afford more internal struggles now.

  “Kwon,” I said, “I need you to oversee the new building defenses. We’re canceling all leaves, everything. We’re canceling sleep too, for the foreseeable future. And close the door on the way out.”

  Kwon nodded and thumped away. He left behind five of us in my office. In case there was going to be any shouting or crying, I didn’t want the staffers outside to spread it all around the base—or the world.

  “What do you want me to do, Colonel Riggs?” Crow asked. “Fly my fleet into the teeth of those machines? If that’s it, I’ll give you two guesses as to my answer.”

  I didn’t reply immediately, as I was uncertain what I wanted him to do. I scratched my cheek. I hadn’t shaved since leaving for the beach. Several days of stubble rasped against the fingertips of my glove.

  “If the Macros are about to come through in strength,” I said, “they could destroy our small space-borne force. Fleet just isn’t strong enough yet to do more than harass the Macro battle fleet.”

  “Right you are,” Crow said. “Hold back and keep building, I say.”

  “On the other hand, we might be able to ambush them if they come through piecemeal. I’d hate to lose that opportunity by holding back now. If some of our mines survive this attack and score hits on their ships, we could finish off the damaged vessels.”

  “Look,” Crow said, “that sounds good, but it isn’t going to happen. They obviously know about our mines. They are sweeping them out of the way somehow. They aren’t going to come through until they know the way is clear.”

  I nodded. “Okay, order your two ships stationed at Venus to move in closer. I want video of these lost mines.”

  Crow looked thoughtful. “Don’t like losing two fighters. We have so few. They don’t even have any mines left in their holds, you know. They are waiting for rotation back to Earth. I’ll send out two new ships to relieve them immediately, with a hold full of fresh mines.”

  I shook my head. “We have to know what they are doing, Crow. Can’t you see that?”

  Everyone looked at him. He wore a stubborn look on his face. Barrera handed him a mug of coffee, and he sipped at it, not responding. I began to wish I’d waited to kick him out of his office a few days longer. We didn’t need this squabble between the commanders doing us strategic harm.

  Crow stared at the screen and sipped more coffee.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking.”

  I took a deep, slow breath. We were both hotheads. Crow gave me time to think about a lot of things, while he drank his coffee. I thought about apologizing. I thought about shooting him on the spot. I thought about unilaterally ordering the ships to press in at Venus—but I wasn’t sure they would do it. Fleet was loyal to Crow. He’d always done his best to hold onto that trump card.

  “Look,” I growled at last, when I couldn’t take it any longer, “I’ll give you back this office and fix your ugly orange carpet.”

  Crow looked at me smugly. There was a hint of triumph in his eyes that made me want to punch him.

  “Very generous of you. But I never liked this orange shade myself. Looked good in the catalog, you understand—I’ve been thinking avocado green, for next time. You yanks like that color, don’t you?”

  “We love it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “All right then, Star Force will build me a new building, with a new office and a new avocado-green carpet. All of which will be billed to the Marine side of the budget. Agreed?”

  My desire to punch him had expanded. Now, I wanted to kill him. I think Sandra and Barrera did too.

  I nodded slowly. I held out my hand to shake. Crow took it warily and we shook.

  “But Crow,” I said as he relayed the orders to his ships. “Don’t ever hold my world hostage over something petty again.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it, mate.”

  He grinned.

  -4-

  The hours crept by and the mines kept winking out up there around Venus. No one had thought of a good reason for them to do so. Crow’s ships had moved in closer to the field and investigated, but the vanishing mines were down inside the atmosphere of the planet. Venus wasn’t an easy planet to investigate. The upper atmosphere was covered in mocha and cream-colored clouds of sulfuric acid. These clouds blew around the planet at about two hundred miles per hour like a continuously stirred pot. Beneath the killer cloud-cover things became nasty. The surface temperature was a cozy nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure was enough to crush a submarine.

  I put the entire base on alert and assigned Major Barrera to kicking everyone’s butt into gear. He marched off and I soon heard sirens and pounding feet all around the base. At lunchtime, the group took a break. The truth was we didn’t have much to do until we learned more. Alone in my office, I received a message from the receptionist.

  “There’s a young woman here to see you, Colonel,” said the voice. The receptionist wasn’t someone I knew yet, but she sounded reproachful.

  I frowned at the intercom. “Who is it?”

  “She says her name is Ping. She seems—upset.”

  I grimaced, remembering her. Had Crow managed to proposition her already? Sighing, I ordered that she be sent up. After I had done so, I reflexively looked to the window ledge where Sandra had spent much of the morning. She was gone. I shrugged, at least I didn’t have to worry about that kind of misunderstanding.

  A few moments later, I heard a loud commotion outside my office door. With my hand on my sidearm, I walked to the twin mahogany leaves and threw them wide. Sandra stood there with an odd look on her face. In her arms she carried what looked at first to be a broken doll. I looked again, and recognized the body. I backed away, despite myself. Sandra advanced. She appeared distraught.

  Behind her, the office staff that had survived the morning sweep of lay-offs were ducking under desks and whispering in every cubicle. I slammed the doors and turned to Sandra.

  “What did you do?” I asked in a low voice.

  “I had to, Kyle. It’s terrible. She’s so young.”

  I looked Ping over. Her neck had been snapped. Her long, black hair hung down, almost brushing the carpet. I eyed Sandra, who was looking at the limp form she held effortlessly in her arms. I was reminded of a housecat who has brought a dead blue jay into the house to show it off. At least in Sandra’s eyes there was remorse, not the pride of a hunter.

  “Sandra?” I asked, trying to sound gentle. Inside, I was a turmoil. “Did you…did you lose your temper?”

  “No, nothing like that. See this?”

  Sandra lifted the girl’s shirt. Underneath, strapped around her thin midriff, the girl had hidden a belt of C4 and a blasting cap. I stared.

  “Don’t worry, I pulled out the mercury cap,” Sandra said. “It was nothing complex.”

  I still stared at the
body and the bomb wrapped around her. “What the hell is this?”

  “I didn’t mean to kill her, but couldn’t let her get to you. I was watching the entrance. When I saw her come in, I moved on her. I didn’t know if she was nanotized or not. My first blow killed her. I only meant to knock her out, Kyle.”

  I looked up at Sandra finally. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “Ping was an assassin?” I asked, still trying to grasp the situation fully. “But I talked to her only this morning. Could Crow have ordered this so soon?”

  “Who else?” Sandra asked.

  I began to pace on the orange carpet, which was now showing many overlapping stains. “I don’t know. It could have been Kerr and his Pentagon boys, making their next move. They tried to take Star Force out last year. Maybe this time, they are taking a new approach. Maybe they want to kill the snake by removing the head.”

  “You’re right,” Sandra said thoughtfully. “It could be a lot of people. How could Crow have known you were going to take over his building today? All the records show this girl was just hired. How could he have recruited her so quickly, then sent her after you?”

  “He couldn’t have,” I said. “These things usually take significant planning. I think Ping was surprised to meet me in person today, and she wasn’t ready to move. But then she put on her bomb and made the attempt. She had to have support to do this. She was an asset placed here by someone.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t just after you, Kyle. Maybe was supposed to kill Crow, or whoever was in charge.”

  I nodded my head. Inside, I felt despair. This was just what we needed today. While the Macros knocked on our doorstep again, Earth had sent a fresh round of assassins after us. And one so young and seemingly innocent, too. For a selfish second, I was glad I hadn’t been the one forced to kill her. I looked at Sandra, and I felt for her. I understood her pain. I’d gone through similar soul-searching when I’d killed Esmeralda, an assassin the Pentagon had sent for me a long time ago.

  “How did you spot her?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” Sandra said. “I…I smelled the explosive on her.”

  I suppressed the urge to react with a look of alarm. I simply nodded. I knew her senses were heightened. In this case, it had allowed her to perform her prime function as my bodyguard. My girlfriend was a freak, but it was best not to think about that. After all, I was something of a freak as well. The differences between us were only a matter of degree.

  I called for emergency personnel and found they were already waiting outside my office door. They checked the bomb and declared it defused. Then they took Ping’s body away on a gurney with a sheet over the face. I let them spread the information that a spy had been dealt with. I knew the rest of the staff would be horrified, and when they learned she was actually an assassin who had nearly bombed the building, their horror would turn to fear.

  Lunchtime had come and gone. I ordered food brought in while we watched the emergency situation unfold out around Venus. I tried to put Ping out of my mind, but it was difficult. I kept seeing her dead, bloodless face.

  I had the roof patched with a barrel of construction nanites, forming a shield which I’d ordered to plane out and form a metal barrier over the entire roof. At least I didn’t have to worry about raindrops soaking the carpet anymore.

  Only Crow, Major Sarin and I still circled the big table. Sandra had faded out again at some point. Her self-appointed task was to be my personal security team in addition to performing general snooping. As she had demonstrated with poor Ping, she was very good at both tasks. I knew she was out there somewhere, probably within a few hundred yards of my new office, ghosting around. I sincerely hope she didn’t bring me any more bodies today.

  “Admiral Crow,” I said, “it’s time to put the Fleet up into orbit. We need them ready to mass. Depending on how this plays out, a quick strike by our forces could be decisive.”

  “It could also be suicidal,” he said.

  “Just put up the ships. We can talk about whether we need to use them or not when the time comes.”

  Crow shook his head slowly. He stared intently at the table with me. “I don’t know, Colonel. Let’s say only one Macro pokes his nose up at Venus. If we fly all our ships after one scout, he can retreat and report back as to our precise strength.”

  I tried not to grind my teeth. “What do you suggest we do then?”

  “I’ll send up two squadrons. Enough to chase off a scout. I’ll even start them flying in the direction of Venus. They can always turn around and run if need be.”

  I didn’t like the idea of splitting our forces, but Crow had a point. We didn’t have any room for mistakes. And the Macros had in the past made judgments concerning whether or not to attack based on perceived strength or weakness. If they calculated they had enough power to wipe us out, they would not hesitate to move. If, on the other hand, they were not sure they had enough strength, they would wait indefinitely. They didn’t like unknowns, and they didn’t take half-measures. They waited for a sure thing, then they always bet the house.

  Crow relayed his orders to Fleet and within minutes ships began to lift off from the island. Darkness gathered over the Caribbean. The rain clouds had thickened, making it nearly black outside. In the gloom, our ships were shadows with gleaming engines. Silver rain trailed out behind each of them as they rose up in single file. They were silent, deadly. But they were nowhere near enough to face the entire Macro battle fleet. I’d once sat in space, facing down that battle fleet with seven hundred smaller ships of my own at my back. I’d calculated their numbers then to be around a thousand. I had been off slightly, as later estimates put the number at somewhere closer to five hundred. But it hardly mattered, as each of their cruisers was worth a squadron of our smallest vessels in combat. We were no match for them. In terms of firepower, they outgunned us a hundred to one.

  “Sir?” asked Major Sarin, staring out one of the big ballistic glass windows to the east. “Is that Sandra—outside on the ledge?”

  I glanced in the direction Sarin had indicated. I saw my girl out there, crouching on a foot-wide strip of concrete four floors up. Rain dripped off her hair and the tip of her nose. She had the attitude of a listening predator. She watched our ships fly into the sky, then tilted her lovely face to stare downward four floors to the ground. From her vantage, I realized she could watch the sky, the base, and me inside my office. With her heightened senses, I knew she could probably hear our conversation despite the thick glass.

  “She likes rooftops, especially during rainstorms,” I said, as if that explained everything. “Since our return from the campaign, I haven’t had time to ask her why yet.”

  Crow laughed quietly, shaking his head. “You sure can pick’em Kyle.”

  Sandra turned her head toward us then. I realized she had heard us, despite the ballistic glass, the rainstorm and everything. She lifted her hand and extended her middle finger toward Crow in slow motion. I chuckled. That was my girl. She was easily the scariest woman, if not the scariest person, on Earth.

  We broke up the meeting at that point, as there wasn’t much else we could do as a team. The office would work well as a battle management center, but at the moment, there wasn’t any battle to manage. I hoped it would be a long time until there would be, but it wasn’t a strong hope.

  I headed out of the building toward the mess hall. I’d grown tired of sandwiches and coffee. I wanted a real sit-down meal and a minute or two to think clearly.

  Behind me on the sidewalk—we actually had sidewalks now, not just open sand and scrubby beach grasses—I heard a splash and a double-thump. I crouched and whirled. The first thought in my mind was that of assassination. I had plenty of enemies on Earth, not the least of which was Crow himself. Was this the moment? The first attempt on my life since returning to Earth?

  It was only Sandra. She stood up quickly, naturally. Her legs weren’t broken, nor even unsteady. She waved to me, smiled, and hurried to catch up.
/>   I looked behind her and upward. I’d just passed by the big windows of my office. She must have jumped down here in a single bound. She’d been physically enhanced much further than the rest of us, due to the combination of nanites and the unknown efforts of the microbiotic aliens. I’d been impressed with her physique and skills in space, but here on Earth with much higher gravity, I hadn’t been sure how she would perform. I could see now she was equally impressive under the pull of a planet’s mass.

  “Join me for dinner?” I asked.

  “Just try to stop me.”

  I reached out my hand and she took it. I walked with her to the mess hall and ordered the best food ever served on a military base. I had turtle soup, followed by a plate of fresh venison. Sandra ordered escargot and a truffle soufflé. Every flavor was marvelous. Of all Crow’s excesses, here was one I could at least enjoy. Sandra and I ate and chatted as lightly as possible. We had a long-standing agreement to try to keep the business of war out of our personal lives. Usually, we failed at this…but not tonight. Maybe it was the very seriousness of our situation that allowed us to suspend talk of weighty things. It was only after a shared dessert of raspberry flan that the subject of our impending doom finally came up.

  “I know you have a plan, Kyle,” she said to me finally as our spoons clinked against one another, competing for the last bites of dessert.

  “I always do,” I lied smoothly. Sandra knew me pretty well, but I could still pull the wool over her eyes on some things when I needed to. It was part of my theory of military leadership that the troops had to believe in the all-powerful nature of their leader. It gave them hope in the darkest of situations. Only I had to live with the truth.

  “What I’m worried about is your self-sacrificing nature. You have a complex about it Kyle. You really do.”

  “Have you been reading magazines again?”

  She flashed me an annoyed glance. “I don’t read magazines. You know that.”

  “Online blogs then.”

  “Articles, I read articles. Do you want me to be a fluff?”