Star Force 11: Exile Read online

  Moranian marched to the dayroom now and again loudly proclaiming, “Make way for the captain!” Funny, back in the academy, or even here on Valiant after I had taken over, I’d enjoyed that kind of deference. Now it was getting a bit embarrassing. Unless it was needed in a crisis, where the practice was designed to allow the captain to move unimpeded through the ship and not lose one precious second, the practice seemed pretentious.

  When we arrived at the dayroom, I saw a surprising number of marines inside. I estimated about half of the ship’s total complement were present, which meant all of the off duty people and perhaps a few on-duty troops were there. Some had to be missing their rack time, so I hoped this was important. For some reason neither Kwon nor Gunny Taksin, the two most senior marines, were present. Whatever was going on seemed important to the grunts, so I put on my best commander’s smile and nodded. “What’s this all about?”

  At the narrowest end of the room on the wall I could see a rack with a sheet hanging on it covering something three feet long and cylindrical. “We thought you’d like to see our newest trophy,” Moranian said, and then called in a parade-ground voice, “POST!”

  On the walls of the dayroom were mounted various objects from Valiant’s adventures—stuff from before my time that I had paid little attention to plus some things I recognized such as the big shards of Litho crystal encased in impervious clear plastic or the skull of an ice shark from Hoon’s water moon. At Moranian’s command, Corporal Fuller made a precise right-face and stepped up to the fabric cover, placing a hand on it.

  “In honor of the recent surface action,” Moranian began, “and his personal efforts that resulted in more than one marine’s life being saved, we hereby dedicate this trophy to Captain Riggs.”

  “Riggs’ Pigs!” barked the room’s occupants in unison. I felt a thrill of martial pride as Fuller yanked the cover off to reveal the horn I’d cut from the beetle-thing, now buffed and polished to a high shine.

  These were good guys. They were blooded troops now and they had grown up under pressure just like I had stepping up and doing everything I’d ever asked of them even to the last full measure of those who hadn’t made it.

  Maybe Moranian’s feelings were purely innocent, but even if they weren’t—even if, as the cynical side of me said, this was all a ploy of hers to get into my pants—I couldn’t disrespect the rest of them.

  Focusing on that and taking a breath, I walked forward to run a hand over the hollow object. “Are we sure it’s not loaded?” I asked with a grin, drawing an explosion of laughter. “Seriously, Pigs, thank you. I’m honored. But it wasn’t me that brought the monsters down. It was you and your kick-ass teamwork. Although I’m sure Fuller will be a bit less froggy on the next mission.” That line invited more chuckles aimed at the corporal.

  After the laughter had died down, I put on my no-nonsense face. “All right, marines, fun’s over. Back to work. I’m sure you’ve already heard that we’re getting underway soon. With everyone pulling together, we’ll make it home. Carry on.”

  With that I left them, avoiding eye contact with Moranian on my way out. That was the way to do it. Don’t stick around too long. Get in, get out, and get on with it.

  “Valiant, where’s Kwon?” I asked the walls as I walked down the corridor.

  “Sergeant Major Kwon is attending General Sokolov in stateroom thirteen.”

  Right. I’d forgotten about that guy with all the other things demanding my attention. He must be done with the medical exam by now, and I trusted Kwon to keep a close eye on him and not get confused by his uncertain status. “Valiant, where is Doctor Kalu?”

  “Doctor Kalu is in the science laboratory.”

  I took the next left and climbed a ramp. Passing through two decks and a long corridor, I approached our scientists’ work area.

  It was no longer as cramped as before with the new ship design. The three human brainiacs still complained they didn’t have enough room, enough equipment, or enough command-level attention. As if I didn’t have anything else to do…

  Fortunately I’d been leaving Adrienne to deal with them most of the time. She was much better with whiny civilians than I was. Then there was the matter of the Kalu incident that my girl had witnessed—before she was my girl, fortunately. Better that I keep my distance from the sexy scientist. She was entirely too enticing, with her exotic looks, sultry accent and voluptuous figure so different from Adrienne’s slim body.

  Damn. I had to quit thinking about Kalu. It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting all I needed in bed. I guess we Riggs were born with wandering eyes…or maybe it was a result of being in charge. Biologists would say the alpha male is driven to spread his genes among multiple females to perpetuate his bloodline. Too bad for me the alpha female seemed driven to defend my genes against the encroachment of any other.

  Forcing myself to be professional, I stepped up to Doctor Benson, the senior scientist. Chang and Kalu seemed engrossed in some kind of analysis. Chang glanced at me but Kalu turned deliberately away. She was probably still miffed at my rejection of her advances.

  “Do we have any information on Sokolov yet?” I asked quietly.

  “We haven’t had long to run our tests.”

  I waved off his objection. “Just tell me what you know so far. In layman’s terms.”

  Benson sighed. “He’s a nanotized human about fifty years of physical age. He shows signs of mild malnourishment and stress but should recover rapidly.”

  “Remind me, what effect do nanites have on aging?”

  “They seem to retard deterioration and optimize bodily processes but don’t affect getting old per se.”

  I knew that Sokolov’s apparent age at the time the Nano ship took him away was similar to his age now within a few years. “So you’re confident in that fifty-year age estimate?”

  Benson furrowed his brows. “Yes, barring some unknown technology.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Doctor. Keep analyzing, and tell me if you find anything out of the ordinary—anything. This man spent more than two decades somewhere while his body only aged a couple of years, and I want to know why.”

  I left the eggheads to their research and decided to take a closer look at Sokolov myself. Stateroom thirteen’s door stood open, and I could see Kwon’s body blocking it as I approached.

  “Get out and give me some privacy,” I heard the general’s voice snap from around my Sergeant Major.

  “Sorry, sir, but I have orders. You aren’t to be left alone.”

  I tapped Kwon on the shoulder and slid around him. “Thanks, Kwon. I’ve got it from here. Post a guard outside to make sure the general isn’t bothered.”

  With the big man gone and the door shut, I turned to Sokolov who seemed like a bone-tired man. While I was sympathetic, I also thought maybe the best time to get some answers was before he had a chance to rest and think about how to spin things. I wanted his story unedited.

  “All right, sir,” I said. “I’d like to hear your tale. What happened to you after you left Earth aboard the Alamo?”

  Sokolov stood and stared flatly at me, tugging at the plain new smart cloth coverall he’d been issued.

  “First,” he began, “let me say I object to being stripped of my rank insignia and treated like a prisoner.”

  “General, you’ve been gone for more than twenty years. We have no way of knowing what kind of influences you might have been under. What would you do in my position?”

  Grudgingly, Sokolov nodded. “I understand. But…” he waved a hand at his plain clothes.

  I cleared my throat. “Valiant, reprogram General Sokolov’s clothing to appear as a plain general officer’s uniform as of the day he departed Earth.” I wasn’t going to give him a modern uniform if I could help it. I wanted to make sure everyone remembered that even though he might be a general—maybe—he was from another era. My authority was precarious enough without any new elements to undermine it.

  Sokolov’s outfit blurred and reorganiz
ed itself into a simple, outdated uniform. He looked down at it and smiled slightly. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Now please, sir. I need to hear your story.”

  The man relaxed slightly and then waved me to a seat in the only chair. He began to pace as he told me his tale.

  -5-

  Sokolov ran his hands over his clean fresh suit. He seemed fond of it already. It must feel good to walk in clean clothing again.

  “I remember hating your father as I was carried away by Alamo,” he began thoughtfully, “but I got over that emotion in time. Once I learned to operate the ship, I realized he wasn’t any more at fault than I was myself. Nano ships had rigid protocols, and I couldn’t expect them to respect my authority any more than they might respect his. Alamo had simply grabbed me and left Earth with me aboard because I was the nearest available command candidate.”

  Struggling to recall the details of Dad’s stories about Sokolov, I raised my eyebrows in guarded skepticism but kept silent. Dad had told me proudly how he’d screwed Sokolov, switching places with the arrogant man when Alamo demanded command personnel aboard to fly from Earth to its next unknown destination. Being tricked in such a manner would have pissed me off, and from my experience people didn’t just let go of hatred…not unless some other emotion came along to take its place.

  “You don’t believe me,” Sokolov said, reading my expression. “I guess being alone for so long gave me time to think—at least in the many days between crises with nothing else to do. Besides, I eventually found something else to occupy any vengeful thoughts.”

  “And that would be?” I asked.

  “Patience, Captain Riggs. I’ll get to everything in my own time if you please.”

  I frowned, but did not object. I wanted the information and would probably learn more just by listening and observing. I could probe later.

  Sokolov continued. “For the next several days we traveled. I learned the limits of my new prison and how to transform it into a ship of war. During that time I didn’t see where we were going. Fortunately I eventually discovered Colonel Riggs’ modifications, especially the nanite display on the walls. Once activated, I was able to watch as the swarm of Nano ships accelerated through several rings. To this day I have no idea which rings they were—but eventually I plunged into the atmosphere of a gas giant.”

  “A gas giant? Are we talking about the planet of the Blues?”

  “Blues? I don’t know of any ‘Blues.’”

  “They’re aerogel creatures that live on a gas giant in the Eden system. They were the ones Star Force came to believe created both the Macro and the Nano fleets and turned them loose on other biotics. After a lot of stuff I won’t go into, Dad eventually nuked them to try to keep them from interfering in our efforts to get rid of the Macros.”

  “Sounds like your father,” he said. “That’s all very interesting…but gas creatures? I saw none.”

  His attitude had shifted. He now seemed to be irritated as if I’d interrupted him with irrelevancies. I felt that he wanted to get the preliminaries of his story over with and reach the good part.

  “Perhaps these Blues were controlling the fleet,” he said, making a waving, dismissive gesture. “Certainly, I wasn’t in charge. I hadn’t been able to establish contact with any other ships. I suspect now that Alamo was restricted by some special external protocol as the way she was acting did not agree with the experience Marshal Crow had described in his commanding of a Nano ship.”

  Crow had been the original commander of Star Force in Sokolov’s time—at least that’s what he’d declared himself to be. Dad had always viewed him as a co-equal in charge of Fleet while Dad was the Marine branch’s commander.

  “Somewhere within the gas giant’s atmosphere, we must have gone through another ring because suddenly I was allowed to communicate with others in the Nano fleet. We could not change course or influence the intentions of the other ships, however. It hardly mattered, as I will explain.

  “We’d arrived in an unknown star system with six planets. The ring we’d transited orbited a life-bearing world—I found this out the hard way soon enough—and the Nano ships immediately headed for its surface. Of course, all I knew at the time was what the colored-metal wall display told me. Once we approached the surface, Alamo forced me into a different chamber ignoring all my commands. I soon found out why when an enormous, angry black-and-white bear entered the room.”

  “We met those creatures,” I said appreciatively. If Sokolov had bested a Panda in one on one combat, he had my admiration. “We call them Pandas. Although as we found out the hard way, they’re not at all cute or cuddly.”

  “Yes. Vicious animals, I thought at the time. Furred masses of teeth and claws. Fortunately, Alamo had never taken away my sidearm, so I immediately shot and killed the thing. As soon as I had defended myself, Alamo allowed me back into the control room and I apparently regained all my command privileges. I realized that I had passed the test again, but I was the only one.”

  “You were the only human to fend off the Pandas?” I asked incredulously.

  Sokolov nodded decisively. “Out of over a hundred Nano ships in my fleet, no other humans retained command of their own ships. All the other command personnel were apparently beaten—and probably eaten—by those thousand-pound carnivores. They must not have had firearms with them.”

  “But our people would have been nanotized!”

  “I wasn’t, and perhaps some others weren’t either. As I recall, your father had to persuade his ship to nanotize him. It wasn’t automatic. Not back then.”

  I sat back, thinking. My understanding of the exact situation so early in Star Force was a bit hazy and lacking in detail. I mostly studied the battles not the little stuff. I did remember Dad saying something about getting nanotized to allow him to interact with other people without his ship freaking out with paranoia. And Pandas were big and nasty enough to beat even nanotized human beings in hand-to-hand combat if the people had no weapons. I decided to accept his story with a grain of salt, so I waved for him to proceed.

  “Over the next several days it looked like the bears sorted themselves out by trying to figure out what had happened to them like we did that first time on Earth. Imagine their confusion when they tried to talk to me! After a few attempts, I declined to communicate further preferring to remain silent lest these bears somehow take action against the one ship among them that did not contain a creature of their sort. I would bide my time and wait.

  “I did test the limits of my command over Alamo and found I had quite a bit of leeway as long as I didn’t contradict anything the rest of the fleet was doing. This would seem to support your theory that someone else was giving the fleet orders. Thus, I was stuck watching as the fleet rose to confront the Macros that came through the ring behind us though I was able to maneuver to avoid the worst of the casualties.”

  I ran through the sequence in my own mind comparing it to my theories. As I’d suspected, the Nano fleet had ended up going through the same ring Valiant and Greyhound had been sucked into beating the Macro fleet there, but not by much.

  Sokolov continued talking. “When we’d lost over half the Nano ships, our fleet broke off. Whether by some intrinsic protocol, external instruction, or by order of a bear commander—I do not know which. It seemed obvious we’d been defeated and someone was saving what he could.”

  “What happened at the Panda world?” I asked. I thought I knew where this battle had taken place. I’d guess it was at Tullax 6, the world below the ring we’d fallen through. That was where Adrienne and I had first encountered the Lithos among the dead Macros.

  “From what I could tell, the Macros landed and started their usual ground campaigns by planting domed factories and relentlessly taking over territory. While this was happening, our reduced fleet of forty-odd ships moved to the fourth world in the bear’s system. By this time, I had enough of a sensor and display system rigged to tell me the planet was hot, wet and inhabited by
both bears and another birdlike race, which seemed to be in charge.”

  “Raptors,” I broke in. “In fact, before the day is out you’ll probably meet some.”

  “You’re allied with these savage aliens?” Sokolov asked, his eyes growing intense.

  “Not exactly. It’s complicated. We tried to help them fight off the Lithos, a common enemy. I’ll explain later—but I’ll say now that we barely won our own battles with the rock-creatures. The Raptor homeworld lost more than a billion people, and some of them blame us for the way the battle was fought. But at least one faction among them seems to like us, and a few of those will be arriving in about…” I checked my chrono. “Sixteen hours. Please, go on.”

  Sokolov took a deep breath as if calming himself, smoothing his brow, which seemed to always be furrowed into an expression of intense suspicion.

  “By this time,” he said, “I’d started a dialogue with the bears in my fleet using the ships’ brainboxes to perform crude translations. I managed to talk Alamo into locking the doors and stopping the tests. Your father pioneered that script.”

  “Right,” I said thoughtfully. “Using the script must have been what allowed you to avoid the fate of the Centaurs.”

  Sokolov looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What?”

  “Remember the Nano ships that first came to Earth with Centaurs aboard?”

  “Of course I remember. I was a general then, not egg in my mother’s gut.”

  I stared at him for a second. The man wasn’t an easy person to like.

  “Anyway,” I said, “people have always wondered why the Centaurs didn’t rewrite the Nano programming the way my father did. If they had, they might have kept the ships under their control and stayed alive. But with an endless number of humans coming in to challenge them—well, they were bound to lose eventually. They never even figured out how to get the ships to nanotize them.”

  “The Centaurs are stupid.”

  “Not really,” I said. “They just come from a less technological culture. If a company of Cossacks—for example—had been picked up by the ships centuries ago they would have fared no better.”