Conquest (Star Force Series) Read online

  I left Major Barrera in my office, with orders to monitor everything and call me back in if anything changed. He nodded without looking away from the big screen. I left him there, confident the situation was in good hands for now.

  Crow hurried to catch up with me out on the sidewalk. I was thinking hard and heading toward Socorro. I hadn’t flown my personal ship since I’d been back, and it was about time I got into this game personally.

  “Kyle,” Crow said at my shoulder.

  I glanced at him, expecting another hail of jokes at my expense. I was surprised to see a worried, haggard expression on his face.

  “Look,” he said, “we have to pull it together. I’m serious. We’re all in this together, and we’re all going to die this time if we cock it up.”

  “Agreed.”

  We were walking side-by-side now. I’d slowed down a bit, but kept moving toward the collection of circular pits we used as a landing field at the southern edge of the base. They looked like blast-pans from an aerial perspective, but since our ships usually used gravitational repellers to lift off and land, they weren’t used that way. The low walls of concrete around each landing pit mostly served to shelter crews and cargo from the weather. They also helped manage traffic. If a ship was told to land in pit eighteen, everyone knew where they were headed.

  I heard a sound behind us. A thump and a splash. I glanced back, not really surprised. Crow’s reaction was much more dramatic. He stopped and whirled, eyeing Sandra who now walked behind us. She nodded to him coolly, and he nodded back. She wore her raincoat and a black fedora. Maybe she’d grown tired of having rain running down her face.

  Crow started walking with me again. Sandra shadowed us about five paces behind. She reminded me of a Secret Service agent, trailing dignitaries while they had a private conversation. I knew Sandra could hear everything we were saying, but by staying behind she gave people the illusion they were speaking with me privately.

  Many powerful men had bodyguards, that was nothing new. In my case, I only had one lovely agent, but that was all I needed. Now and then, Crow gave Sandra a quick, worried glance over his shoulder. No one liked to have her behind them. Everyone knew she could probably kill them before they could move. That was the beauty of the arrangement.

  “I’ve got something I need to show you, mate,” Crow said, keeping his voice low.

  “Can it wait? I’m going to set my factories to produce defensive materials.”

  “Your factories? Don’t you mean Star Force’s factories?”

  “Excuse me.”

  Crow threw up his hands. “There I go again. Sorry. Let’s start over on the subject of factories. I’ve got more of them.”

  For the first moment of the entire conversation, he had my full attention. Crow smiled. Some of his natural smugness began to shine through again.

  “Yeah, you heard me right,” he said. “Did you think you were the only one with a secret base on this island? The only difference is I’ve managed to keep my base an actual secret.”

  I heard a muttered curse behind us. Neither of us glanced toward Sandra, who was obviously listening in.

  Like Sandra, my first reaction was anger. But I quickly realized that was a foolish response. After all, hadn’t I built my own base of Nanotech power? More importantly, if Crow had factories he could commit to the defensive effort, that would strengthen our position against the Macros. We could shout about who should have told what to whom later on.

  Crow watched all these thoughts and emotions play out over my face with amusement.

  “How many do you have?” I asked.

  “Do you want to come see it? My holiest of holies? My inner sanctum?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to get married.”

  Crow produced a harsh laugh. “Don’t worry. You aren’t my type, mate. Come on, let’s take your ship.”

  We’d reached pit eighteen. I hopped over the low concrete wall and walked up to the ship. Crow and Sandra trailed behind. I told Socorro to open her hatch and Crow followed me up a short ramp. Sandra hurried quietly after us.

  I ordered the ship to create a third chair inside the bridge. Crow climbed onto the raised gleaming shell that had contoured itself into the shape of a crash seat. To normal people it would have been uncomfortable. But nanotized Star Force personnel didn’t care about hard surfaces against their backsides.

  “No safety harness?” Crow asked, half-joking.

  His seat, being a makeshift facsimile created by the ship, looked more like a steel bathtub than a real padded seat. There were no belts or buckles. Before I could answer, Sandra spoke up.

  “Socorro,” she said, “restrain Admiral Crow. Secure him to his seat.”

  Six thin black arms rose up, whipping like steel tentacles. They grabbed each limb and the last two crossed his chest. He was held firmly to his seat.

  “Happy?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” Crow said. “This reminds me of a dentist I once knew in Sydney.” Turning back to me, he said: “Shouldn’t give your girlfriend the keys, mate. Bad policy, that.”

  Crow was referring to the Socorro’s command permissions. Sandra was able to order the ship to do things, including flying it in my absence. Sandra opened her mouth to make another snappy reply, but I raised my hand. “I’m the commander on this ship. Socorro, loosen Crow’s restraints. Allow him to adjust or remove them by touch or command. They should function as automated support systems, not shackles.”

  “Options set,” said the ship.

  “Now, Jack,” I said. “Tell me where to fly.”

  Crow gave me the coordinates. We took off and within a few minutes were hovering over the northern edge of the island. We’d never done much with the land up here, it was mostly undeveloped swamp and forestland. Bahaman pines ruled the area, standing out among sprays of tall grass and expanses of sand. Gliding down over a wetland area Crow had us set down in a small body of water.

  I went with it, only mildly surprised to be coming down in a pond. In order to have hidden a base for this long, Crow had to have put it underwater or underground. There were simply too many flyovers on Andros Island to hide it for any length of time in any other way.

  To my surprise, the pond we descended into opened up and turned black as we came down into it. I had the external cameras on and was able to watch visually during our descent.

  “Ah,” as I said, nodding to myself. “There is no pond, is there?”

  “Give the man a prize!” Crow said, chuckling.

  We continued to descend. Lights glimmered below. I saw concrete and fluorescent lamps that automatically sensed our approach and flickered into life.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sandra demanded.

  “Nanites,” I explained. “Crow made a false pond with a surface of nanites. As we approached, it opened. Like a giant version of our melting walls aboard any ship.”

  “It looked so real.”

  Crow leaned forward, plucking away the tiny black arms that attempted to restrain him. He slapped at them and they reluctantly retreated, as per my instructions. “That’s the genius of it,” he said proudly. “There is some water involved. I have the nanites pool up about an inch on the surface of the roof. When a ship comes down, they bud up in the center and push it away automatically. You’re not the only one who can program a mass of nanites, Kyle.”

  I nodded. I had to admit, Crow had me beat in the area of deception. “When did you build this place?”

  “Quite a while back,” he said. “Remember when you first announced war on the mainland?”

  “As I recall, they announced war on Star Force.”

  “Well, in any case, I was worried they would get all our factories. I’d already stashed one by then. Since that time, I’ve built more with the first one.”

  I craned my neck around to look at the sneaky bastard appreciatively. “How did I lose count of a factory?”

  Crow shrugged. “Remember all those ships we lost fighting the Macros? O
ur original ships? They all had factories of their own you know, every one of them. Now, what if the Macros knocked out a few of those craft without destroying them utterly. Without ruining the factory component….”

  “You found one of our downed ships and recovered the factory without telling me about it?”

  “Salvage-rights mate. One of the oldest laws of sea, you should look into it.”

  “Okay,” I said, shedding complaints and arguments as quickly as they popped into my mind. They didn’t matter now, I kept reminding myself. “What the hell have you been doing with these factories all this time—what’s it been, two years?”

  “Nearly that long,” Crow said. “Well, for the most part, I’ve been building more factories.”

  I got up out of my seat and put my hands on my hips. I smiled at him, and he slowly grinned back.

  “You magnificent bastard,” I said. “I’ve never felt like hugging you before.”

  “I’m hoping you never do again,” Sandra said. “What are you two so happy about?”

  “I’ll show you,” Crow said. “Open up your ship, Kyle.”

  I touched a section of Socorro’s inner hull. The wall and part of the floor melted away. A moment later, a dulling gleaming metal ramp formed leading down to the concrete floor.

  “This is where the budget and materials have been going, isn’t it?” I asked. I thought about the extra materials Star Force had been swallowing. All the double-accounting and extravagant prices were suddenly making sense to me. Crow had been hiding massive shipments of materials for his pet project. Building factories didn’t take a lot of bulk, but they took more precious metals and time than anything else we could produce.

  “Exactly,” Crow said. “I didn’t hire a hundred extra purchasing clerks to feather my nest with trinkets.”

  “Just factories?” I asked. “Is that all you’ve been building?”

  “At first, yes,” Crow said, “but—well, let me show you.”

  We all stood on a dark section of stained concrete. A single factory was in evidence. The maw at the top of it was aimed upward, clearly waiting to be fed materials through the opening that mimicked a pond overhead. Like every one of these strange systems we called ‘factories’, it was a spheroid about twelve feet in diameter that sat in the center of the structure. It resembled an old-fashioned steel kettle, but the surface was uneven, full of ripples and bulges that hinted the machine was loaded with unimaginable components. The strangely twisting internals made me think of a man’s guts pressing out against a thin, metal skin.

  In every direction around us shadows hung. The pool of bright light we stood within made the darker regions impossibly dense. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the single factory in the lit region.

  Sandra gasped, however. “Kyle? Do you see them all? They are fantastic!”

  Crow looked at her and smiled. He made a slow waving motion with his left arm. The lights came up then, revealing a vast area. I turned around, taking it all in. The area resembled a parking garage with a triply-high ceiling. Round metallic columns of what looked like construction nanites stood, holding up the roof. The columns undulated in shape, reminding me of three-foot thick termite mounds. The floor was concrete, but roof was all metal—all dully gleaming masses of constructive nanites.

  What I saw between those columns wasn’t more factories, as I had expected. Instead, my eyes feasted upon ships. Nine sleek, beautiful ships. They looked like birds of prey nesting here in the dark.

  “They are my design,” I said. “My destroyers.”

  “Indeed they are, mate,” Crow said. “Fully-armed, this lot. Not like the ragtag force we threw together to face the Macros the last time they came into orbit. Every ship in the squadron has three heavy guns. I’d say any three of them can take down an enemy cruiser easily.”

  Getting over my wonderment, I whirled on him and grabbed up a wad of his shirt. “You could have deployed them,” I yelled in his face. “You could have put them into the sky when the four cruisers came down and went on their bombardment run over Earth. Instead, you sat back and put up a token force for show. You let my men die up there fighting ship-to-ship!”

  Sandra moved in a blur. It was as if she had waited for this instant all her life—perhaps she had. She moved behind Crow, grabbed up his arms with her small, steel-like hands. Crow reacted violently. He twisted away and whirled to face her. He was strong and fast, but not fast enough.

  Crow froze when he realized Sandra had placed one of her incredibly sharp blades at his throat.

  “Nanites can’t save you if your head is on the floor, Jack,” she whispered into his face.

  They were both panting. I decided it was time to intervene. “Let’s stand down, you two.”

  “Let me do it, Kyle,” Sandra said. The two had locked stares. “He let Gorski die up there on the Jolly Rodger. Gorski, and a hundred others like him. I want to cut the good admiral.”

  I knew Sandra was firmly in the grip of one of her blood-lusting moods. I’d seen it before while fighting Macros. I had to move carefully to talk her down.

  “You are by no means the first who’s had that wish, Sandra,” I said, keeping my voice calm in the hopes it would calm them both.

  “You’ll have to take a number for the privilege,” Crow said.

  I eyed him. He didn’t sound as if he were as worried as he should be. Then I saw it.

  “Sandra, behind you,” I said.

  She bound forward, spinning around in the air before she came down. Something long and dark snaked forward from the nearest of the destroyers. In the excitement of the combat, it had reached for her. Three thick fingers clicked together where her body had been a moment before. The arm itself was as thick as a tree trunk while the fingers were like black metal fire hoses with minds of their own. The arm rose up like a rearing cobra and darted forward to catch Sandra. She slashed at it and sprang out of the way. A spray of white sparks lit up our faces. One of the fingers was now about a foot shorter than it had been.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “That’s enough you two. Stand down! We’ve got billions of people to worry about. Get your heads on straight, that’s an order.”

  Crow waved back the arm. Sandra stood behind me with both of her knives in her hands. Crow and Sandra were breathing hard. Their eyes were wide and possessed by a wild light. I reflected that I’d been foolish to bring these two into close proximity. Neither was the best at self-control.

  “I’m an Admiral,” Crow reminded me. He rubbed at his throat, where he was indeed bleeding from a thread-like cut. “A Colonel doesn’t command an Admiral.”

  “I told you I would cut you,” Sandra said over my shoulder to Crow. She dipped her head close to my ear then and whispered: “You don’t order me around, either, Kyle. You know that.”

  I sighed. Normally, I would tell them to shake hands, but I figured someone would be minus some fingers afterward.

  “Okay,” I said to Crow. “Tell us how long you’ve been hiding these ships. And how many do you have?”

  “He’s got nine,” Sandra said. “Can’t you see them all?”

  I shook my head. “I only see one factory. You said you built more. I have to know what assets I have if I’m going to win this fight, Crow.”

  Admiral Jack Crow looked irritable, but resigned. “Yeah. That’s why I brought you and you’re delicate flower of a girlfriend out here. So much for gratitude.”

  I felt Sandra bristle behind me. I held up a hand again to prevent another outburst. “Just give me the numbers.”

  “You have to understand, Kyle. When you came down in those Macro ships I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have these ships manned. I had no trained crews for the destroyers yet. I didn’t know if we could take them down, especially with green crews. Just getting pilots out here would have taken longer than the battle did in the end. I—”

  “Cut the excuses and give me some numbers,” I said.

  “All right. On the top floor, we have nine sh
ips here. All the ships are on the first floor. Easier to fly out, you understand. The factories are building another squadron like this one.”

  “Makes sense. What about the factories you spoke of?”

  “On the floor below, we have twenty-one more factories. This one is special,” he said, walking over to the unit I’d seen first. “It’s the first one, but that’s not why it’s special. It’s my preprocessor. It takes in raw materials, refines them a bit, then distributes the partly digested product down these tubes to the factories below. That speeds up overall production, you see.”

  I walked around the unit, inspecting his setup. In spite of myself, I was very impressed. “You aren’t a computer architecture expert, Crow,” I said. “Who helped you with this design?”

  He cleared his throat. “I had a little help. Yeah, sure. I worked with General Kerr. He has a thousand computer geeks like you to back him up.”

  I looked at him sharply. “Pentagon people?”

  “Further out than that.”

  “Langley?”

  Crow shrugged. “Spooks come in many flavors.”

  “Do they know about this installation?”

  Crow smiled. “No. But they know something like it must exist.”

  “How the hell did you get them to help you? Without them knowing what was really up?”

  Crow looked modest. It was an odd look for him. “It was nothing, really. Just a bit of deception. They think I’m programming your machines at your base. I traded them some components for weapons and guidance systems. Brainboxes, sensors. But never a factory of their own. They are still dependent on us for any real production of Nanotech.”

  I frowned, disturbed. Crow had been busy. But I supposed I should have expected that. He was a proactive person with ambitions that bordered on the delusional. In my long absence, I should have realized he’d try something like this.

  “What were you doing with all these ships?” I asked. “Building them up in secret? Why?”

  “I wanted Fleet to be strong. I’ve always said that.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “I know him,” Sandra said. “He intended to take over the world when no one was looking.”