Conquest (Star Force Series) Read online

  I glanced quickly at Crow. He appeared slightly embarrassed. If I had to guess, I’d say that Sandra had hit the nail on the head. I shook my head and walked back toward Socorro. Crow and Sandra followed, keeping a wary distance apart.

  “Admiral, I demand that you put these nine destroyers under regular Fleet command,” I said, standing on the ramp. “Move them to Fort Pierre and get them crewed up and ready to fight. In addition, bring home any other ships you might be hiding and not telling me about.

  “There may be a few more…” Crow admitted. “But once I show my hand, the eyes in the sky will know about this base. The secret will be out forever.”

  I nodded. The governments of the world had slowly built up dozens of satellites that just happened to pass by our latitude on a regular basis. Supposedly, they were for communications and the like. But we knew better. They were spying eyes, and they were tolerated for now. One thing was for certain, there was no way we could field nine new, large ships out of a pond without someone noticing. The reason why all that mattered is they had once tried to take our island away from us, to gain control of Star Force and our Nano technology. I didn’t think we could afford to worry about that now, however.

  “We have to commit now, Jack,” I told him. “All the chips are on the table this time. If the Macros get to Earth, you’ll be as dead as the rest of us and your glory days will never come.”

  “Agreed,” Crow said. “What do you think we should do with the rest of the factories while we wait for the Macros to make their next move?”

  “Keep building destroyers,” I said. “As fast as you can.”

  -9-

  I flew Socorro to my own secret base full of factories. Like Crow’s base, it wasn’t such a secret anymore. Before I got out of my ship, I dressed myself in one of the surviving battle suits I’d designed and utilized to great effect during our recent return journey to Earth.

  We put down in one of three circular landing pits set up outside the base. There were thirty laser turrets ringing the base perimeter now, many of them squatting atop a shed with a factory inside. Every one of those thirty projectors tracked Socorro as we made our final approach. I’d set these turrets to ‘extra-paranoid’ due to the strategic importance of the factories they were protecting. It was unnerving to have them aim at me, but I felt it was necessary. Even though they recognized my ship and who was in it, I knew they were thinking hard, trying to determine any excuse they could to burn me out of the sky.

  We walked from the landing pits to the base gates. We were challenged at the gates by my marines. Most were American, but there was a number of Indian Ghatak troops mixed in. I’d hand-picked these men for loyalty and their suspicious natures. The guards at the gate opened a dissolving curtain of nanites and waved us inside after a few terse questions.

  “We aren’t going to fight someone today, are we Kyle?” Sandra asked warily. She watched the marines who stared back in stony silence.

  “Not today,” I said. “Unless the Macros make a move, I’m going to spend the day programming.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Will there be any time for a break, later?”

  I smiled at her. “We’ll meet up for dinner, I promise. In the meantime, you don’t have to sit around with me while I talk to the factories.”

  Sandra twisted her lips. “I know you too well. You don’t want me distracting you while you are trying to program.”

  I shrugged. “Sadly, programming is best done in solitary confinement.”

  “If we weren’t all about to die, I would complain—but instead I’m going to let you work in peace.”

  “Great. I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’ll take up bird-watching.”

  I could tell she would be boredly twitching her tail all day. Like all commanders, I hated to see talent sit around idle. I had a sudden thought.

  “How about I have you work the com-links and monitor communications for me? Tell me what’s happening. Relay to Major Barrera a report about Crow’s stash of ships. Tell him he’s bringing them in to Fort Pierre. Let him know what to expect.”

  She agreed and walked away happily toward the communications shed. I watched her go, my eyes lingering on her shapely form. Had the microbiotics somehow perfected the musculature of her body? I wasn’t sure, but I thought she might have lost five pounds of fluff and had it turned into muscle. It didn’t seem to matter anymore what she ate, her metabolism had been heavily redesigned. If I ever ran into that race of microbes again, I figured I owed them one.

  At the base of every laser turret was a shed, and inside every shed was a factory. These were identical in size and function to the ones Crow had built and secreted away on his own. I looked at the laser turret with my hands on my hips, reflecting on the two very different approaches Crow and I had taken concerning the protection of our most precious commodity. Overall, I had to give Crow the blue ribbon. Deception provided better security than armed defense—as long as one kept the secret.

  There was no one in Shed Six when I entered. I looked around the room. There were pallets of supplies. I’d always insisted we maintain a stockpile of raw materials to keep the machines busy. These days with Fleet being strong again, Nano ships made regular deliveries, pouring the raw materials into the maws up on the roof. Tubes ran upward from the top of the factories central spheroid to the roof of the shed where the materials intakes were. An output port was on the side of every laser turret, built to yawn open or squeeze closed like a metal orifice. Right now, they were closed up tightly.

  I sat down on the programmers stool and began conversing with Unit Six. I ordered them all to link-up and shut down any production that wasn’t immediately useful to defense. It was a shame, really. They were engaged in the production of a dozen useful goods—useful in peacetime, that was. Medical equipment was the primary export we had on the island when we weren’t building up weaponry. The Nanos had quite an extensive knowledge of the human body after having spent nearly a century dissecting specimens of our species. A brainbox, sensor kit and a set of three whipping arms were enough to do pretty much any surgery people cared to attempt. Combined with a generous helping of medical nanites, they could save a lot of lives normal human medicine couldn’t cope with. But programs like that would have to go on hold now. With the Macros entering our skies again, everything had to be thrown into defense. Everything.

  Over the past few weeks, I’d reviewed our tactics against the Macros. One element that had been surprisingly effective was boarding efforts by our troops. In effect, my Marines had operated like independent spaceships in the final battles. The Macro cruisers as currently designed were not well-suited to stopping a mass attack by extremely small opponents. They usually only had one big gun on a belly turret. They also possessed a large number of missile launchers, but individual flying men weren’t the best targets for missile weapons. The best defense they’d had against my marines had been their own onboard marines, which had been larger and more effective than humans.

  I recalled the boarding parties of the enemy. They had been very sophisticated. Flying on racks that resembled carrier trailers with a dozen automobiles chained into place, the enemy machines had been able to ride their delivery systems to my ship like troops aboard a missile, then deployed as individual fighters. They’d very nearly taken my ship with those tactics.

  In comparison, our systems were primitive and unreliable. I had placed my own marines in a lightly-armored spacesuit and stood them atop a propulsion system my men affectionately called ‘skateboards’. In truth, they looked more like the pizza dishes kids went sledding on than skateboards, but they did require balance and skill to fly properly.

  I needed a redesign. I wanted a system that could more safely and effectively deliver one of my marines to the enemy. Heavier armor would likely be required as well. The system designed would work best if it was able to function in multiple varied environments. Open space, certainly. But th
ere were plenty of other conditions my marines might be required to operate under. They might need to fight on land, under the sea, on a high gravity world or even flying around in a planetary atmosphere—Earth’s atmosphere, specifically.

  After doing some sketches, checking on weight allowances and gross materials, I was ready to build a prototype.

  “Unit Six,” I said. “Respond.”

  “Unit Six responding.”

  “We are going to create a new program. Make space for it now without deleting existing programs.”

  “Done.”

  “Load battle suit configuration from my suit’s repository,” I ordered.

  Unit Six paused for a moment. I knew it was transferring data wirelessly from the recording brainbox on my own battle suit. My current design of such suits was naturally stored in the suit’s brainbox, along with a lot of other useful information. I’d just finished my long series of alterations when Sandra contacted me.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “General Kerr. He knows about the Macros and others things. He’s demanding to talk to you.”

  About a hundred and fifty times a day some foreign dignitary demanded to talk to me. I dodged ninety-nine percent of them. General Kerr, however, had to my knowledge never wasted my valuable time.

  “Just a second,” I told Sandra.

  “Unit Six,” I said. “Build me that prototype as currently designed.”

  “Working.”

  “Give me a time estimate to completion.”

  “One hour, nine minutes.”

  “Good,” I said. “Run program.”

  “Executing.”

  The machine near me began digesting metals and gently heating up. A quiet, thrumming filled the room. For the hundredth time, I wondered what the hell these things were doing inside. I felt like a monkey running a microwave.

  “Sandra? Could you come in here and babysit this machine while I walk over to base headquarters and to General Kerr? I want to have the big screen in front of me, as I’m sure he’ll want a tactical update. After I get off the phone with Kerr, we can eat.”

  “Eat?” she asked. “I know you, this will not be a real date. You mean you’ll bring some food to Shed Six, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No time to fly Socorro to Miami tonight.”

  She sighed. “All right. I’ll be right there to babysit your machine. I’m only going to do it for ten minutes, however. I want you to hang up on him after that.”

  I chuckled.

  I walked over to headquarters. Once inside, I adjusted my headset and opened up a channel to General Kerr.

  “Kyle? Is this damned thing on? Are we connected? Talk to me, Colonel Riggs.”

  “What can I do for you General?” I asked, trying to sound positive.

  “You just had to do it, didn’t you son? You just had to play tag with the aliens again, piss them off and bring them straight home to eat my planet.”

  “You were happy enough when I destroyed the four cruisers bombarding Europe.”

  “Four cruisers? I’d trade my wife and kids in a straight-up swap right this second, to be facing only four cruisers. Can you see your screen? Can you see the red triangles floating around Venus? They tell me those are hot death for Earth.”

  “Yes, General. I’m looking at the same data you are.”

  “Self-sacrifice, if that will help,” General Kerr went on in my earpiece. “I’ll face them alone out there in my undies, if that’s how you want it. No suit, no nanites. Just give me a pistol, that’s all I ask. Pistols will fire in space, won’t they?”

  “Um, yes they will, sir,” I said, frowning. The general was often excitable during stressful moments, but I couldn’t recall having heard him in a mood like this. “Have you been drinking, General?” I asked gently.

  “Damn straight I have. And I’ll tell you why. You want to hear why, mister-professor-colonel Riggs?”

  I had a feeling I was going to hear why no matter what I said, so I kept quiet.

  “Because you brought home one hundred Macro cruisers to kill us all, that’s why! And they rolled right through your little minefield. I bet you thought we didn’t know about all that, but we primitives hiding in caves at NORAD have a few cameras of our own left in the sky.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said. “But there are only ninety-two enemy ships, sir.”

  “What?”

  “There are only ninety-two surviving vessels, and many of them are damaged.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s dick about that. Ten would be more than enough. We saw it all. We saw your mines fail to stop them, and we saw them form up behind Venus, just like last time.”

  “Um, you have described the situation fairly well. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “What I want to know is: What the hell you are going to do about it?”

  I thought quietly for a second.

  “Hello? Riggs? Don’t get prissy with me—”

  “Perhaps you can help, General,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “You can sober up, then talk to every military worth a damn on Earth. Tell them not to fire if the Macros come close. Tell them to wait until they are fired upon, or I request their aid.”

  “We have to fire first! It’s use-it-or-lose-it when you’re talking about nuclear weapons, son.”

  “Normally, yes. But I want you to hold back. I know the U. S. and several other nations have built up a stockpile of surface-to-space missiles. But I don’t want you to fire them off until I ask for your help.”

  “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s all you want from us? We’re supposed to sit on our hands and not use the only effective weapons we have? Do you understand the concept of a preemptive strike? If not, I will explain it to you: The basic idea is to fire first.”

  “I understand that, sir. I’m just asking you to convince all the players to stand down until the time is right.”

  Kerr was silent for several seconds. “Are you concocting some kind of new deal with the Macros, Kyle? I don’t like the smell of this. Not one bit. Don’t be giving them any of our real estate or our first born sons. Not this time.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” I said. “Do I have your government’s cooperation?”

  Kerr laughed. “Hell no. But you might in forty-eight hours. Kerr out.”

  The signal did not disconnect, however. I heard rustling and a small crash through my headset. I thought maybe the general had tripped over a cord. “Get that off me and find some coffee!” I heard him shout. Moments later the signal finally cut out.

  I sat still, rubbing my face and thinking for five full minutes before Sandra showed up and barged in. I turned to her, shaking my head.

  “I don’t have time to eat,” I told her.

  “I figured you’d say that,” she said. I noticed she was carrying a tray of sandwiches and a bottle of water.

  We ate together quietly. She watched me while I brooded.

  “Anything I can do?” she asked.

  “Can you think of a way to take out ninety-two angry Macros?”

  She shook her head.

  I forced a smile and kept chewing.

  -10-

  I fell asleep late that night inside Shed Six. My com-link beeped and woke me up. I had no idea what time it was, as the interior of the shed had no windows. Even if it had possessed a window, the view would have consisted of the interior metal walls of the laser turret.

  Sitting up, I noticed that Sandra was gone, and that the prototype of my new battle suit was lying in the output tray. The last thing I noticed was my com-link light, which was blinking red. I reached for it, and it beeped again.

  “Riggs here.”

  “Colonel, we have new contacts,” Major Barrera said. He sounded as solid as always. I wondered what time it was. I wondered what day it was.

  “Contacts?” I asked. “At the Venus ring? Give me the count and configuration.”

  “They are at the Venus ring. The new con
tacts are invasion ships. Cylindrical shape and size match our recognition patterns perfectly. There are six of them, sir.”

  “Did they all make it through the minefield?”

  “The minefield had been completely eradicated, sir. The Macros spent all night shooting down every mine we had out there.”

  I lifted my helmet and checked the chronometer inside. It was four-thirty a. m. Barrera was still on station at my desk computer where I’d left him yesterday. Apparently, he’d never slept. Despite all that, he sounded calm and competent.

  I found some cold coffee in a plastic container Sandra had brought yesterday with the sandwiches. I sipped it and grimaced. It was awful.

  “Are they moving yet?” I said.

  “No, sir. Not yet.”

  “Good. Keep me updated.”

  “Will do.”

  I disconnected and stretched. The enemy fleet had been waiting for reinforcements after all. Logically, since they hadn’t moved on, there were more ships still to come. I hoped they wouldn’t show up for months and when they did, that the additional forces were insignificant. It was a faint hope.

  Sandra showed up around six with breakfast. By that time, I had most of my new suit on and had her help me with the helmet. The problem was with the design, I could see right away. I needed to alter the helmet so it was self-sealing with trained nanites. With the gloves so thick and unwieldy, I couldn’t fasten the catches on the helmet by myself. That was unacceptable design. I didn’t want to put my troops in vacc suits that couldn’t be put on solo. If they were caught in an emergency situation alone, that could mean a dead marine.

  “You look like some kind of freak,” Sandra told me when I was all suited-up.

  “Thanks,” I said. My voice echoed and was somewhat muffled inside the suit. I sounded like I had a garbage can pulled over my head.

  I didn’t have a mirror handy, but I knew I must look rather daunting. This new battle suit wasn’t like the old ones, which were basically nano-fiber with a series of solid form-fitting plates over vital areas. Instead, it was all solid plates of dull, black metal. The plates interlocked and slid over one another to allow reasonably freeform movement. The nano-fiber interior was still there, underneath this heavier exterior of inch-thick plating.