B. Larson - Conquest

“Oh, but it does!” Marvin said. He blathered on for a while, telling me how the Worms managed to build various elements of their electronics and drive systems. Even their circuit boards were individually fabricated, being assembled on a substrate of vomitous resin rather than fiberglass.

I knew as I listened that I had him. I waved for the helmsman’s attention.

“Range?” I asked quietly.

“He’s slowing and gently gliding back toward us,” the helmsman said.

I smiled, pleased. Without directly agreeing to anything, Marvin was drifting closer. I got the feeling he was glad to have someone to talk to. Space was a lonely place for a solitary intellect.

Captain Miklos caught my eye and gave me a knowing nod. I was sure he figured we’d lock our lasers on Marvin and blast him the second we could. I hadn’t made my decision on that point. The robot was a wild card, but he had yet to do us any real harm.

Marvin and I continued talking for a time, back and forth. Now and then, I checked the ranges, which the helmsman had helpfully relayed to my screen. I was somewhat disturbed when I realized we would reach the Macro fleet before Marvin was within range. He was slowing and drifting toward us at a very gentle rate. He’d only given his course and speed a nudge in our direction. We would be in a firefight with the Macros before he was in our grasp. At that point, we’d probably have bigger things to worry about. Clearly, Marvin’s trust was not yet absolute.

I had options, of course. I could change our fleet’s trajectory slightly and bring us together faster. That would slow us down in our pursuit of the Macro fleet, however. Hmm. Maybe that was exactly what Marvin wanted. Maybe he was testing us, to see if we were really here to catch him or to catch the Macros. I nodded to myself, feeling a growing certainty I was being tested. Marvin had managed to stay alive in the face of the Macros, Star Force and the Worms. If he was anything, he was adept at survival.

After we broke off our little chat, Captain Miklos turned to me, smiling grimly. “That was masterfully done, Colonel,” he said. “I’d underestimated your capacity to deal with these aliens. I can see it must be done with care and subtlety. We’ll be in range of the rogue robot after we are engaged with the Macros, but we can always spare a few beams for him.”

I snorted. “No,” I said. “He won’t let us get into range. He’s only testing us.”

Miklos frowned, uncertain.

“Just watch,” I told him.

More hours passed. The Macro fleet had lost three more vessels. The Worms had lost a dozen ships in the same time. The Worms seemed to be running out of steam. They were still making passes at the enemy, but with less of their characteristic vigor. I figured they’d realized we would catch up soon and they should wait to hit hard when we were all together.

The ring that led to Helios loomed near over the next hour. As they drew close, the Macros again fired salvoes of missiles to eliminate any mines they may meet as they passed through the ring. I watched the tiny pinpoints of light flare then quickly fade as nuclear fires cleansed the volume of space in front of the ring. The ships began filing through after that.

The first to vanish were the Macro ships. The Worms followed, then Marvin. We glided up in silence. Every crewmember stared tensely. What was on the other side? The last time we’d jumped, we’d met with the happy surprise of a Worm fleet and enemy wreckage. This time, the surprise might be played upon us.

I glanced at Captain Miklos. He gripped his command chair tightly. His face was staring at the forward wall, squinting as if he expected a painful surprise.

I couldn’t see any way we could know what was ahead, and neither did he. Whining about it wasn’t going to help either. We sat in our chairs tensely, waiting for the stab of the needle.

We jumped.

The star known to Earthlings as Aldebaran was a red giant about sixty-five lightyears from our world. From the point of view of Earth it was in the Taurus constellation and lined up with the belt of Orion. The star was truly huge, its diameter being forty-four times that of our sun. There were a few crispy planets circling the ancient, monstrous star. Only the planet Helios was in a position to support life. It was a heavy-gravity planet with sunken seas and towering Worm cities that stood like termite mounds here and there on the hot surface.

Nothing shocking occurred as we flew through the ring. The only surprising thing was the behavior of the Worm ships. They were falling farther behind the Macros and veering off slightly-moving above the plane of the ecliptic for the Aldebaran system. I studied them, frowning.

“What are they up to?” Captain Miklos asked, becoming nervous. “Their ships are no longer in range of the Macros. They’ve broken off.”

“They probably decided to hit them again when we catch up. Maybe they finally realized we can’t go any faster than we are currently traveling. A bit of math will predict the intersect of this fleet and the Macros. Speaking of that, when will we catch them, helmsman?”

“Just short of the next ring, sir,” he said, working his computer.

“Excellent. I didn’t want to have to wait until we reached the next system to fight them. I’d like to see Eden again, but every jump we make is nerve-wracking at this speed.”

“It bothers me too, sir,” Captain Miklos said. “But I’m not used to spreading my atoms over lightyears via alien technology. You’ve done it a number of times. Is there some special danger I should be aware of?”

I chuckled. “Using a little imagination, the dangers are countless.”

“Sir?”

I took a deep breath. “Think about it, captain. What if the ring on the far side malfunctions, or simply isn’t there? Worse, we’ve see these rings switch on and off. There’s even some evidence to indicate they can be reset to go to a different destination. What if we came out in the atmosphere of a planet? The rings on Venus and the one on Helios both are inside the gaseous envelop of a world which connects to a point in space.”

Miklos stared at me. He shook his head. “We’d be smashed like ants, sir. At this speed, hitting an atmosphere would be like hitting a wall of granite.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Now you know why I’m nervous. I don’t expect a problem, but I can imagine plenty of them.”

Miklos sat back in his chair and looked disturbed. I shook my head. He shouldn’t have asked me.

Many hours passed. We were gaining on the Macros, but only slightly. To make matters worse, they seemed to be more capable of managing curving course changes. As the next ring wasn’t perfectly lined up with the entry point into the Aldebaran system, we had to turn our ships toward the next ring. Since we were already moving at high speed, we had to fight our own inertia. We would still catch up with the enemy before they escaped the Worm system, but it was going to be a close thing.

I didn’t like cutting things closely. I didn’t like the prospect of failing to catch them and having to fly into the unknown yet again at these speeds. We couldn’t afford to slow down, or they would lose us. We couldn’t veer off and miss the next ring either, as that would only leave us with the long process of braking, turning around and going back through it. The maneuver would take us a day or so at least, depending on how cautiously we moved. No, we were committed and I hated it. I much preferred to keep an enemy guessing. An enemy that knew what you were going to do many long hours ahead of time had plenty of opportunities to screw you over.

Marvin now flew between us and the Macros. He’d slid through the ring, but had managed to stay out of range of every gun in all three fleets. I could hardly blame him. Slowly, he was drifting closer to us. But he wasn’t going to let himself come into laser range. We’d plotted his flight path. At no point did it enter the globe on my screen that represented our possible range of fire.