B. Larson - Rebellion

“Isn’t that more of an orange giant?” I asked.

“Right sir, but it fits the spectral signature of the Helios star.”

I nodded. “I find that interesting, as the Blue Giant I visited once was most likely Bellatrix-the left shoulder of Orion. Let’s review: we have a known chain of five star systems. The first link on the chain is the blue giant Bellatrix-at least we think it was Bellatrix. Only Sandra and I were out there and we spent the whole time running around avoiding the Macros, not taking careful measurements. Anyway, subsequent analysis of the video we brought back places the star in that region, around the constellation of Orion.”

Everyone nodded and worked their instruments. No one looked terrified. No one looked as if they were going to barf on my screen. I kept talking, and they stayed focused and calm while data poured into their computers concerning the new star system we’d just discovered.

“The second star on the known chain of systems is Sol, our home star,” I continued. “Third was Alpha Centauri-very close to Earth. The fourth was the red giant where we fought the Worms on Helios. This is the fifth system we’ve mapped. It appears to be G-class. A yellow, cheery, solo star. Perfect for warm-water planets and life. What is the stellar mass, Gorski?”

“About ninety-one percent that of Sol, sir,” he said. “Interesting new detail coming in: the star is metal-rich according to spectral analysis.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“A higher likelihood of rocky planets.”

I nodded thoughtfully. If we were on a colonizing mission, this would be an excellent place to start. None of the other systems I’d visited thus far had been inviting places for humans to live.

“Sir, more bodies are being plotted now-a lot of them,” Gorski said.

We watched quietly as planets appeared magically on the big screen. There were indeed a lot of them, and no less than six were in what we projected to be the habitable zone. Two of these were twins, both about the size of Mars. They orbited one another in a tight, tidally-locked dance. It was as if each was the moon of the other.

Such a lovely system. There had to be habitable planets here. It was a colonization mission commander’s dream.

“Life signs?” I asked quietly.

“None yet, but we have six in the zone for liquid water, and a grand total now of twenty-one bodies, not counting moons.”

Twenty-one worlds. My mind could hardly grasp it. Our eight planets-plus Pluto-seemed paltry in comparison. Eleven of these were out past the gas giant, frozen iceballs it was certain. There was a handful in too close as well, blasted worlds that must look like Mercury. But it was those six worlds in the cradle, nestled between a gas giant and their steady, warm sun, which kept drawing my eye.

I looked around my crew and saw that all of them were feeling a sense of wonder. We had discovered what might turn out to be a treasure-trove of habitable planets.

“I wish this was a friendly, exploratory mission of peace,” Sandra said.

We all looked at her, and we all wished the same thing. But we had come here to fight-and we didn’t even know who we were up against yet.

“Something I don’t get,” I said aloud. “There are six living worlds, and yet the Macros said we are going after people on satellites. What’s wrong with the planets? Have we spotted any of these stationary structures yet?”

“No sir. They are too small to detect yet. They wouldn’t have much gravitational tug, less than a moon. They probably aren’t emitting too much radiation, either.”

“Try radio waves. Are we picking up any com traffic?”

Sandra jumped a little and worked at her board. “Oops,” she said.

I looked at her with a flat stare. She made tapping adjustments on her screen. Suddenly, the big screen lit up with contacts.

“I think I had it set for known contacts and signals only,” Sandra said. “It was just showing our two Macro ships.” She turned back to the big screen. Then she shut up and joined all of us in jaw-dropping shock.

The screen swam with hundreds of contacts. There were ships around every planet, or satellites of some kind. Dozens of contacts roved the surfaces of all six of the central planets and a few on the icy worlds as well.

“Give me some color!” I shouted. “Sarin, give me something. I want to see red on unknowns, blue on Macros.”

“Working on it, sir,” she replied evenly. “Blue contacts are Macros.

There it was. I had my answers. Every contact on the surface of every planet was a Macro. All six of the living worlds were crawling with them. Up in space, there were red contacts, however. Unknowns in stationary orbits. Those had to be our targets. Orbiting apart from the satellites was a small number of what I assumed to be Macro ships.

“Looks like we’ve come to this party late,” I said.

“Why do they even need us?” asked Major Sarin. “The Macros have them surrounded; they are running wild on every planet.”

I shrugged. I had a few ideas already. Maybe the satellites were rigged to blow up if they got too close. Maybe they knew they would take a few losses in these final assaults and decided they’d rather lose human fodder. Or maybe, this was all a big test to see which side was stronger, these defeated beings or my marines.

Whatever the answer, I knew we were going to be fighting brother biotics again soon, people who appeared to be on their knees already, and it made me sick.

“Colonel?” Sandra said.

I didn’t answer for a second. I just stared at the screen. I was trying not to have an angry outburst. It would not be good for morale.

“Kyle,” Sandra said insistently, her voice full of sudden emotion. “I’ve got new contacts. Very close, very faint.”

My eyes swept back to our spot on the map. We were at the ring still, in terms of distance we’d covered little ground. There was a scattering of tiny, green dots nearby.

“What are those?” I asked, frowning.

“They’re…” Sandra trailed off. She tapped at her screen with urgency, and piped through a transmission to our speakers. “I think they’re ours.”

“S. O. S…” a scratchy voice came in for a moment, then faded out, then came in again. “We’re Star Force marines, Echo Company. Can anyone read me?”

A chill ran through me. I knew I was hearing my own marines, calling to me for help.

For one crazy second, I thought we might have gone through some kind of time-warp. Then I thought of a worse scenario. Maybe, just maybe, we had finally experienced a relativistic effect of the rings. What if this one wasn’t operating properly? What if it really had taken centuries to transport us from Helios to this system, and the men outside were beaten Star Force units from our own future? For all I knew, I was looking at six worlds covered in Macro robots that had once been human colonies. If that were the case, we were far worse than late for the battle. We were centuries late, and we were on the wrong side.

I tried to push these wild thoughts away. They wouldn’t do any of my crew, or myself, any good to contemplate.

“I know who it is,” Sandra said. Everyone looked at her this time, and not with disgust, but with hope.

She smiled, but none of us smiled back. We didn’t share in her hope yet. “It’s the guys that fell through the ring-back on Helios, remember? They had to go somewhere.”

I stared at her, and suddenly I realized she was right. It had to be. It was the simplest answer. The contacts were small. They could be single men, floating in space. They would have been out here for what…four days now? They could have survived that long. Our rebreathers were better than old Earth technology had ever built. With nanos scrubbing out the CO2, they could function almost indefinitely. They would have been critically short of water, power and rations, but…