“Enemy in range in three minutes,” said the Alamo.
More panic people identified themselves. We ordered our ships to gather around each in turn. As we closed with the enemy, the enemy rate of fire seemed to be increasing. The big red ship was retreating now, slowly at first, but picking up speed.
“They are pulling out, let’s go after them!” shouted Crow. “Everyone, order your ships forward. Increase speed.”
We chased them, still blowing up each missile as it came in. It only caught one more ship, a woman who screamed and howled for us to get close. She was too far out and hadn’t clustered like the rest of us. Clearly, she hadn’t followed Jack’s orders.
“See?” demanded Crow as her contact vanished and her cries for help were cut off. “See what happens when we don’t all work together? She was a rogue, and she acted like one, and now she’s dead. We couldn’t save her because she wouldn’t work with the group.”
I worked on creating a program to cluster around the targeted ship. By giving our ships a carefully worded set of commands, they should automatically move to protect the one that was targeted.
Soon, we were in range of the big red bastard itself. I wished, right then, that I knew just what it looked like. Our ship began firing. So did the others, according to the reports. We circled around the ship and engulfed it. The big ship tried to pull out, to run, but we were all over it. At some point, it stopped firing missiles. Still, we kept pounding it.
“I wonder who is on that ship?” asked Sandra aloud. “Who are we killing? Are we really the good guys, or the bad guys?”
“Yeah,” I said, slightly troubled. What if this ship had come here to rescue Earth? What if its mission was to get rid of these vulture-ships that had kidnapped us? Maybe the ship was full of angry, righteous centaur people, bent on revenge for what these ships had done to their own world. We had no idea and no way of knowing.
After a while longer, the ship stopped retreating as well. Still, we rippled and churned around it, like a school of piranhas tearing apart a side of beef. Each of us got our mouthful, then went back for more.
When it finally blew up, we felt it. The Alamo stuttered. We lurched and drifted. The firing stopped. The other ships stopped moving, too.
We had lost six ships altogether. But we had won.
9
“Riggs? Hey, Riggs?”
It was Jack Crow again. He sounded pretty happy.
“Hello Jack. We lived.”
“We sure did, my fat-brained friend. You helped out tremendously. I want to make you a lieutenant commander, Riggs. No, forget that. A full commander! How does that sound, Commander Riggs? I want you to know, you would be the only person with such a high rank in my fleet. You would be my second in command.”
I chuckled. “If I wait another day, will you make me a captain?”
“Right. Well, right. Laugh it up. Well done. This is all a big joke, isn’t it? But consider, the fact that I put together some sort of organization kept us alive today. That ship might have killed all of us, you know. Think about that. Your ideas saved the day, but without my organization, we wouldn’t have worked together at all and we would have failed.”
“You have a point there, Jack.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear you admit it. I’m not just some megalomaniac who wants to call myself a commodore.”
“What’s a commodore?” I asked.
“It’s a rank between captain and admiral.”
“You are a commodore now?”
“Well, I realized I needed to have more ranks as more ships join us. More of a hierarchy.”
“I see,” I said, grinning.
“But that doesn’t matter. What I want you to think about, Riggs, is what that ship would have done if we had lost the battle. What if it had made it down to Earth?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what about the next time? What if there are a dozen ships like that, or a hundred?”
“Next time?” I asked wonderingly. I had honestly not had time to think through the implications of the battle we’d just faced. I felt out of my depth. I had no idea what was going on out here. Was Earth involved in some kind of war? We desperately needed more information. Would there be a next time? Why not? Wars were not usually fought in a single battle. And it did indeed seem like we were involved in a war.
“Jack-Commodore Crow, I mean. Do you have any more detailed political information? Is Earth in a war? Or did Earth just declare war on whoever was in that ship, by helping our ships destroy it?”
“Great questions. Join us, and I’ll assign you the task of figuring out the answers. I’ll do recruitment and organization.”
“What the hell have your people been doing? Do I have to figure out everything?”
“Look, Jack, most paranoid people who sleep with a gun in their hand aren’t deep thinkers. This organization isn’t made up of a bunch of philosophers, diplomats and techies. We are a fleet of opportunistic killers-survivalists. Unfortunately, running a fleet of alien ships in space combat requires more than reflexes and a killer instinct. I’m coming to realize I need you more than anyone else in my fleet. For the last time, will you join me?”
I thought hard for about five seconds. I looked over at Sandra, who nodded firmly. I sighed, and realized they were both probably right. I didn’t really like joining some independent, militia-like organization. It wasn’t my style. But in our situation, I couldn’t see how we were going to be taking orders from the ground, and I wasn’t interested in letting some military agents come aboard and toss me out of this ship. Self-sacrifice had its limits. Who knew, anyway, if the Pentagon could run this ship better than I had done? Would they have won that battle? Maybe I was overestimating my problem-solving skills, but then again, this ship had chosen me for good reasons.
“Okay Commodore. You’ve gotten through to me. For now, I’m joining your organization. I’ll be a commander, if that’s what you want. By the way, what do you call your fleet?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. How about Star Force? That has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
I agreed. It did have a nice sound to it. I broke the connection and looked at Sandra again. She was smiling and I thought I hadn’t seen too many smiles on her face up until now. She was very pretty, but I had to get her out of those ridiculous cables that held to her ankles like manacles. Maybe I should go through with the injections, or whatever it was the ship wanted me to go through to allow people to be in my presence without restraints. I’d have to ask the ship about the details. I mentally added it to the growing pile of tasks I should be doing.
“I’m impressed,” said Sandra, smiling at me.
She was a babe. I had to admit it. She was also way too young for me, but that was mattering less and less as I spent more time with her. I was wary, naturally, having watched other professors go down that road with research assistants and the like. There was a legendary formula that an old, philandering professor had supposedly worked out. It described a critical ratio for the duration of such relationships. It involved the measured youth and attractiveness of the student against the length of the inevitably short-lived marriage. It was an inverse relationship. The prettier the girl, the story went, the shorter the marriage. To me, Sandra looked like a two year experience, at best. I had to admit though, it would be an excellent two years.
I turned back to the screen I’d figured out, which now encompassed three walls. The golden beads that represented friendly ships had drifted apart and were heading back toward the dark crescent of the Earth. More golden motes had appeared there, sliding over the surface of the planet. They must be ships that had managed to locate suitable ‘command personnel’. I almost shuddered at the thought. How many people were being dragged from their beds down there and slaughtered? One every minute, perhaps? The flocks of ships were relentless in their searches for someone who could pass their tests. They were machines, I knew now, built of something like
