breath. I knew without a doubt he had received a message from Crow as well. At this point, the system worked like email with voice attachments. There was no central control, no easy way to find out what anyone else with an account was hearing. I had dark thoughts as the beeping continued. Perhaps in future updates, this system should become more centralized and controlled.
I opened the channel at last. “What is it, Commodore?”
“Riggs? Why are we still following the enemy?”
“Because I plan to destroy every Macro I see, Decker. That is my mission.”
There was a pause. “Have you gotten any messages, Colonel?”
“From who?”
“From Star Force.”
I closed my eyes and bit back a stream of curses. Crow had sent him a message. From the sound of it, he’d told Decker what he was telling me, that we should cease and desist.
“I heard what Crow had to say, Decker,” I told him. “I was not impressed.”
“Colonel,” Decker began, but then his voice shifted. He paused, as if uncertain. “I understand, Riggs. I understand how you feel, and how you think. We have them on the run. The enemy that had eluded us for so long.”
I opened my eyes. “Yes. Yes, that’s it exactly. I’ve got them, and I don’t want to let them get away now.”
“You are an excellent tactician, Riggs,” Decker continued. “But this is a strategic decision. You need to elevate your thinking. Contemplate the bigger picture, that’s all I ask. Commodore Decker out.”
I did think about it. It was impossible not to. We’d chased the Macros out of our home system, and pushed them back from three more. Was that enough? Was it time now to lick our wounds, to rebuild and plan our next move? It would be a great waste to lose these systems. What if the Centaurs could help us by building their own fleet, given the time? We could work on better communications with the Worms, and let them rebuild as well. Star Force was no longer in this alone. We were leading a coalition of sorts.
“Sir?” the helmsman asked a half hour later. “We are coming to a decision point. Are we going to head straight on toward the ring or are we going to start decelerating? If we don’t start braking now, we’ll overshoot the target area even if we turn around and apply full power.”
I grunted unhappily. Every eye in the cabin sought mine, then looked away.
“Keep going,” I said at last. “We’ll chase these machines out of the Eden system. I don’t want them to have a moment of peace. I don’t want them to even think they’ve escaped us.”
Glum and determined, the crew turned back to their boards and relayed my instructions. We flew onward. A few hours later, the enemy fleet formed a tight formation and disappeared through the ring. It was at that very moment a message came in from the Worm ships. I contacted Marvin, who came to the bridge.
Marvin had given himself yet another makeover. I forced a smile when I saw him. He was truly horrifying to look upon now, all wires and struts and random pieces of equipment. He had somehow formed himself into a hulking humanoid shape however, as I’d suggested. The most disconcerting thing about him was the whipping arms. There were seven of them, all of varied lengths. He moved via these snake-like independent tentacles, slithering over the hull of the ship. At any given point, four of the tentacles reached out and grasped walls and chair backs around him, presumably for support. The entire ungainly mess didn’t look very well balanced. A dozen camera eyes poked out of his body-mass at odd points such as the lower knee-joints and two from one shoulder. Every camera simultaneously moved and tracked something different.
The overall effect was very disconcerting for a human observer. The helmsman made an odd whooping sound, as if he’d swallowed his own tongue, when the robot loomed near. I had to admit, Marvin was a monstrosity. Wisps of vapor escaped his misshapen body when he moved, and I could tell he was still freezing- cold from the depths of space. I felt him chill the air as he passed by my chair.
“Welcome aboard, Marvin,” I said as warmly as I could. I wanted him to feel at home. I figured I could help him edit himself later.
“Thank you, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said in cheery fashion. “Is something wrong with your helmsman?”
“He appears to have eaten too much for lunch,” I said.
A few cameras studied the helmsman, who withered under the scrutiny. A tentacle snapped out toward him, and the helmsman flinched. But the skinny little black arm only grabbed the back of his chair and steadied Marvin’s central mass.
“I apologize if my appearance is intimidating,” he said to the squirming lieutenant.
“Marvin, I need you translate a new message from the Worms,” I told him.
“Certainly, Colonel.”
I relayed the message to him. It consisted of four symbols. The first two consisted of the grub and the raging Worm warrior. I got that much of it. They were telling us we were friends and brave. I confirmed this with Marvin, and he agreed with my interpretation. The third was an image of a full-bodied Worm, but not in battle gear. The fourth was of an odd, finger-like structure.
“The third symbol is that used to refer to all Worms, not just warriors,” Marvin explained. “It means ‘the people’.”
“And the second?”
“That is an image representing their home mounds.”
“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “They are talking about home and civilians? Is that it?”
“Yes.”
I puzzled the message for a minute or so, but then the Worms made their meaning clear. They began braking hard. Soon, we were plunging alone toward the next ring where the Macros had vanished.
“Sir?” asked the helmsman. “What now?”
I sat in my command chair and stared into space-literally. It was decision time.
— 49
In the end, I ordered the fleet to power-slide to a halt. We all did a one-eighty, and poured on engine power, braking as hard as we could. Even so, we didn’t manage to stop completely before we slid past the newly-discovered ring. We didn’t go through it, although the temptation to explore was great.
I didn’t know what was on the other side of this ring, and I dearly wished to send a scout through to find out-but I didn’t quite dare. The Macros were machines, and machines had software that worked on triggers. Each action I took risked a reaction. There could be a hundred more ships on the far side. They would come through to attack us eventually, but they might wait a year or so before doing it. If I dared to peep beyond the next ring, I might cause an avalanche that would lose everything we’d gained.
No, I decided. If I was going to halt the advance, the halt would be complete. We had to consolidate our gains, and our new allies needed help. There were still mining machines in this system, walking monsters that needed to be sought out and destroyed one my one.
The ring hung over an icy world that was thick with nickel, iron, water and ammonia. There were cyrovolcanoes on the surface, structures that fountained frozen methane, ice crystals and the like when other bodies swung near. The tidal forces caused the planetary interior to heat up inside and shoot thawing liquids up onto the surface where they quickly refroze.
The planet was beautiful in its own cold fashion. It was dark out here so far from the yellow sun which burned brightly in the distance. The system’s yellow star did not deliver enough heat to warm this snowball of a world. After we’d come to a halt and begun to slowly turn around, reversing our course and heading home, I got an idea. I had finally had time to really think things through by then.
What occupied my mind more than anything else was the need to hold onto our gains. How could I take what I’d learned in this phase of the war, and apply it to assure victory in the future? After some hard thinking, I came to a conclusion: we’d won the battle with the combination of minefields and our heavy fortifications on Andros. They’d been forced to come through at a certain tight point-the rings-and we’d broken much of their fleet with mines because we knew where they had to pass by. The rest of their fleet and their armies had been
