Conquest

-41-

In the end, we didn’t mount the pursuit until the next day. By then, I was yawning and getting tired of Crow’s complaints.

“There’s no real need for this, Kyle. We’ve driven them off. Let’s build up everything we can and chase them when we’ve got two hundred ships. We’ll take lower losses that way.”

“And if enemy reinforcements show up at Venus?” I asked.

“We’ll launch the minute that happens. I promise you.”

I thought about it. There was some logic to Crow’s caution, but I didn’t like it. We needed to get out there and put our minefield back into place to stop the next invading force. Next time, they wouldn’t conveniently go for Andros Island. They’d come at Earth without any reservations.

We were having an early breakfast, and dawn hadn’t yet broken over the ocean outside. Crow was having a stack of overly-syrupy waffles while I stirred my fork in an omelet packed with big Caribbean shrimp.

“We can’t afford to wait, Crow,” I told him.

“I’ll have another squadron of nine destroyers out in a week or so, mate. At least wait for that.”

“Right now, the cruisers can’t do much against our fleet. Those cannons are showy, but they can be dodged. They’re really only good for planetary bombardment. Our lasers outrange them and we’re more maneuverable, too.”

“They’ve still got missiles left,” Crow argued. “We’ve calculated the numbers carefully over here at Fleet—yes, we can do sums. We figure they’ve kept around four hundred missiles in reserve. That’s enough to do a lot of damage to my light ships.”

I grimaced. Crow was right on this point. Four hundred missiles were enough to wipe out our entire force. We couldn’t shoot down that many coming at us all at once.

“Very unlikely,” I said. “If you count a standard allotment of sixteen missiles on each ship and they’d fired only half, you’d be right. But they’ve fired more than half of them. Besides, if they had so many in their magazines, why haven’t they used them up until now?”

“Did you think they might have been waiting for this very situation, Kyle?” Crow asked me intently. “They know the missiles are their only real ship-to-ship weapon. Once they fire the last ones, they are helpless.”

I nodded, he had me there. Looking back on their behavior, they’d fired their weapons in percentages. The first barrage was around half our estimated total. The secondary barrages had been much smaller. From what I could tell now, they probably had one to two hundred shots left. Enough to be a serious threat to our fleet.

I shook my head after mulling for a while. “Good arguments,” I said. “But we still need to kick them out of the system. I can’t start rebuilding our space defenses until they do. Their next fleet could roll right in and finish us any day.”

Crow looked stubborn. His red cheeks bulged and his heavy brows knitted together as he chewed his breakfast. I could tell at a glance he was going to argue for the rest of the morning. It was time to throw him a bone.

“Admiral, I’ve got another concern you can help me with,” I said.

Crow immediately narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He knew by now that if I called him ‘admiral’ I was buttering him up for something.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Only about half our factories at the main production base survived the invasion. I’ve been quite impressed by your hidden production facility under that pond up north. Do you think you could choose two quiet spots on the island, split up our factories into thirds and place them in equally well-hidden locations? I want access to all of them, of course. You’ll have the same. But I really think your system is superior. Rather than putting them all into an armed camp, hide them. If the enemy have no idea what to hit, they probably won’t find any of them.”

Crow smiled proudly and puffed up a bit as my words of praise for his skullduggery sunk in. “Glad you see the strategic benefit of my careful planning, Riggs,” he said.

“We’ll still keep the fortified production facility, but it will be empty.”

“Ah, I like it. Two levels of deception. Keep them guessing.”

“Exactly,” I said, leaning over the table toward him and using my hands for emphasis. I could see I’d captured him by talking about one of his natural obsessions. Hiding valuables underground had been a favorite pastime of pirates throughout history. “We’ve got to get right on this one. In the long run, the factories are our most valuable asset. Everything else can be replaced quickly. We have to hide them now, before more Macros show up and hit us again.”

Crow looked upset at the concept of fresh Macro forces arriving. I could tell he’d been thinking along the lines of most of Star Force. The general belief was that we’d won the round. That we’d earned a breather. But I knew differently. The enemy was still out there in strength. They might show up with two hundred more ships any day. We didn’t have time to sit around.

“Problem though, mate,” Crow said thoughtfully. “What about the Macros out there right now? They are monitoring us, watching us closely. Won’t they see and record our digging? If they know where these new bases are, what’s the bloody point of building them?”

“Hmm,” I said, as if he’d come up with a concern I hadn’t already considered. “I’ll tell you what: I’ll take care of that.”

“You’ll do what? Ah, hold on!”

“No, you hold on. I’ll take the fleet out and push them from our system. You bury our factories where they’ll never be found. Both jobs have to be done before they come at us again.”

Crow sucked air through his teeth. He flashed me a dark look. I knew he suspected he’d been finessed, and he had, but he was having a hard time refuting my logic. The key to the whole thing was I’d given him an excuse to stay on Earth. He didn’t want to lose command of his fleet, but he didn’t want to die, either. If he had a critical job to do on Earth, he could let me take the fleet into battle without looking like a coward. Even better, he wouldn’t be risking his own skin.

“All right,” he said at last. “I’m agreeing to this with reservations, mind you. And I will not appreciate it if you go up there and get my carefully built-up fleet blown out of the sky, mate.”

I smiled at him. “Believe me Admiral, I don’t want to lose a single ship.”

“But you will,” he grumbled.

I couldn’t argue with him there. The odds were grim. I had a few tactical ideas, but I wasn’t sure they would work out. What I was sure of was I couldn’t wait around for the Macros to make the next move. We finally had the initiative, and I planned to force them to react to me for once.

In the end, he agreed to my plan. I had the keys to the fleet, and I had a smile on my face. As I headed straight for the landing pits, Sandra appeared at my side. She’d been gone for a while, I didn’t ask why.

“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?” she asked.

“Um, sure.”

She frowned at me for a long second. “You are the most frustrating man.”

“But that’s a good thing, right?”

“No.”

“Just tell me where you’ve been and why you are upset.”

She sighed. “I’ve been talking to Jasmine.”

I stopped walking. We’d reached landing pit five. I had been on my way to number seventeen, but I paused to give Sandra a hard look.

“Is Jasmine—okay?” I asked her.

Sandra flapped her hands at me and pursed her lips as if my question was insulting. “Of course she is. I went there to apologize.”

I nodded slowly, keeping all hints of shock off my face. “Ah,” I said. I didn’t say anything else, as I wasn’t sure it was safe to do so.

“I told her I was wrong about her,” Sandra went on. “She might have had feelings for you, but she wasn’t trying to kill us. She was loyal. I was the fool.”

“Really?” I asked. I allowed mild surprise to creep upon my face now, but kept my voice neutral. When the topic of Jasmine came up, I instinctively knew anything I said might be misinterpreted. I therefore let Sandra do all the talking.

“Yes, I should have found out about Barrera sooner,” she said. “It’s my job to protect you. My jealousy blinded me to any suspects other than Jasmine. It wasn’t fair to her, and it was dangerous for you. I failed.”

“Not in the end. In the end, you got your man. Jasmine was on my list of suspects too, and I’d have placed her higher than Barrera.”

She looked at me quizzically. “Really?”

“Yes. Did you think you were the only one trying to figure it out?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

I laughed and we started walking again, passing more landing pits. “Even I care when assassins jump me.”

“Where are we going?” Sandra asked.

I stopped walking. We’d reached landing pit seventeen. I pointed to the sleek destroyer that waited there, being loaded with marines in battle suits and ordinance. Sandra followed my finger and her face fell.

“You’re going out there, aren’t you?” she asked. She sounded depressed and lost.

“Yeah. This is Captain Miklos’ ship. He’s a good man. I’ve flown with him before. We’ll be fine.”

“Yes, Miklos,” Sandra said. She eyed the ship the way one might eye a giant shark in a tank. “He was the one that flew you up to talk to the Macros.”

“Exactly. I’ll be fine while flying with him.”

She looked at me intently. She reached out a hand and clamped it onto my arm. “Kyle, I don’t want you to go up there today.”

“I’ll be fine,” I chuckled. I wiggled my arm slightly, but she held on. “Miklos and his crew are experienced fliers.”

She shook her head. “You can’t fool me. You’re not going up there to fly around and shoot some lasers at the enemy. You’re going to jump out of the ship and do crazy things.”

“I can’t take you with me this time,” I told her gently. I tried to pluck her hand off my arm. It didn’t budge. Her fingers were like the steel cables of a three-fingered nanite hand.

“I don’t want to go with you. I want you to stay home.”

I sighed. How many marines had a conversation like this with his woman? I understood her feelings, but I had to go. I hugged her, and it was the right move. After a long time, she finally melted against me. Her flesh no longer felt like a piece of metal, but like the shapely young woman she was.

“How long until you leave me?” she whispered.

“We’ll be loaded and flying in five hours. Less, maybe.”

“That’s long enough.”

“For what? Oh….”

She led me to a private place amongst the tents, rubble and newly erected buildings. It was amazing how fast Star Force could rebuild after a battle. A big part of the magic was the smart metal and the nanites, of course. They rebuilt structures by themselves, often without any instructions from us. Left to their own devices, nanites tended to return to their last remembered configuration. When the wounds were too great, however, they had left holes in the smart metal, gaps that couldn’t be troweled over without the addition of fresh barrels of nanites. The walls in particular had suffered. There were big gaping holes here and there in the outer barrier and on top of the ramparts. Wet earth, blackened by scorching heat, showed through the silvery planes of metal here and there.

Sandra and I made love between two new buildings. One of them contained a generator, and the fusion process hummed loudly enough to provide a little cover noise. Still, I suspected that passersby might have heard something. If they did, none of them were rude enough to poke their noses into our hideaway and discover us.

We could have gone back to our new quarters, or found an empty room deep inside the headquarters bunker. But she had led me here, and I didn’t object. I had to wonder if she had found this place while lurking around the base. She did a lot of lurking.

I enjoyed her soft skin the most. The blue sky above was second. Making love in daylight under a clear sky was always invigorating. She was almost desperate in her love-making. She often behaved this way when I was leaving her, possibly for the last time.

I enjoyed every second of it.