Conquest

-42-

When I boarded Barbarossa, I was in an excellent mood. Captain Miklos’ destroyer still had the gleaming interior of a freshly built ship. The walls and particularly the floor of any smart-metal hull were impossible to stain, but crews invariably added their own furnishings over time and that made them more homey. Barbarossa looked like it had been built yesterday, as the crew had had no time to settle in.

The crew greeted me with cautious enthusiasm. They had emerged from the recent battles with the Macros unscathed. As a Star Force marine, I felt slightly jealous of these Fleet people. They had no appreciation for the grim combat my men had endured in the dirt, ashes and blood that was the battle for Andros from our perspective. I took solace in the knowledge that they were going to be encountering the Macros much more closely in the near future.

Captain Miklos’ crew was the same as I’d left it days earlier. The gunner still appeared to be the most nervous of the lot, while the helmsman barely made eye-contact. Miklos himself seemed honored I’d requested to fly with him again. I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed by the end of our journey.

Kwon loaded sixteen grunts on after me. I stood in the bridge, watching them take their jump seats in the troop pod located directly below the bridge section, in the belly of the lower deck. Right behind the marines were the engines, and right below them was empty space. The floor was designed to flash open, just as the nanite floors had done to me and my kids years ago when I first encountered the Nanos. I followed the men into the troop pod and gave them a short pep talk. I told them this was really the sweet spot in the ship. If anything went wrong, they would die instantly—a blessing in the grim environment of space. No one wanted to hang around out there waiting to suffocate or burn up when their personal orbit decayed.

When I was finished, only Kwon seemed to be cheered up. The rest gave me a ‘hooah’, but I sensed their morale wasn’t a hundred and ten percent. I chalked it up to a general need for a break we weren’t going to get. These men needed a few weeks of R&R, but as far as I was concerned, that was going to have to wait until there wasn’t an enemy robot within a lightyear of Earth.

I returned to the bridge and took my seat behind Captain Miklos. The crewmen glanced at me now and then, but looked away quickly when I returned the scrutiny. I wondered as we lifted off if they were still thinking about the time I’d taken over their ship and threatened to shoot their captain. To me, that was all water under the bridge. We were all in this together, and we would live or die as a team today.

When the mass of ships had risen up and gathered in a loose formation about a hundred miles above Andros, I ordered the fleet to swing around the planet once to gather momentum, and also to possibly throw off the Macros as to our intent.

“We’ll get up to just over escape velocity,” I told the captains on a joint channel, “then slingshot ourselves toward high orbit. With any luck, we’ll catch them sitting there and have a good combat-pass before they know what hit them.”

The kind of combat I intended would be enhanced by a stationary or slow-moving enemy. Getting in close to the Macros was going to be difficult with their massed firepower and unknown supplies of missiles. Getting in close was a requirement for my attack plan, which consisted of harassing the enemy ships with laser fire while covering the real assault, which would consist of around a thousand marines swarming the cruisers like tiny individual spacecraft. Once in close enough, my marines in their powered battle suits could maneuver to the enemy and hurl nuclear grenades at the hulls. If necessary, they could invade surviving ships and destroy the Macro crews in detail. In my fantasies, some of the enemy craft might even be captured.

Before we’d made half of our initial orbit, however, my hopes were thrown out the window.

“Colonel?” Captain Miklos asked. “I’m getting reports, sir—yes, the enemy fleet is getting underway.”

“Shit,” I said. I slammed my fist down on the command chair. The metal shell of the chair was much thinner than my armored battle suit, and it gave way under the blow. I irritably yanked my fist out of the dent it had formed. Over the next minute or so, the smart metal rebuilt the armrest. Nanites were nothing if not dutiful.

I glared at the forward metallic-relief screens and occasionally eyed the normal computer-driven flat screen in front of my chair. They were definitely moving. They’d not been fooled in the slightest. I had to give these machines credit, they could do their math. They’d projected my likely trajectory. Each ounce of thrust that sped us toward them committed us to a shrinking array of objectives. The faster we went, the more easily they could predict where we were headed. Under no illusions, the Macros had reacted immediately rather than sitting and waiting to see just how we were going to hit them.

“Which way are they going?” I asked.

“Not conclusive yet, sir—but it looks like they are not heading toward us.”

I looked at the helmsman in surprise. “Is that from your math? Let’s see it on the boards. Project the likely enemy path on the screen.”

“Yes, sir.”

Soon I had my answer. The enemy were swinging around the Moon and out of the system. The odds were already eighty percent and ticking higher as they continued accelerating.

I frowned at the screen. “Zoom out,” I said. “Continue the projection to its likely destination.”

This took a few seconds. I squirmed in my command chair, waiting uncomfortably. Visions of an easy surprise victory were fast evaporating. I’d hoped the enemy didn’t understand how dangerous my ships were. The key was my force of ship-storming marines, of course. We’d used similar boarding tactics against four macro cruisers recently, but since none of the enemy had survived, I’d hoped this fleet wouldn’t suspect our intentions.

When the projections solidified I was even more surprised. “Are you kidding me? Why are they flying out there?”

The projected flight path of the enemy fleet didn’t lead toward us. It didn’t lead out toward Venus, either. I’d expected them to follow one of these two routes—either to attack us, or to retreat out of the system. But instead, the enemy was in full flight to the outer system.

“Show me what’s out there,” I said.

“It looks like they are heading for Jupiter,” Captain Miklos said.

I shook my head, eying the path with growing concern. “No. They are heading for the Tyche ring. They are going to head to Alpha Centauri, then maybe Helios. Hell, who knows? They might be planning to knock out the Centaurs once and for all, since they failed against us.”

Captain Miklos brightened considerably. So did the rest of his crew, as the curve of the enemy projected path continued to solidify and possibilities narrowed.

“You’re right, Colonel,” Miklos said. “They are heading for the Oort cloud ring. They are going to run right out of the system. We’ve run them off without a fight.”

“Let’s keep them running,” I said. “Lay in a new course to follow the enemy fleet.”

Captain Miklos looked startled. “Sir, might I suggest—”

“No,” I said.

“But we’ve already achieved our mission. We could return to Earth orbit now, secure in the knowledge they are exiting the system. Perhaps they don’t even know about our secondary minefield out there. Why not let the mines do their work?”

“Fortunately, I’m in command of this expedition,” I said. “Follow them.”

Without further argument, Miklos flew his ship after the Macros. A hundred other vessels glided silently through space after us.

I could tell Miklos was pissed off. I was too, but not at him. I wanted to crush the enemy ships while I had them at a disadvantage. For all I knew, they were moving to meet up with another task force. Together with reinforcements the Macros could easily take out my fleet. They knew that, and so did I. As it was now, the odds didn’t lean very far in my favor.

The worst part of it was not knowing the enemy mindset. Were they running because they were uncertain about their success? Or because we’d become too expensive in terms of materials to defeat? Or did they have some kind of cold trick waiting for me farther out in space? I just didn’t know, and not knowing ate at any commander.

We flew on for hours. Slowly, we were gaining on the enemy. We ran the numbers, and double-checked them. Our smaller ships were faster than their cruisers. We were going to catch them before they could reach the ring and fly through it.

“Maybe we should slow down, sir,” Captain Miklos suggested.

I gave him a disgusted look.

“No, no, sir. I don’t say this out of cowardice. I’m simply suggesting we let the enemy hit the minefield at the Tyche ring at full speed before we get into range to finish off their damaged ships.”

I nodded. “A reasonable suggestion,” I said. “Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like it. Helmsman, ease-off to three-quarters velocity and relay the command to the rest of the fleet. We’ll hang back just a little and hope they don’t know what they’re running into.”

The chase went on for two solid days. When the Macros finally reached the Tyche ring, they did something unexpected. They fired a barrage of missiles.

“Missiles launched!” shouted the weapons officer.

“Count?”

“About twenty, sir. Make that thirty.”

“Scatter the fleet,” I ordered.

“Second barrage sir, pulsed thirty seconds after the first.”

“One mile between ships,” I said. “Globular formation, relay and execute. How long do we have before they hit us?”

“No estimate yet, sir. But at this distance, we’ll have less than half an hour.”

I watched the screens tensely, as did every commander in the fleet. The battle monitors slowly filled with a crowded mass of tiny red contacts. The contacts finally moved a pixel, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise. The two clouds of missiles were not moving toward us.

“They didn’t fire at us?”

“No sir,” the weapons officer replied. “They seem to have fired—at the ring, sir.”

I stared at the screens and frowned. I couldn’t find any fault with the information I was receiving.

“They know about the mines,” Captain Miklos said. His voice sounded dead and distant. I surmised he’d been hoping for an easy end to this.

“Yes,” I agreed, reviewing the data. The enemy was laying down a blast pattern directly in front of their advancing ships. They intended to destroy the mines we had floating in a tight cluster around the Tyche ring. Either that, or they meant to blow up the ring itself.

In either case, I was less than happy.

“Increase our speed,” I ordered. “Push the engines up to one hundred percent, and tighten up our formation again.”

“Is that wise, sir?”

I looked at Miklos. I wanted to ask him what had happened to the bravado I’d witnessed in him the last time I’d been aboard his vessel. Perhaps that was the answer right there. We’d had some close calls last time I’d flown with him. Maybe he’d had time to think about his mortality and realize how close we’d come to destruction on that occasion. Or perhaps, he’d had a few bad moments serving under Crow when they’d chased down and taken out the dreadnaught. Fleet had lost some good crews that day. In any case, he’d become overly-cautious. It was a common enough problem among my new officers.

“We’re going after them, Captain. Give the damned order.”

He did so without further comment. I thought his face was slightly red over his beard. Perhaps he felt a little embarrassed by his hints that we should slow down. If that was the case, I was glad. The first step toward real bravery was to admit you were afraid of the enemy.

God knew this enemy was worthy of our fears.