Conquest

-48-

Marvin didn’t show any signs of life for the next several minutes. As each moment passed, my hopes faded. I was reminded of the day my children had died at the cold steel hands of a ship like the one we flew within now. Marvin’s mind had been stilled by an automated, thoughtless subsystem.

Quite possibly, the Centaurs hadn’t ordered the download of a blank intellect into his brainbox. When we’d last left Eden, they’d been in the act of transmitting the contents of a powerful brainbox to give us information about other species and the like. The operation had been suspended when we’d left the system before the download was complete. That partial mind of Marvin’s had made him what he was, had given him his unique personality.

I imagined the original download had been queued since we’d left the region by some server on their side. Months had passed, but the moment their server detected Marvin’s return, it had decided to finish what it had started. He seemed to have no choice or defense against the erasure of his mind. I supposed any piece of software set up to accept automated updates would be in the same situation.

I sighed.

“Sir, the Centaurs are attempting to communicate.”

“Keep jamming them.”

“But sir, this could be seen as a diplomatic breach.”

I stared at the young lieutenant. “I don’t care. Continue jamming.”

The helmsman turned away. He appeared huffy about it. I truly didn’t care what he thought. I watched the screen with Marvin being dragged behind us. As I watched, an oddment of metal peeled away and was lost in space behind us. He was beginning to disintegrate—or at least his collection of junk was.

After about five minutes, I heard a weak signal in my helmet. “Restart complete.”

“Marvin?”

“Backup restoring. Please wait….”

Breathing through my teeth, I waited. I felt like a father hovering outside an operating room.

Finally, Marvin’s voice came through again. “Colonel Riggs?” he asked. “What happened? I appear to have malfunctioned. Am I being towed or am I a prisoner?”

I laughed. “You are being towed,” I assured him. “You—sort of fainted.”

I explained the download the Centaur brainboxes were trying to make to him and the automatic nature of such things. I could tell while conversing with him his mind was undamaged. I supposed the system worked in a similar fashion to an earthly computer system when doing an update—it didn’t erase the old software until the new code was completely downloaded and ready to install. My jamming had caused it to retry for a while, then give up and call it a failure. The update operation had timed out, and then reloaded the backup, meaning Marvin’s original mind. Marvin’s mind had been restored.

“Originally, your software was interrupted while being downloaded from their computers,” I told him. “I think that’s why you’ve always been so inquisitive. You are always looking for the missing part.”

“Perhaps the download should be allowed to continue,” he said. “I’d like to know more of my origins.”

“I don’t think it will work that way, buddy. You are what you are because the download was incomplete. If it is allowed to finish, you’ll be different. I would suspect your memories will be erased as well.”

“How awful. Are these Centaur creatures barbarians?”

“I don’t think so. They don’t understand you and your unique mind. The computers that originally copied you to our systems know the job was never finished. They are only trying to complete what they started.”

“I see, and you interrupted the process?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Colonel Riggs? I’ve been so much trouble for you.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “But you’ve been a friend as well. I’ll tell you what, Marvin. If you will give up your flying body, I’ll protect your mind from this transmission.”

Marvin hesitated. “Give up my body?”

“Not entirely, just the space propulsion systems. I’d like to have you aboard as a regular member of Star Force. Maybe you could assume a humanoid shape, so you fit into our environments more naturally.”

At this point, the helmsman swiveled in his chair and stared at me. His expression clearly indicated he thought I was stark, raving mad. I gave him an irritable frown, and then ignored him.

“I will accept,” Marvin said after a time, “if I’m allowed to study the specimens I’ve found.”

“That seems reasonable. I just want you to be ground-based, not a spaceship anymore, Marvin.”

“I understand, Colonel Riggs.”

I suspected that he truly did.

* * *

The following days brought significant changes to our tactical situation and presented us with new choices. We followed the Macro cruisers toward the outer planets. At a certain key point, each of the enemy cruisers that circled the six habitable worlds on guard duty suddenly left orbit. At perfectly matching speeds, they accelerated to join the fleet we were chasing after.

I’d managed to talk to the herd peoples of Eden and get them to turn off Marvin’s download. They did so without an argument, telling me the sky was bountiful and the winds would forever ruffle my fur. Something like that. I was sure to them, they were paying me the highest of compliments for coming back and driving the Macros out of their system.

I anxiously watched this development with my command staff. But according to all our calculations, they were all targeting the same remote point, the spot which we suspected contained a second hidden ring in the Eden system. I realized thoughtfully that every system we’d visited thus far had at least two rings. The Aldebaran system had three, including the small one on Helios. Even the blue giant, which we believed to be the star Bellatrix, must have had more than one ring. How else had the Macros appeared at our Venus ring with over a hundred ships? I’d gone through the Venus ring personally and seen the blue giant system on the other side. I hadn’t found another ring, but I’d only been there a short time. I was certain, however, there had not been over a hundred enemy cruisers in the system.

All logic pointed toward the conclusion the Macros were abandoning Eden. They were badly outnumbered against our fleet and the Worm fleet combined. I decided to continue pressing onward, to drive the machines as far as I could. Not everyone in my command staff agreed with this decision.

The very first relayed message I received from Earth was from Crow. It was impossible via our system to have a real conversation. All we could do was transmit a recording of our voices over the vast distances, in each case relayed via the ships I’d posted for this very duty at each of the rings. Each ship caught the message, flew through the ring to the next system in the chain and relayed the message to the next ship waiting at the next ring. Even at the speed of light, the distance between the rings required hours of transmission time to cross each star system. When I finally did get something from Crow, it was about two days old. I played it privately in my helmet while sitting in a command chair in the destroyer.

“Riggs? This is Admiral Jack Crow, the supreme commander of all Star Force Fleet operations…”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes, but kept listening.

“…I’ve received and reviewed Commodore Decker’s report concerning your engagements with the enemy. I want to say right off mate, I’m impressed. I’m not sure how you made friends with those slimy Worm bastards, but I guess it turned out for the best. You’ve managed to drive the Macros from two systems, and as I understand it now, you are pushing across a third system.

“But Riggs, I want to caution you. There is no way you can continue your string of victories forever. You are the conquering hero now, but you must halt your rampage and consolidate our gains. We’ve conquered four systems now, including our own. That should be enough. We can’t even defend them all, and I don’t want you to keep fighting until you lose all my ships and leave Earth defenseless. Crow out.”

I frowned fiercely, not liking the message. I didn’t bother to listen to it a second time. I deleted it in fact, purging it from my system. I sat there, thinking hard. The crew around me tossed me frequent glances, but I maintained my stony silence. I had a decision to make.

Crow had a point. I knew in some ways he was right. Logically, I couldn’t go on forever. If I jumped again through the next ring, none of us knew what we would encounter. A hundred more cruisers, or a million more mines could be waiting for us. It could be the end of our fleet.

The other side of the argument was the one I couldn’t get out of my head. I wanted to destroy every Macro I’d encountered. I didn’t want any of them to escape. After a string of victories, I found myself wanting more. I realized I’d begun to have fantasies of ending this war right now, of pushing the enemy to the ends of the universe and destroying them all.

A beeping began in my helmet. I glanced at the readout. It was Commodore Decker. I let out a growling 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.