“Jack,” I said, taking in a deep breath, “you know I’ve had many dealings with the Macros. More than any other human we know of.”
“Right,” he said cautiously.
“Well, I’ve got some ideas. Things I want to try out. I want to talk to them, and see if I can redirect their rage.”
Crow gave one of his dirty laughs. “No chance there, mate. If anything, you’ll prod their backsides until they’re even more pissed off.”
“How can we be any worse off than we are right now?”
“Well, you have a point there. But I don’t want you losing our best ground officer in space, as well as a perfectly good destroyer. Barbarossa is one of the best vessels in the fleet. And you didn’t bother to even ask if you could take her up.”
I knew that his last point was the element that irritated him the most. He hated it when I usurped his authority over any part of Fleet ops. I didn’t blame him, but this had to be done. I decided to back down and throw him a bone. I was a firm believer in asking for forgiveness rather than permission.
“I apologize for that, Jack,” I said. “I should have talked it over with you first.”
“Oh right, I buy that, mate,” Crow said sarcastically. “Well then…I suppose you can try out your plan, whatever the hell it is. I know you won’t tell me the details, so I’m not even going to ask. But I do want to know if you plan to return Barbarossa.”
“I absolutely do,” I said.
“What about your own person?”
I hesitated. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Crazy bastard. I knew when you took off like a robber’s dog you were a danger to yourself and the rest of us.”
“The Macros are coming to stomp humanity into dust. The fleet outnumbers us four to one. I might as well try to talk to them.”
“I know that. Everyone knows that. But why can’t you just wait it out until they get closer to Earth? Why fly out there into their faces?”
“Have they fired any missiles yet, Admiral?” I asked.
“No, they haven’t—” Crow broke off and fell silent for a second. “Oh. I get it.”
“That’s right. Once they launch a few thousand nukes at us, the time for negotiation will be long past. I need to talk to them before they decide to do that, sir.”
“Bloody hell. Right…well, right. Just get on with it, then. Crow out.”
I relaxed in my crash seat and put my helmet back down on the floor. Captain Miklos gave me a tiny nod of thanks. A chain-of-command crisis had been averted. The captain’s face was white, but relieved. Around me, I saw the crewmen go back to their duties calmly. I think only the Captain understood that disaster had just been averted. He had kept command of his ship by a thread.
“How far out are we going, Colonel?” he asked me.
“Far enough to allow them to pick out our signal. Let’s not fly directly toward them. I want to shift our course thirty degrees below the ecliptic for the next hour. At that point, our position should be clearly distinguishable from Earth’s in the background.”
Miklos blinked at me, trying to figure out my plan. At last, he nodded. “You want them to be certain it is you in this ship talking to them, not a signal relayed from Earth.”
“Exactly.”
“You want them to be certain of your location—in the Barbarossa?”
“Yes.”
He thought about that. He didn’t seem to like his conclusions. “Are you going to exit the ship, sir?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on what the Macros say.”
“Colonel, self-sacrifice is a noble attribute, but there are limits to the logic of it.”
I eyed him for a moment. His concern seemed genuine. “Have a little faith, Captain,” I said, giving him my best, most reassuring smile. “I’ve always got a plan.”
That line worked, as it usually did. Captain Miklos turned back to his screens and readouts with a more confident expression. Some of the color even returned to his cheeks above his bristling beard.
I did have a plan, of course. I even had a few back-up plans. But I wasn’t sure if anyone aboard would like my ideas, so I kept them to myself.
We flew on into the face of the Macro fleet for the next hour. It was hard not to feel a growing sense of tension in my shoulders and neck as the enemy contacts swelled ever so slightly on our long range sensors. The Macro fleet was bunched up behind their big dreadnaught. They looked like a dripping snowball seen from head-on, with one big central mass and dozens of smaller contacts slipping out from behind the protective skirts of their mother from time to time. Things looked even worse as we slid below the plane of the ecliptic. The enemy fleet began to stretch out and lengthen as our viewpoint shifted. From this new perspective, the snowball had grown a short tail of specks like a comet. If we kept flying away at an angle, they would stretch out and out into a long mass. The thought that each of those specks was a Macro cruiser with greater firepower and much greater mass than our ship possessed was terrifying if one let your mind dwell upon it. I didn’t bother.
After we were about two hours out from Earth, the Macros finally reacted to our presence.
“The enemy fleet is shifting formation, sir,” the helmsman said.
I nodded, unsurprised. I glanced at the helmsman, a young, obviously inexperienced ensign. He had the look of a bookish fellow from a good college. I wondered why he’d joined Star Force, but there wasn’t time to ask him.
“Describe the new formation,” I said. I could, of course, figure that out for myself by looking at the forward wall of the bridge or checking on the linked-in sensor data. But I wanted to hear how he analyzed the input.
“Sir, the enemy seems to be shifting some of their ships away from us. The—the tail sir. The ships hiding behind their dreadnaught are moving to where we can’t target them. Even though we are clearly out of range.”
“That’s a good sign. They don’t like us being out here by ourselves. We’re making them nervous. The fact they reacted to us at all shows an unusual lack of certainty on their part. Macros do not usually bother with reactive defensive postures.”
“Could their change in tactics be due to the leadership of this new, larger vessel?” Captain Miklos asked.
I looked at him and nodded. “Yes, that’s very possible. I’ve seen evidence before that the Macros get smarter with increasing numbers of them on the scene. Maybe their shared processing systems increase in capacity with the presence of more individuals.”
“So Macro Command becomes more capable with larger fleets?”
“My guess is that it does.”
“Sirs?” the helmsman interrupted, “they are shifting again. A sub-formation has broken away.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Four ships in a diamond pattern?”
“Exactly sir.”
“And, they’re headed toward us?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then,” I said, sitting up perfectly straight. It was hard to do anything else in my battle suit, but I’d managed to slouch fractionally inside it. “They’ve noticed us, so it’s time to talk to them. Barbarossa, open a directed channel to the Macro fleet.”
There was no response for a second. I glanced at Miklos.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Barbarossa, take all orders from Colonel Riggs as if I’d given them to you. Colonel Riggs is to be accepted as command personnel with full authority.”
“Permissions set,” said the ship.
I repeated my request.
“Channel open. Propagation delay due to distance is three minutes each way.”