“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 destroyed by the island itself, fortified as it was with lasers and the like. In that case we’d smashed them against our strongest defensive point. The enemy had helpfully come against our strength, beating their heads against a rock. Unfortunately, fortifying Andros Island further wouldn’t win the next battle. I didn’t think they could be talked into attacking only that single spot on Earth again.
The trick then, I thought, was to put something like Andros Island out near the rings themselves. The reason Andros had managed to stop a hundred ships was because it wasn’t a ship, but an island, a brick of land bristling with weaponry. I decided we needed a platform like that in space. A huge structure we could drag out into place or build on the spot. It would have to be big, and it would have to put all its power into weapons.
The key problem with ships was the fact it took more power to run engines than it did to run weapons. Most of every ship’s power went to the engines, and the guns were therefore comparatively small. But, if I could build a static defensive platform, I could mass heavy weaponry on it and blow away enemy ships as they wriggled through the rings a few at a time. A fort placed in range of a ring would be able to concentrate its fire, outgunning each ship as it came through. That was the key, the enemy would be blind easy to ambush, and they couldn’t all come through at once. If I could generate enough firepower to blow away one ship at a time every few seconds, they could throw a thousand ships into an attack and lose them all. And, knowing the Macros, they might just do that.
Minefields weren’t going to cut it, and I couldn’t station the fleet at every ring forever. We had to build a fortification. Something…huge.
I smiled to myself. Possibly, I had the tail of an idea that could win this war—not just another battle.
The End
From the Author: Thanks Reader! I hope you enjoyed CONQUEST. The Star Force series will continue with the fifth book, BATTLESTATION. If you would like to see the series move forward as my next writing project, please put up some stars and a review. Let new readers know what’s in store for them.
-BVL
Visit BVLarson.com for more information.