I cursed and staggered in surprise. “Didn’t hear you following me,” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to,” she said.
I could tell she was proud of herself.
“How long have you been following me around?” I asked.
“For quite a while. I finally got bored tracking Marvin. He’s just a floating brain box with one skinny arm now. All he does is look at everything and poke at Macro control systems all over the ship, wherever he finds them.”
I frowned. “Does he make the boards do anything?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. He just taps at them and stares. Sometimes he talks to himself. But I’m not completely taken in by his act. All serial killers seem like harmless eccentrics early on, you know.”
“You do sound like the neighbor after the crime,” I said. “The one who talks about how he always mowed his lawn, kept to himself and waved hello like a normal robot.”
She almost laughed, but not quite. I could tell Ning’s nasty passing was still fresh in her mind. I decided to change the topic. “I’ve been looking for a place to get some sleep,” I said. “Any ideas?”
She gave her head a small tilt to the left, considering it. I’d always liked that affectation. After a short pause, she crooked her finger in my direction. I followed her like a puppy. Despite my fatigue I admired her shapely figure as she walked through the halls. She’d gotten rid of the vacc suit now that most of the ship was pressurized and heated. It was much more comfortable for everyone. Wearing a vacc suit continuously was like living in a sleeping bag with holes cut out for your eyes.
I wanted to reach for her, but stopped myself. I knew that much about make-ups, you had to time things perfectly. She led me to one of the countless chambers on the ship that served no obvious purpose. This one was full of tubes. Metal tubes, fabric tubes, tubes that looked like they were made of rubber or graphite-but weren’t. The trick was, the tubes that ran over the floor and the walls had two wonderful properties: they were soft and slightly warm. I was sure they carried power or data or both. In fact, this looked like the Macro equivalent of a networking data-closet. We spread out some blankets that were kind of like tarps on top of the thick, flexy tubes. With a little rearranging and plumping, they made a firm but livable bed.
“This isn’t bad,” I was saying, admiring our handiwork. I was about to go on, but she grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me down on top of her. And I do mean pulled. I was yanked off my feet, and forcibly kissed once again.
I turned my head as she began to run her hands over my back.
“What’s wrong?” she growled.
“I didn’t think we’d made up yet,” I said.
“Since when did you care?”
“A man’s got to have some self-respect,” I said, straining away and giving her my best poker-face.
Sandra stared at me for a confused second, and then burst out laughing. I joined in. Both of us knew I had no self-respect what-so-ever when it came to getting into bed with her. She was a weakness of mine-an addiction.
“We haven’t made up,” she said after we were finished.
“Why did we do it then?” I asked.
“I didn’t want you thinking about Jasmine Sarin for one more second,” she said.
I laughed with my eyes closed. “You’re a succubus.”
Overall I’d found her body to be familiar, but more firm and energetic. I didn’t mind the change. The tubes were still soft under me, and I was falling asleep the moment she climbed off me. She’d taken the last ounce of energy out of my tired form.
I passed out for a long time.
44
I awakened with Sandra standing over me, shaking me. I opened gluey eyes and peered up. “Morning already?”
“We’re in trouble,” she said.
I took one look at her face and stood up with a grunt. I dragged my vacc suit back on while she explained. She was already dressed. I got the feeling she had been for some time.
“Everyone was looking for you,” she said. “Calling over the com-link-then I realized I was the only one who knew where you were. So I sprinted down here to get you.”
I picked up my helmet and saw it was indeed full of flashing lights. “I must not have heard the buzzer,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s the Worms,” she said.
I snapped my head around to stare at her.
“They have ships,” she said. “They are small ones, but they are coming up here.”
“Up here?”
“Yeah, heading right toward us.”
“Are they firing? Are they in range yet? How long do we have?” While I asked these questions, she shook her head and we hustled together along corridors and access tubes to the bridge. When we arrived, everyone looked up. I realized we’d made a grand, hurried entrance together. Every eye in the place stared at us. A few smirked.
Only Major Sarin avoided looking at us. She kept her eyes down on her computer. Internally, I felt a twist. More discord. I couldn’t seem to stop messing up my staff. It was obvious Sandra and I had been together, and Jasmine felt hurt.
I decided to go commander on them. No apologies. No explanations. Nothing. When I wanted to get the minds of my marines off gossip and hurt feelings, nothing worked like a pile of snappy orders.
“Have we got a big situational screen hooked up yet?”I demanded.
Heads shook.
“No?” I asked. “Sarin, you are on screen ops. Feed the data to my tablet, clone our screens. Gorski, give me verbal numbers on the situation. Enemy strength and range first.”
We soon stood in a group that resembled a football huddle, with everyone tapping at small portable computers. The situation was not yet dire. We had no sign of Macro ships in the Helios system or Alpha Centauri. Instead, we had exactly fourteen small vessels coming up from Helios. The unusual configuration of the ships and the fact they’d come from Helios led us to believe they were Worm ships. They looked vaguely like the old NASA shuttlecrafts to me, but a bit larger. They had stubby wings and a pointed snout. They were clearly designed for atmospheric travel.
“It looks like fourteen frigate class ships against one cruiser,” I said, “and we aren’t fully operational. I don’t like the odds. Where did this Worm fleet come from?”
“As far as we can tell, Colonel,” Gorski said, “they’ve been hiding them underwater. They lifted off from beneath those muddy seas of theirs.”
“Makes sense. I’m not surprised they’ve been hiding them. They aren’t very big. I would bet two Macro cruisers could take all of them out. I suppose whatever fleet they may have had in the past was wiped out by the Macros. So they hid what they had left-or built new ones in secret.”
I’d never been able to say I liked the Worms, but I did find them worthy of admiration at times. They were the beaten down people in this game. But they were determined, and never seemed to give up. I suspected their population was even lower than the Centaur herds had been. They could be snuffed out after another few bad battles. Everywhere we went, it looked as if the machines had already won. We were still struggling, but like the Worms we’d really been beaten long ago.
“Should we fight or run, sir?” Gorski asked.
I ignored him. I could feel every eye on the bridge on me. I didn’t look at my crew, but instead studied the small Worm fleet, knowing it was all they had. I sighed as I looked at the screen. Fourteen Worm ships, coming up to do battle with what they must have figured was a single, damaged Macro cruiser. I couldn’t blame them. I could imagine they’d argued hard amongst themselves whether this was the time to make a counterstrike. If they were anything like human commanders, some had wanted to keep hiding and building. Others had urged action, taking the position that they must act. If they didn’t take the chance to win this small battle, how could they ever going to take the initiative?