Empire Ebook Full (16 page)

“Hmm, so…they don’t interact at all? Each colony is a world unto itself? That will
make it harder to deal with them as a single society.”

“They are not a single society. They are not even a single species. They vary dramatically
from warm water types that float in cycles around the world, following various currents,
to cold, deep-water types that anchor themselves to the sea bottom.

“I see,” I said thoughtfully. I’d always planned to get around to adding the Microbes
into my list of biotic allies. Now, I wasn’t sure if such a thing would ever be possible.
Marvin had been right when he’d once told me the Microbes were like the living form
of the Nanos.

I looked at Marvin again, sharply. “You’ve found some of them then, here on this planet?
You’ve encountered the smart ones?”

Marvin’s tentacles writhed. “Not exactly. Can I get on with my investigation of the
crime scene now?”

“No,” I said. “What do you mean by
not exactly?
”

“’Not’ is a negative logical operator, reversing the true-false state of a Boolean
value. ‘Exactly’ qualifies as an adverb.”

“I know that, you evasive robot! What I want to know is what your vague reference
means in this instance.”

Marvin squirmed some more. I figured he was dreaming up a new half-lie.

“Never mind,” I said suddenly. “Let me guess what it means.”

“Be my guest.”

I glared at him. “You haven’t
exactly
found intelligent Microbes here. That means you have encountered them, but not in
the manner described. Are they different Microbes? Maybe proto-intelligent ones?”

“That would be very exciting, but no.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe I was playing twenty questions with Marvin, standing
on this patch of beach. The odd thing was it was probably a faster way to get to the
right answer when dealing with him. I could see by his body language he was excited
and intrigued by the contest. Could Colonel Riggs figure out what Marvin was hinting
at without losing his mind? For Marvin, the very process was stimulating.

I considered giving up the thread in frustration, but didn’t. Becoming stubborn, I
pushed ahead. I was going to match wits with this bucket of nanites and I was going
to win.

“Second point,” I said, “you don’t want me to know the truth. That indicates I might
not approve of your methodology. Let’s put this together. You’ve met smart Microbes
here, but not in the manner I described. And, you aren’t sure I’ll be happy about
what you did…I’m still not getting it.”

I looked at the Marvin, who’d come close and seemed agitated. His cameras were eyeing
me from a dozen angles and his tentacles were restless, causing little sprays of sand
to shoot up from under him as they squirmed.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” I asked him. “Is this all an experiment
you’ve set up to test me?”

“No, this incident is spontaneous. But it is very stimulating.”

I took another deep breath, closed my eyes, and thought hard. Finally, I opened them
again and nodded. “You brought colonies back here from Eden-11. The creatures the
Macros used as a biotic weapon—you returned them to their home planet. That’s it,
isn’t it? Do you have them somewhere on the island trapped in a tiny pool?”

“I’m very impressed, Colonel Riggs. I’m not sure that I could come up with the same
conclusions, given the same input.”

“Thanks, I guess. What the hell are you up to, Marvin? Playing god again with the
Microbes?”

“To answer your earlier more coherent inquiry: yes, I did transport Microbes from
Eden-11 to Eden-6. I’ve returned them to their homeworld, just as you for did the
Centaurs.”

“Yes, but they aren’t the same as when they left,” I said. “You told me yourself the
Macros bred them to kill the Centaurs. Then you fooled with them further, breeding
them to effect changes in human physiology.”

“They should pose no danger to the indigent population.”

“
Should?
You have no idea if that’s true or not. I suggest you dump your pools and go looking
for native colonies again. But I don’t want you to trap them and abuse them. Try to
contact them and arrange a peaceable trading system for us to use their special biological
talents.”

Marvin squirmed. “You are ordering me to kill several trillion individuals? I’ve brought
them all the way here, to their fabled homeworld. They like it here, even if they
find it too warm. They are adapting and thriving. I’m surprised that you would be
so ruthless with a population of refugees.”

I made a growling sound of frustration. He had me, and I knew it. If it was immoral
to create and transport an altered intelligent colony, wasn’t it equally immoral to
destroy them to keep this world’s local population pure? Maybe these returning populations
would invade the oceans and eat all the coral or something, but who was I to kill
them all because they might be a problem to the more established members of their
complex people? I barely understood them, and didn’t feel qualified to pass judgment
on them.

“All right Marvin,” I said. “Keep your experimental pool. But keep them far from the
ocean itself. Don’t let them grow in number or escape.”

“They will object to further imprisonment,” he said. “I’ve promised them—”

“I don’t care what you promised them. You are a member of Star Force, and under my
command. Do you wish to keep that status?”

“Yes I do, Colonel Riggs.”

“Then stop giving me such a hard time.”

“My apologies, sir.”

-14-

After we’d sorted out the fate of the Microbes Marvin had brought with him, I had
him investigate the mess on the beach that had once been the beautiful Marvelena Hellsen.
Just in case, he left his brainbox on the sand and rolled his body into the surf.
The body was connected to the brainbox by a long strand of gleaming liquid metal.

After an hour or so of poking around, he managed to blow himself up. Afterward, what
was left of Marvin came to make his report.

“The subject known as Marvelena was attuned to the device,” he said. “It apparently
was recording data of several types, but it detonated when I used a sample of her
DNA and applied it to the internal switch.”

Sandra narrowed her eyes. “Where did you get DNA…? Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“But could it spy on us, Marvin?” I asked.

“Yes. I believe so. The unit appears to be capable of ring-to-ring transmissions.
Using this system, the subject was possibly able to report back to Earth directly.”

I wasn’t happy to learn that Earth had this technology. Who knew who Crow was communicating
with now?

“So,” I said, pacing over the sands, “she
was
a spy and possibly an assassin, but they sent her here undercover as a newsperson.
Are we sure she was who she said she was? If she was the real Marvelena, did she
know
she was an assassin?”

“Every detail of her identification checked out,” Marvin said. “Either they cloned
her, or that was the original Marvelena Hellsen. I cannot summarize her state of mind,
as I never actually met her.”

Neither Sandra nor Kwon were certain how much she knew about her role in this tragic
event, either.

I nodded. “Okay, let’s accept she really was the famous reporter. And whether or not
she knew what was going to happen, she knew she was supposed to get the box close
to me and then touch it. Maybe she thought it was something else, like a data capture
device. I can hardly believe she would have come out here to be a suicide bomber.
Not someone like her. She loved herself more than anything.”

The rest agreed with me. We puzzled over the story for a long time, but couldn’t figure
out the rest of the circumstances with incomplete information. But regardless of the
details, it seemed clear that someone was out to kill me—again.

 After the attempted assassination, as bizarre as it was, I was more determined than
ever to find out what was going on back on Earth. I ordered the fleet to gather at
the ring that led to the Helios system.

Naturally, my staff filled the air with objections. Miklos said that if I would only
wait another week, we’d have ten more ships. Welter wanted me to wait a month. By
then, we’d have the battle station up to strength and we could leave the Eden system
behind, certain that our rear flank was secure. Kwon and Sandra thought we should
send a scout expedition first, and when they returned, we could make our decision
with a more complete picture of the strategic situation. Marvin, for his part, watched
us all with curious excitement. He made no objections, because he didn’t have any.
He
wanted
to go exploring again. Knowing that the only staffer on my side was a crazy robot
didn’t make things any easier for me.

I listened carefully to my people as they all presented good ideas. Unfortunately,
every proposal would eat up a lot of time that I wasn’t willing to give away. Whatever
we could build in a given amount of time, I reasoned the enemy could build more in
that same span. Whether it was Crow’s Fleet building against us, or another Macro
task force, I would be losing in relative strength with each day that passed. Besides,
I didn’t even have enough trained crews to properly man the ships I’d already built.

Accordingly, I overruled them all. They were sullen, but unsurprised. Only Marvin
seemed happy, his snarl of tentacles whipping about excitedly and his cameras watching
everyone. He’d rebuilt himself with startling speed. I guessed it wasn’t that hard
to do when you were built mostly of nanites and electronics such as cameras. The only
unique thing about Marvin was his brainbox. I reflected that same thing could be said
about all of us.

We launched the next morning and gathered at the ring until I had over fifty ships.
It wasn’t much, but they were all veterans of a dozen battles and our designs had
been tested in battle and honed. I had no idea what we would meet, but I was through
with waiting around.

Captain Miklos flew our only light cruiser
Nostradamus
, which was a replica I’d built of the ship Sarin had brought out to parade in front
of me a few months back. We’d made a few modifications, but for the most part it followed
Earth’s design. The ship looked like a flying ladle with fins—and lots of heavy laser
turrets. Six of them.

I left Commander Welter behind, placing him in charge of the battle station and the
overall defense of Eden. He mumbled his thanks, and I couldn’t blame him for that.
If a serious threat came and the Fleet was out on maneuvers, we both knew he couldn’t
hold. But I told him to do so anyway. I told him I planned to bring back help.

We formed up into a column at the ring, behind
Nostradamus
. The rest of the ships were the new gunboats I’d designed. I’d been able to mass-produce
these ugly little ships. I was still proud of them. They weren’t sleek, especially
fast, or powerful. What they were was numerous. We built them using the massive captured
Macro factories to make the hulls in one single birth-like effort, along with the
power generators. The interior components were manufactured by the nanotech factories.
Combining the Macro bulk-production with the refined technology of the Nano factories
was the key. We were able to churn out gunships at an alarming rate. Already, I had
more of them than I had qualified Star Force pilots. Even with a crash training program,
I could only deploy a proper crew on fifty of them.

Surviving from my original forces, I now had only six destroyers and ten saucer-shaped
frigates. The rest had been lost in the struggles against the Macros to retake the
Eden system, and they were too difficult to replace. I decided to leave the destroyers
and frigates behind to cover Eden, under the command of Welter, who sat in his ruined
battle station.

When I finally flew my task force through the ring, I had fifty gunships with one
light cruiser at the point. It would have to do.

We arrived in the Helios system a moment later, nervous, but not paranoid. I’d been
scouting ahead, naturally. The Worms knew we were coming, as I’d made a point of sending
pictographic messages to them. These included images of the raging Worm Warrior, followed
by their images for comradeship and shared glory. These concepts never seemed to fail
to stir the hearts of the Worms. They were suckers for bravado.

In response to our arrival in force, the Worms launched their own fleet. They had
a small, but impressive force. Their ships were radically different from our own,
but still surprisingly effective in combat. They were close fighters that released
powerful short-ranged beams of particles. I’d personally witnessed them tearing up
Macro cruisers in the past.

“Count those ships, Miklos,” I said, standing in full battle armor on his bridge.

“Ah…sixty-two Worm ships, sir,” Captain Miklos said. He wore a full beard and an Eastern
European accent. If anything, isolation out here on the frontier had sharpened these
two characteristics. His accent had thickened somehow, and so had his hoary beard.
“More are rising up out of the atmosphere every minute, Colonel. They appear friendly
or at least neutral. But, they’re scrambling to meet us if we represent a threat.”