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“The most sophisticated of my Microbe colonies are located there, yes.”

I sighed. “Marvin, that’s their homeworld. They’ll be fine. In fact, I would guess
they’ll be a lot better off without you poking and prodding at their tiny backsides.”

“Your reference is imprecise. The typical microflora has a food intake and an exit
for byproducts and waste, but I’m not sure this would qualify as a ‘backside’ since
they do not, in most cases, independently propel themselves in any specific direction.
Directional motion is often happenstance, due to the rippling action of defensive
cilia—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, waving my gloved hand at him. “My bad. What I meant was they
deserve to live and die in the wild, not to exist solely for your entertainment.”

“Oh.”

There was an awkward pause. Marvin didn’t even bother to refute my accusation. Wasn’t
every evil scientist supposed to give people a speech about how his efforts benefited
the greater good? Marvin seemed to find such delusions unnecessary. He delved into
the tiny lives of others purely for his own pleasure, and apparently felt no need
to candy it up with a moral argument. Somehow, I found this disturbing.

The newly-pledged Star Force people lined up. I beamed at them, thrilled to see their
numbers inflate my ranks. In most cases, they weren’t allowed to keep their former
rank. As a matter of course, I’d bumped up the veterans who’d fought with me out here
on the frontier for so long and busted most of the new people back down to private.
They weren’t always happy about that, but they were soon eager to rebuild their reputations.
I figured that starting off at the bottom always made a marine work harder. More importantly,
this system kept my own loyal personnel at the top of the command structure. If Crow
had planted a few shills in this group, they would not find themselves running anything
until I was sure they were true to the cause.

The hold was about the size of a gymnasium. The recruits formed lines, and I walked
among them. Each wore a spacer’s black nanocloth uniform, a uniform that would forever
remain sharply-cut and perfectly-creased. Most of them were male, but about a third
were female. I stopped in front of the next and placed a marine private’s single stripe
on his shoulders. The insignias adhered themselves to the nanocloth and merged with
it, becoming part of the uniform. Shining gold on black, the stripes really stood
out.

“Sir, is your decision final?” Marvin asked as I shook hands and congratulated the
newly sworn-in marine.

“All my decisions are final,” I said. “Until I make a new one.”

Marvin followed me as I walked down the long ranks in the main cargo hold, distributing
insignias of rank. His limbs scrabbled at the deck like a nest of vipers. The recruits
couldn’t help but stare at him, but at a stern look from me, they set their eyes dead
ahead again.

“Are you considering a change of course in the next few hours? Preferably before we
reach Eden-8, I—”

“No, Marvin. I’m not. I assure you, however, we’ll return to Eden-6 in due course.
When we do, your puddles of slime will still be full of thriving Microbes.”

“I think you may fail to grasp the significance of lost time in this circumstance,
Colonel. A day represents a generation among the Microbes. We will have been gone
so long, much of their conditioning and specialized breeding will be lost.”

“Is that so?” I asked. I was about to pin a Fleet midshipman’s symbol on a redhead’s
collar. I paused and glanced at Marvin. “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

“How could such a gross loss of effort be beneficial?”

“Living beings are supposed to determine their own purpose in life, Marvin. We’re
programmed that way.”

“An interesting hypothesis. I would counter that your theory is unproven and unlikely.”

“Listen,” I said, tired of being badgered by a robot. I pinned the insignia on the
redhead where it melted into her uniform. I shook her hand. We’d long since dropped
the midshipman’s anchor in favor of a golden comet, which now streaked across her
lapel. “Excuse me,” I said to her, “welcome home to Star Force.”

“Thank you, Colonel Riggs,” she said.

I turned on Marvin. “No more whining,” I told him. “If you want to play with your
Microbes again, you’d better come up with a valid reason for doing so. Give me a solid
gain for Star Force, a tangible advantage that I can weigh against other concerns.
Then you’ll get whatever you want—an office. A laboratory and a staff, maybe.”

I had so many cameras on me now, I couldn’t count them all. “Really, Colonel Riggs?”

“Yes, now get out of here until you can make a substantial case for your pet project.”

Marvin slinked away excitedly. I glanced after him once as he left the hold. I shook
my head. It was good to see him energized about his work, but I wished he’d make his
obsessions more useful to the cause.

I forgot about Marvin after that and swore in hundreds more new people. Sometimes,
I thought I recognized a face. A few times, marines shook my hand warmly, claiming
they’d been with me in one firefight or another. A few I actually remembered having
met before.

In every case I gave them a hearty welcome home, whether I remembered them or not.
I didn’t like glad-handing, but it was necessary. Not only was it good for morale,
it was good for my cause. Crow had splintered Star Force, and as far as I could tell,
I was his only serious rival. Personal loyalty was a powerful motivator for any military
organization, and I intended to use that to the fullest. I let them take shots of
the ceremony with their handhelds and helmet optics. I gave out hugs and smiles like
I was running for office back home. Perhaps, in a way, I was.

Jasmine and Sandra interrupted me as the crowd broke up. The recruits were heading
back to their transports amid cheers and well-wishes. I took one glance over my shoulder
at the approaching women, and knew there was trouble coming. At least they weren’t
fighting each other. But their expressions were worried—even nervous.

“Sir,” Jasmine said, “we’re in trouble.”

I threw one last salute at the recruits as they mounted their ramps and passed through
the coupling airlocks. I gave them a bullshit smile, then turned back to my staff.
I marched with them toward the long, sloping corridor that led up to the bridge. Under
my feet, the deck rippled and shifted—that worried me. The ship was reconfiguring
itself for something.

“The nanites look frisky,” I said. “Give me the short version.”

“I took the liberty of ordering the bridge crew to prepare for a rapid departure,”
Captain Sarin said.

I stared at her for a moment, trying not to become annoyed. Miklos was still the second
in command in this system. I could see already that Sarin was bucking for her old
job back. Well, she hadn’t earned that position yet in my mind. Maybe she would in
time, and I had to admit she had been the best at ops, but I didn’t want her to overstep
her bounds right off. I almost admonished her, but nodded instead. I decided to wait
until I heard what these two had to say.

I looked to Sandra next. She didn’t seem to be trying to put Jasmine in her place,
as I would expect. That cued me in.

“This is something big then. Very big. Am I right?”

“We don’t completely know, sir,” Jasmine said. “But there are transmissions coming
in, through both the rings on either side of Eden’s star. The signals going to Helios
we don’t have a report on. But we do have ships in the Thor system. They are monitoring
the opposite ring, where the Macros came from last time. The signals—whatever they
are—are going through the ring in the Eden system near Hel. Then the signal can be
traced, vibrating the ring at the far end of the system.”

“Which goes to an unknown system beyond the edge of our maps,” I said showing my teeth
for a moment. “What was it the old maps used to say about such points? ‘Beyond here,
there be dragons…’ Well, that is discouraging news, and may well be a prelude to an
attack. But I hardly think that—”

“That’s not all, Kyle,” Sandra said, speaking up for the first time. “There has been
a report from the Worms as well. They came through the ring from the Helios side—just
one ship, with a message.”

I stopped marching toward the bridge. At this point, we stood near the entrance to
the bridge itself. I could sense energetic movement up there. People knew something
big was happening.

“What did they say?”

“We just had Marvin translate. It wasn’t really necessary though. Anyone can understand
their symbol language, once you get used to it. They sent their symbol for enemies,
then the symbol for approaching or attacking. Lastly, they sent a pictograph of the
stars in the Helios’ sky.”

I took a long second to digest that one. “Isn’t that the one that means a count in
the high hundreds?”

“Or even in the thousands.”

Suddenly, I got it. “They aren’t talking about the Macros, are they? They’re talking
about Earth ships. They have to be.”

Sandra and Jasmine both nodded seriously. As we’d been talking, the women had lowered
their voices. For some reason, when discussing possible approaching doom, it is part
of human psychology to talk about it quietly.

I thought about this new situation for several seconds. Someone was sending signals
through the Thor system again, possibly summoning more Macros or a new fleet of Lobster
ships. We’d trashed them the first time, and we’d repaired our battle station. But
it was nowhere near one hundred percent operational effectiveness. If they had another
fleet, this would be an opportune time to strike.

Worse, it sounded like the Earth fleet was coming as well, on our opposite flank.
I felt a bit sick inside, but tried not to let it show in my face. I think the women
standing near me both knew, however. They’d been with me for so long, and seen too
many terrible things while standing at my side. It was harder for me to fool them
than anyone else I knew. Finally, I took a deep breath and stopped trying.

“This sounds bad,” I said. “If it is Crow flying in after us, coming to avenge Decker,
well, that’s bad enough. But the Macros and Crustaceans too? How long do we have?
Have you gamed it out in the holotank?”

“Not long,” Jasmine said. “A week or less, I’d say. We can place scouts at the far
side of both rings to keep a lookout, but that will only tell us when they’re coming.
I don’t know if we can be ready in time.”

I smashed my right fist into my left palm. “We have to know if both sides are really
attacking at once, and which will arrive first. I refuse to split my defenses onto
two fronts.”

I turned to Jasmine and peered down at her. “I’m going to speed things up. Let’s go
to the bridge and open a general channel. I want to talk to every volunteer, every
grunt and swabbie you brought with you in those transports.”

She nodded, and the three of us walked onto the bridge together. A few hours passed
before I made my announcement. During this time, we investigated the situation as
best we could and read every incoming piece of data. We wargamed enemy positions and
made calculated assumptions. By the time I set up my system-wide broadcast, we had
a pretty good idea what was going on. It wasn’t good.

“This is Colonel Kyle Riggs,” I said loudly over the public address channel precisely
one minute after I’d been hooked up and everyone had been given the one minute warning.
They knew a major address was to begin, and they’d better listen to this one.

“I know that many of you are new to the Eden system,” I said. “I want to thank you
for coming out here to support Star Force. The people here on these worlds believe
in a different kind of life, one without tyranny and backstabbing. We have no secret
police, torture booths or live floggings on TV. There is no Ministry of Trust, whose
job it is to silence dissenters and spread lies. Instead, we have a set of beautiful,
unspoiled worlds and a handful of determined defenders. We’re all colonists now, whether
we want to be or not.”

I paused here, as there was scattered applause on the net and around me on the bridge.
Everyone was staring at me intently. I pressed ahead, trying not to think of the gravity
of the news I was going to impart to this faithful group.

“Unfortunately,” I said, knowing it was a word every audience hated to hear from their
leaders, “when a group lays claim to a jewel, or a set of jewels such as these fine
worlds, there always seems to be a challenger to the claim.”

I let that concept sink in for a moment before pressing ahead. As I paused, I signaled
Jasmine. She worked the controls on the holotank, allowing the contents of it to be
transmitted and duplicated on every bulkhead in the fleet. In most cases, it would
only appear in two dimensions, rather than three, being formed by hard beads of nanites.
It would have to do.

Before I went on, the scene was depicted clearly for everyone to see. The Eden system
was in the center, with its hot, yellow sun burning. The tight circle of green worlds
spun around the star. Further out were two rings, which led to two other star systems.
I took a few moments to explain the positions of our enemies. I pointed out that as
far as we could tell, there was nothing happening in either the Helios system or the
Thor system—but there were grim warning signs in each.