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“Let’s hope so.”

“Sir?” Captain Sarin called me from her post. She still stood at the table, as she
had done for at least a full day. “Could you come look at this?”

“I will,” I said, “if you promise to take a look at your bunk for the next few hours.
You are relieved on ops, Captain.”

“Thanks for the thought, sir,” she said. “But take a look at this, first.”

I walked over and examined the board. I frowned, as the Macro force had split into
two groups. One was heading for the Helios ring, while the other, smaller group was
heading back toward the ring to the Thor system.

I pointed to the smaller group. “Where are these guys going?”

“They appear to be going back to the Thor system. That force is made up entirely of
the Lobster troop ships.”

I frowned. “Why did they do that?” I asked.

“I hope the Macros didn’t order them back,” Jasmine said to me quietly. “I hope the
Macros aren’t expecting to fly to Helios right now and pick up their contingent of
Worm marines.”

I looked at her with widening eyes. “I haven’t even told the Worms about that deal
yet.”

She shook her head slowly.

I contacted Marvin immediately. “Marvin, can you get through to the Worms somehow?
Do we have any ships that could relay a message through the Helios ring?”

“I’ll have to check with traffic control…negative. The nearest friendly ship is about
six hours away. You ordered the fleet to pull back to defensive positions around Hel
and the populated planets.”

“I know what I did,” I snapped.

“Sir?” Jasmine asked, pulling her headset to one side to speak to me. She had that
urgent, worried look on her face that I’d come to recognize.

“What is it now?”

“The Crustacean transports are decelerating heavily, Colonel.”

“Yeah, so? They’re about to go through the ring back to their home system.”

“But they know there are no mines in the region to worry about. I just thought it
was strange.”

“Let’s stick to the more serious issues. The Macros are about an hour away from the
Helios ring, they’ve dumped their Lobster troops and it appears they expect the Worm
troops to be ready to go instantly. We can’t even get through to the Worms to tell
them about my little fib.”

“The question then,” she said, “is do we contact the Macros and tell them they aren’t
ready yet?”

I glared at the system-wide map. The Macros looked like a giant school of red fish,
heading toward one of the two exits. I’d learned today that the one thing a swimmer
wants to see is the tail end of the shark as it swims away to hunt someone else.

“No,” I said, “it’s an unpleasant situation, but we have to look after our own first.
If we can get these damned ships out of our system for just a few days, we can breathe.
We’ll send a ship to the ring, transmit an update of the situation to the Worms and
then try to help use diplomacy to get them out of the situation.”

“Fine, sir. But I’m still worried. What is that fleet going to do? They’re on their
way to Earth, you know. Where else would they be going?”

“Maybe they want to find out what happened to their bases around Bellatrix.”

“Crow destroyed them.”

I nodded. “Yeah, they might not be too happy about that. But let’s hope the Imperial
fleet can stop them.”

Jasmine frowned at me reproachfully. “If they can’t, Earth is doomed. We have to warn
the Worms, Kyle, and we have to warn Earth!”

“Do we have to do everything? Can’t we rely on these self-styled Imperials to defeat
a fleet on their own?”

“They managed it in the blue giant system. But that was an isolated mining colony.
This fleet is monstrous. We dodged them because you were worried we couldn’t win.”

I thought about it, and she was of course correct. “What you’re saying is that sooner
or later, someone is going to have to destroy this Macro armada.”

She nodded.

“We’ll move,” I said, “as soon as this armada has slid past our borders. We will.”

I took the next hour or so to think about my options. The enemy fleet began a long,
drawn-out exit through the ring, transporting themselves into the system of the hapless
Worms. When about half of them had wriggled through the ring into Worm space, I thought
I’d come up with at least a partial solution. I contacted Marvin and summoned him
to the command deck.

“Marvin, I need you to connect me to the Earth fleet via the rings. According to our
calculations, they’re in the Alpha Centauri system now. They may not see the Macro
fleet which is following them home to Earth. Can you use what we’ve learned of their
ring transmission to contact them from here?”

“Yes and no, sir,” Marvin said. “If you’re asking if I can perfectly duplicate their
code, then no. I’m only about eight-five percent fluent in their secret transmission
protocols. I’ve been distracted by—”

“Not necessary,” I interrupted. “I don’t even want you to use their encoding scheme.
Just transmit on an open channel to the Earth fleet.”

“I can try, sir.”

A few minutes later, Marvin worked with his arcane equipment. It was a tangled mess
of brainboxes linked to a miniature version of the ring he was targeting to receive
the message. Anyone in that system that was measuring the sympathetic vibrations of
the ring would pick it up.

“Connection made, sir,” he announced.

I talked my way past a few operators, and quickly convinced them I wasn’t another
Earth ship playing around on military equipment. They finally passed me up to Kerr
himself.

“Riggs? Is that you?”

“Yes, General.”

“Not surprised. I was wondering when you’d figure out our little secret.”

“This isn’t a social call, General.”

“It never is with you. What do you want?”

“I want Earth to survive the next week. To that end, you must prepare for a massive
assault, which will come through the Alpha Centauri ring into the Solar System in…we
estimate six days, General. Maybe less.”

There was a minute or so of quiet after that. I was about to request an acknowledgement,
when Kerr came back on the line. I did like the faster response time while using the
ring communications systems. It was difficult to use just radio transmissions, which
moved at the grossly inadequate speed of light. Conversations across space using such
antiquated means took hours or even days to complete. Using the ring system and their
sympathetic resonance, we were able to converse as if we were on a phone line across
a thousand light years.

“To what do I owe the honor of a massive Macro assault on our beloved homeworld, Riggs?”
asked Kerr. His voice rose in volume and pitch with every syllable.

I cleared my throat. “We might have had something to do with that, sir. We talked
the Macros into not attacking us. But as a result, they’ve decided to seek their fortunes
elsewhere. It’s our estimation that they’re heading toward Bellatrix and they plan
to find out what happened to their mining colony there.”

“Bellatrix? We wiped that out. It’s Imperial space now.”

“You know that and I know that, sir,” I said. “But I’m not sure the Macros do. In
any case, there is bound to be a fight when they hit your border. Looking at the situation
strategically, I would suggest you utilize your fortifications at the entrance to
the Solar System to the fullest. Fight it out right there at the border. What did
you call your defenses there? Overkill? I truly hope for your sake you weren’t bluffing,
General.”

Kerr yelled at me for a while after that. I didn’t blame him. To his mind, we were
the ones who were supposed to stand and fight to the last, hopefully eliminating the
robots and ourselves in the process. But, instead of dashing our brains against one
another, Kerr had just learned his enemies had come to a peaceful accord. Now, the
Macros had turned their attention to Earth itself, and their mining colony. We both
knew there wasn’t going to be any way they could talk the Macros out of paying them
a visit now. Even if they could buy them off in some way, when they saw what had happened
to the mining system and found all those Earth ships and destroyed Macro hulks, they
were going to start shooting.

 At the end of the conversation, I tried to be magnanimous. “If you make a formal
request General, I’ll send along an expeditionary to support you. We’ll stand in solidarity
with Earth on this one.”

Kerr sent me one last message before the channel was suddenly closed: “Thanks for
the warning, you dick.”

-37-

The Macros had sailed serenely through the Eden system and now the last of them were
lazily exiting out the far side. I stayed near the Hel ring with a small contingent
of ships assigned to watch over the battle station and the entrance to the Thor system.
Most of my ships I sent after the Macros, with orders to travel around the system
in their wake. If they did declare war for some reason, I wanted my ships to be ready
to strike. Even if they couldn’t win, they might be able to defend the civilians who
huddled on many of the planets in the system, watching the skies with wide, fearful
eyes.

Over the last few days, we’d averted disaster a half-dozen times. It’s not easy to
stand-down defensive systems that span an entire star system, especially when they
maintain a hair-trigger alert status. It seemed as if a dozen different attempts were
made by blundering parties to blow the ceasefire into oblivion—and all of us with
it.

The Centaur charge had only been the beginning of treaty-breaking events. As the Macros
cruised around each planet, they triggered automated stations with excitable brainboxes.
Weapons had locked themselves on, itching to fire. In some cases, they
did
fire, such as the full barrage of missiles from the Centaur-controlled satellites
over Eden-9. We managed to destroy them all before the Macros were damaged, but it
had been a close thing.

Another near-calamity came at the last moment as the last of the Macros were leaving
the system. At this time, the Crustacean transports were approaching the Thor ring.
They were traveling very slowly, and cruising along very close to our battle station.

“What the hell are they doing?” Sandra demanded as we all stared at the command console.

I was wondering the same thing. “I don’t know,” I said, “but if they linger until
after the last Macro ship is gone, I’ll be tempted to order Welter to blow them up.”

“You should do it, Kyle,” Sandra said. “They’re probably taking a million pictures
and readings. They want to know every secret about our station, so they can come back
later and destroy it.”

I nodded and stared at the screen. “You could be right.”

“They’re changing course sir—and accelerating,” Captain Sarin said.

“Good. It’s about time they finished their little sightseeing tour.”

“No sir, they aren’t heading for the ring.”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. On the screen between us all, the computers
were updating the situation. As they were huge cylindrical ships, Crustacean transports
looked like tiny yellow tin cans. They were obviously Macro-built, or the design had
been borrowed from the Macros. What mattered right now, however, was their course
and speed. The predictive dashed lines now converged—on my battle station.

“Can that be right?” I demanded. “Marvin, are you monitoring the Crustacean ships?
Is there increased chatter?”

“Definitely, sir. They’re in tight communication with one another.”

As I watched, the dashed lines went from yellow to red. Then the canister-shaped ships
themselves were updated with bright, blinking red. Even the computer knew it, and
it was time that I caught up with the programming.

“They’re attacking,” I said.

“Attacking?” Miklos asked. “How can they attack us with just a bunch of transports?
We’ll blow them out of space.”

“Check the acceleration patterns.  I bet if we zoom in, we’ll see their ports opening.
They’ll release their assault troops when they are less than a thousand miles out.
Have they fired a shot at us yet?”

“No sir, nothing.”

“How long until the last Macro ship exits the system?”

“About four minutes, sir.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “They’ll time it down to the second. When the last Macro exits
through the Helios ring, they’ll hit us with everything they have. Their marines will
be climbing all over the battle station’s outer hull, drilling their way in.”

“How can they have assault troops with those abilities? And how can you be sure they’ve
come up with such a tight plan?”

“Because we have those troops, and they’ve been copying our tactics. They’ll attack
at precisely the right moment, because that’s what I would do. They’ve been copying
my maneuvers as well. Worst of all, they’ve been listening to our little chats with
the Macros. They know about our bullshit alliance.”

“Sir? Commander Welter is requesting a channel. He says it’s urgent.”

“Indeed it is. Patch him through.”