Annihilation (Star Force Series) by B. V. Larson Read Free Book Online Page A

down to get our platter of broiled air-swimmers, the kitchen had run out for the night. But after a disappointed look from me, they headed back to the freezers and thawed another batch. Rank does have its privileges.

-5-

    The first day’s voyage into the Thor system was tense, but uneventful. We were expecting something to happen at any moment. Every hour we stared at the screens, made countless attempts to open channels and continuously scanned the moons ahead.
    “What if we’re too late?” Sandra asked me.
    I glanced at her, then went back to staring at the screens. The same thought had occurred to me. What if the Crustaceans had been too proud to ask their enemies for help? What if they’d waited until the last and what we’d heard had been the last gasp of a civilization? Now that we’d finally responded, there might not be anyone home to answer our call.
    “Nonsense,” I said. “They’re just stuffy and prideful. They’re probably too embarrassed to tell us they have problems.”
    “You think they regret calling on us? That they’re too proud to admit they need help?”
    “Exactly,” I said. “But we won’t know the truth until they talk to us or we get more solid data.”
    More long hours passed. During this time, the carrier Gatre was crewed and launched back in the Eden system. It came into the Thor system behind us, trailing its tiny flotilla of support ships. When a call finally did come into my command center, it was from Captain Sarin, rather than the Crustaceans.
    “Where are their ships, Colonel?” Jasmine asked me when I opened the private line to her carrier.
    “I don’t know,” I admitted. “We haven’t seen them fly above their atmosphere on any of the three worlds since we entered the Thor system.”
    “I don’t like it,” she said, “it looks like a trap.”
    “That, or the aftermath of a tremendous catastrophe.”
    Jasmine didn’t answer me for a while. When she finally did, her voice was hushed, almost as if the things we were discussing were too terrible to be spoken aloud. Perhaps we were.
    “You think they’re all dead?” she asked. “That’s why they aren’t talking?”
    “We’ll find out when we reach orbit.”
    “But it might be too late by then. If there is something so powerful it could erase a species from three worlds that quickly—your fleet may not stand a chance.”
    I chuckled. “If this entire fleet turns into vapor, your orders are to do a U-turn with that carrier and get back to Welter Station. Then close all the shutters and hide in the cellar.”
    She didn’t seem amused. “Don’t you at least have a theory, Colonel?”
    “Of course I do,” I said. “But I’ve got nothing to go on. Guesses aren’t helpful, so I’m going to wait until we have some hard evidence.”
    Privately, I felt certain the prideful Crustaceans would never have called me for help unless they were desperate. Whatever was going on out here, it was serious.
    The second day went on as had the first. We sailed through space, coming closer and closer to the gas giant in the habitable zone. More than a day’s flight behind us was Captain Sarin’s carrier group. I monitored the new ship’s vitals from the beginning. There were a few glitches, and she was slow. I calculated that it would take Gatre more than two days to reach the home planets of the Crustaceans—it would be closer to three days.
    The moons, Yale, Harvard and Princeton, now were visible using our long-range optics. They were strange worlds, beautiful in their own way. I reflected that calling them moons was really only a technical description. They were planets, just like any other. They did happen to be locked in orbit around a larger planetary body, but isn’t every planet is locked around its star? They were nothing like the sterile rocks we called moons back in the Solar System.
    Two of the worlds had so much water on them there was virtually no land to be found on the surface. The depths of these