Star Force 12 Demon Star Read Free Page A

said.
    “Captain Marvin here,” came the robot’s voice a moment later. “I’m very busy, Cody, so let’s please make this discussion a brief one.”
    “I’m going to make you even busier, Marvin—and don’t start whining about it.”
    “It’s impossible for me to be busier as I’m already working at one hundred percent of my physical and neural capacity. Unlike biotics, I don’t become fatigued, need breaks, or withhold reserves in my efforts. It’s also impossible for me to whine.”
    “Not true,” I snorted, “you don’t have a nasally tone, but you are definitely capable of whining.”
    “I’m naturally displeased by alterations to my plans. I make rational prioritization judgments based on—”
    “Okay, okay, forget about that,” I said. “I need you to reprioritize and dedicate twenty percent of your neural circuitry to building translation databases and subroutines for the Elladan and Whale languages. Work with Valiant and make sure that she’s able to function as an interpreter as well as you are once you’re finished.”
    I didn’t want to make the mistake of relying purely on Marvin again. After all, the first time we’d encountered a biotic race, his faulty translation had gotten Valiant’s original captain and officers eaten.
    “I thought ship repair was my top priority.”
    “It still is, Marvin. That’s why I’m only asking for twenty percent. I’m leaving you eighty percent to devote to fixing everything. By the way, did you manage to outrun those missiles I saw chasing you…?”
    “Reprioritization complete. Marvin out.”
    “…Marvin?”
    He’d cut the channel, and my repeated attempts to reopen it failed. We received only automated responses indicating communications were currently impossible. Thinking this over, I wondered if he’d taken my percentages literally, putting twenty percent of his processing power into translations and the rest into repair efforts. It could have been that, or it could have been he was dodging me—quite possibly, it was some combination of both.
    I’d wanted to ask him more about the missiles that he’d teased into chasing him, but I figured it was pointless now. He’d report on that topic when it suited him. Maybe he was planning to run the missiles out of fuel or jam them so they couldn’t detonate. Then he could take them aboard and dissect them. It wouldn’t be the first time.
    “Valiant,” I said, “let me know when that Whale message is translated to a high degree of certainty. Say, ninety-nine percent.”
    “Understood. Estimated time to completion, fifty-one minutes.”
    “Much better.”
    That was interesting. A little high-school algebra in my head told me that Marvin must be more than thirty times as effective as Valiant when it came to translation.
    I occupied my time by reviewing what our still-degraded sensors had collected about the complex star system. Ellada, the planet populated by humanoids, was remarkably Earthlike in every detail. It even possessed a moon of similar size to Earth’s, only a few percentage points smaller.
    One of the interstellar connection rings orbited at a stable Trojan point ahead of Ellada’s single moon, but there didn’t appear to be any traffic in or out of it. No fortress guarded it either. In fact, other than a few communications arrays, nothing floated nearby.
    To me, that meant the ring wasn’t functioning. It might be under the Elladans’ control, and they only turned it on when needed. But as Marvin was the only being I’d ever known to actually get a ring to do what he wanted—sort of—it seemed more likely that they didn’t know how to make it work.
    The situation dampened my hopes that their ring would provide us an easy route back to known space. However, maybe Marvin could use it to communicate, or even get it working again, if he would apply himself to the problem.
    Ellada’s similarities to Earth made me decide to attempt to communicate with them first. If they