The Dead Sun (Star Force Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

if he wanted to talk to me badly enough. I imagined him tapping and rasping up to the door, listening to us having sex, then scuttling away disappointedly. I suspected he’d been doing this over and over again, as if he was caught in a loop of some kind.
    “How long have you been out there?” I demanded.
    “Does that matter, Colonel? I need to discuss something important with you.”
    Jasmine headed back into the bathroom with quick steps. I could tell she was pissed off at the robot.
    I pulled on some smart-pants and let them close over my legs and waist.
    “All right, come on in,” I said resignedly.
    The door melted away, and Marvin humped into our quarters. He was a bit too large for the space available.
    Using his own ever-morphing designs, Marvin had always altered his shape the way others changed clothing. Today his central body mass consisted of a single cube—reminding me of the first time I’d met him. He had about a dozen upper-body tentacles. The lower ones were thick and short and were being used as legs. The upper appendages were long and snake-like. Instead of his usual dozen camera-eyes, I counted only seven. These were held aloft via the writhing nest of upper tentacles. He had so many damned limbs he still had plenty left over to manipulate his environment.
    I noticed right away he didn’t have any gravity plates attached to his undercarriage. That must have been why he’d been making so much noise as he move around outside, “politely” waiting for us to finish our activities.
    I was surprised by the lack of grav plates and wondered what it meant. He liked to fly using gravity repellers, and often got into trouble for unauthorized investigations in space. One of the things we disagreed on most often was whether or not he should have the power of independent flight and space-travel. While configured for flying, he could do more work, but he also tended to zoom off and do things no one wanted him to. Often, these independent activities gave Star Force a headache.
    Today, he had no repellers at all. I could only surmise that he’d trimmed them out of his design in order to placate me—as sort of a peace offering.
    That thought didn’t put my mind at ease, however. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect. When dealing with Marvin, I knew that the more cooperative he was at the beginning, the more I was going to have to pay at the end of the exchange.
    Jasmine closed the bathroom door and fired up the shower. I felt a twinge of regret. I liked showering with her after our encounters. It was kind of like having a light dessert after the main meal.
    “Let’s start over again,” I said cordially. “Hello, Marvin. You’re looking trim this morning. What’s up?”
    “Hello, Colonel Riggs. I’m here to formally ask for your permission to solve a major problem Star Force has been facing for some time now.”
    “Whoa, whoa,” I said, chuckling at his intensity. “Tell me what you’re talking about first.”
    “Are you aware there are two rings exiting the Thor System that have never been successfully explored?”
    “Oh, that,” I said.
    I was indeed aware of the unexplored rings. Thor had three rings we knew about. One led to the Eden System, and we pretty much controlled that one for now. We had Welter Station, a giant fortress in space, sitting right next to it on the Eden System side. The other two rings were more mysterious. One was about an AU out from the central binary stars and led to an unknown location in space. When we’d chased the Macros out of the system, they’d used that ring to escape.
    The third ring was in the oceans of Yale, a water-moon that used to be inhabited by the Crustacean species. We’d managed to switch off that ring using some control codes we barely understood. It hadn’t functioned for many months, but when it had, Macros had used it to invade the world’s seas directly.
    For a long time, we’d carefully avoided both rings. We didn’t want to trigger