by B. V. Larson
“Kreel,” I called again, “What did Leng say?”
“He called me a liar and a traitor. I told him I was under orders to lie and called him an incompetent moron for being fooled. He agreed with my logic and ate his tail.”
I shook my head. “You Raptors are crazy,” I said. “How do any of you live long enough to procreate? Tell Leng’s people to open the control center door.”
“It shall be done.”
A moment later, the armored hatch swung open, and we charged in to see a group of Raptors sitting meekly in their chairs with their arms folded. Apparently this was the equivalent of putting their hands in the air in surrender. I sighed in relief. We’d won this round.
“Kreel, come aboard and take charge of these prisoners. Load them into the fortresses’ own disarmed shuttles and send them off with enough food and air to make it to the nearest base. As soon as that’s been done, meet me here with your officers. Oh, and tell Marvin it’s safe to come in.”
It didn’t take more than ten minutes to search the mini-fort, round up the crew and send them off in shuttles. Kwon and I helped as much as we could, which turned out to be mostly by looking intimidating. We couldn’t operate the Raptor controls, and they knew their own facilities best. Consequently we found that standing around looking fierce our best contribution.
When everything was done, Kreel and several officers reported to the control center, activated it, and manned the various stations.
I looked at the group. “Where’s Fleeg?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Fleeg has joined his honored grandmothers,” Kreel said.
“Huh? He ran off?”
“He led the assault on Fortress Number Four. Unfortunately, the resistance there was particularly stubborn and his force was driven back. Rather than allow the enemy to fire on Ox and the other three fortresses, Lieutenant Fleeg detonated the atomic weapon you provided.”
“Damn. I’m really sorry. Fleeg was a fine officer.”
“It was a clean death. He will be remembered.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Not even Star Force marines had such a stoic view of life. For me, it always hurt to lose people. Maybe the Raptors’ attitude was better. No guilt, no regrets. But I couldn’t feel good about it. Not if I wanted to stay human.
-13-
“I wish we could nanotize you and your people,” I told Kreel as he coordinated his people in getting the three remaining fortresses operational again. “But the nanites have to be tailored for each biotic, and we’d need a factory to do that.”
“I understand, Commodore. It is our lot in life to serve and die.”
“Snap out of it, Kreel!” I said with some irritation. “Play this right and maybe you and your people can go home as heroes, or at least with enough power to be taken seriously by your government. Worst case, you’ll have a long and honorable life with us. You know: see the universe, meet new and exciting people—and kill them if necessary.”
“Boss,” Kwon said, “we do have a factory.”
My jaw dropped. Of course. I’d forgotten about Marvin. I knew he’d cobbled together a tiny factory with materials he’d scammed from Adrienne. It may not be able to make big things, but self-replicating nanites should be well within his capability.
I found Marvin aboard Greyhound working to reconfigure its robot-friendly interior to give Kwon and me a stateroom bigger than a broom closet.
First I talked to Marvin about my overall plan to get Valiant back, and then I asked him about the nanites. Marvin quickly agreed to develop nano-treatments for our Raptor troops. “That is a project worthy of exercising my neural chains,” the robot said. “Also, I did good work on the repairs to Ox and the fortresses, did I not?”
I saw where this was going. “Yes you did, Marvin. What do you want?”
“Did I indicate I wanted something?”
“You did so subtly, Marvin, yes. But I can’t promote you right away. It wouldn’t be fair to all the other ensigns that wait months or years. So what do you suggest?”
“Nothing difficult. Just a promise for the future.”
“Yes?”
“I wish to reproduce.”
“Huh? Okay, what’s stopping you?”
“I’m expressly forbidden to reproduce by the same law that gave me a special exemption from the Sentient Machines Prevention Act and granted me citizenship. As long as I’m a citizen of Earth and an officer in Star Force, I cannot legally do so.”
I rubbed my neck while I thought. “I don’t think even my father has enough pull to get that one overturned. The government is terrified of sentient machines because of the Macros—and the Nanos for that matter. It was only because Dad was Emperor at the time that the World Senate swallowed your exception. It hasn’t been revoked because they all forgot about you when you wisely stayed out of the limelight. If they ever remember that you almost got Earth destroyed by the Macros when you let them into the Venus ring, they might decide to declare you an enemy of the state.”
“I will accept your promise to do all you can on my behalf.”
I stared at Marvin. “That’s it? A promise to do my best when we’re not even sure we’ll get home? Frankly I’m shocked that you don’t just do it anyway.”
Marvin’s tentacles rustled, and his cameras looked aimlessly here and there—a sure sign he was uncomfortable. Maybe I’d struck close to home. Had he already made a baby Marvin? Was he pulling one of his usual stunts to get me to give him retroactive permission? I was afraid to ask.
More probably he had everything ready to build a prototype and wanted to cover his ass in case something went wrong. “You told me I could!” is a refrain every parent knows, and I often felt like Marvin was my brilliant but wild problem-teenager rather than a robotic intelligence older than I was.
“Well…” I began. Marvin’s cameras focused on me all of a sudden. “I’ll do everything I can to get you permission to reproduce—IF something doesn’t happen between now and then to make me believe that would be a bad idea.” There. I’d left myself a huge “out.”
“Bargain accepted. Thank you, Commander Riggs.”
“Now let’s see about making me ‘Captain Riggs’ again, okay?”
“I am already working at maximum capacity,” Marvin said as he continued to cut and weld dumb metal while simultaneously reordering smart metal sections to get my stateroom in order.
“So when do you think you can have Raptor nanites ready?”
“Are you certain you trust them enough to give them such an advantage?”
I thought about that. “Can you include a simple backdoor to disable the nanites with a coded radio signal? And a lifespan limit of say…three months?”
“Of course.”
“Then do it. How long until you’re ready to try out this new breed of nanites?”
“I’ll be ready for the first patient within the hour.”
Damn. The metal bastard had suckered me again. He hadn’t actually said how difficult it would be to adapt the nanites, he’d only implied it would be a hard job. No wonder my part of the deal was so easily accepted. When bargaining in the future with Marvin, I vowed to remember that an easy deal meant I was getting screwed somehow. Probably he’d had the specs worked out long ago.
I tried to keep the irritation off my face. Why should I be upset if he was even more efficient than I expected him to be?
“Good,” I said, forcing a smile. “I’ll go tell Kreel.”
When I told the Raptor commander, he seemed happy for the first time in a while. “We will heal faster and be stronger?”
“Yes, several times faster and stronger.”
“I am pleased.”
“Good.” Fortified with nanites, I’d feel a lot less guilty about possibly sending them off to do my dirty work. “Now let me tell you about my plan to get Valiant back. It’s not going to be easy.”
* * *
Kreel insisted he be first to perch in the nanite chair. Marvin had modified one o
f the Raptor seats by adding restraints and braces to reduce the chance of the patient damaging anything—including himself.
“Sorry,” I explained, “but we can’t reduce the pain any further.” I’d told the Raptors to take some of their own analgesics, but except for major surgery they didn’t use them much. The only really good drugs were inside their med-bay reservoirs, so they’d decided not to bother.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kreel said bravely. “Pain is transitory. Only death is forever.”
“You sound like a marine already.”
“I am prepared.”
Marvin strapped Kreel in tight and hit the injector switch. Several big ugly needles poked the Raptor in his legs, arms and neck. Right away Kreel’s body spasmed in a now familiar way.
I stepped back in case he broke loose, but Marvin hovered over Kreel with a dozen tentacles ready to intervene as the Raptor writhed in agony, eyes bulging and muscles straining. “I calculated the dosage and nanite parameters for an average Raptor quite carefully based on all available data, but each biotic being is slightly different. Without custom calibration, something could go wrong.”
“Now you tell us?” I demanded. “With their leader in the chair?”
“You seemed to be in a hurry.”
“I think you just wanted to see what would happen.”
Marvin stayed silent.
After a long half hour Kreel had exhausted himself, but it appeared the treatment had taken hold. His bruises faded, and soon he seemed lucid and healthy.
“Free me,” he said in a gravelly voice.
Marvin removed the restraints, and Kreel tore the bandage off his injured arm, and then flexed it.
“Excellent,” he said, opening and closing his taloned hands.
“You’ll have to be careful until you’re used to it,” I said. “You’ll probably be breaking things by accident for a while.”
“I will remember.” Kreel turned to Marvin. “Inject the next.”
Marvin waved the Raptor forward from the head of the line. This time the robot turned away as soon as the needles had squirted the liquid metal into the patient’s veins. “I have tasks to perform,” he said, apparently not caring what happened to the next Raptor once the process had been proven. With that, he clattered away on squirming tentacles.
Well, that was Marvin for you.
It took over a day to get all the Raptors nanotized even after I had Marvin construct another injection chair to double our capacity. I was glad I had done so. We were just about to implement the next phase of my plan when one of the bridge officers broke into my channel.
“Commodore Riggs, Commander Kreel—the Guardian Box has returned.”
The fortress’ sophisticated and undamaged screen array showed the Slab, which was still double-sized. The square hulk skipped like a spun rock across the solar system. Oddly, it seemed to be moving backward until it had closed upon our position.
We saw several different versions of the ship on our sensors all at once. The closest version, which stayed put, now hovered far above us at about a hundred thousand miles out. Because the vessel teleported faster than light, we saw its last jump as it appeared and disappeared, then its second-to-last jump, and so on, each time the slower light catching up to its previous incarnations. Eventually, we would be able to track its path back to wherever it had come from in the Orn system. It was like watching it stretch backward in time.
The Slab jumped once again, appearing practically on top of us. It hung there like a mile-long city block with golden buildings projecting from every side. Even with the optics pulled back to zero-zoom, it filled the sky. The three fortresses under my control suddenly seemed puny.
“What’s it doing?” Kwon asked. “Are we under attack?”
“No idea.”
“I’m detecting neutrino streams,” said a Raptor watchstander.
I didn’t feel anything, but some of the instruments blinked and beeped with alarm sounds. We waited, but nothing in particular seemed to happen.
“It’s scanning us,” the officer went on. “Shall we fire?”
“No!” both Kreel and I said as one.
“We cannot fight such technology,” Kreel continued.
I was glad he saw that. He might be uncaring of his own life, but he wasn’t suicidal.
“Exactly,” I replied. “Has the Guardian Box ever done anything hostile or damaging?” I asked Kreel.
“It eventually destroys all the probes we send through the ring. Sometimes instantly, sometimes taking hours.”
“What’s the next star system like?”
“That is classified intelligence. I have no certain knowledge. Rumor says a golden planet even stranger than the Guardian Box orbits a dying star.”
I thought for a moment, and then switched to Marvin’s channel. “Marvin, can you tell what the Slab is doing?”
No answer came back.
“Marvin?”
Nothing.
The Slab vanished from our screens.
“Crap,” I said. “Kwon, come with me.”
Kwon and I pounded down the passageways in our powered armor, heedless of the dents we created in the decks and bulkheads. Soon, we came to the shuttle bay where Marvin had parked Greyhound for ease of modification and protection.
“Marvin!” I called again. “Kwon, look for him. Maybe he’s just engrossed in some mad experiment. Try all channels.”
Hopping out of my battlesuit, I scrambled into Greyhound.
First I searched the area the robot had been restoring for human use, but I didn’t find him. Then I began clambering through the weird maze of the rest of the ship. I always found enough room to get through as Marvin had configured the passageways for his own ground-car-sized body, but it was like climbing through a nightmare funhouse without proper lighting. Sharp pieces of metal and plastic protruded everywhere as if trying to cut me. Cables ran like snakes trying to trip me. Lines hung from the walls and overheads threatening to wrap me up and strangle me. None of it was actually alive, but it was still one of the most inhuman places I’d ever explored. I was afraid to just bull through for fear of damaging the operation of the ship.
I wondered if Marvin had even retained a cockpit with controls a human could use. I’d directed the robot to make sure he kept manual backups in case he wasn’t available, but his interpretation of my instructions was often imprecise.
“Marvin!” I kept calling, but I got no answer.
Returning to the crew area, I put my hands on my hips in exasperation and looked around again. Marvin had completed restoring one small stateroom with two bunks, a shower and a tiny table with two seats and a food dispenser. The only thing not ready seemed to be our battlesuit niches. One was finished, and its readout glowed, showing it was ready for use. The other seemed half put together with wires and metal flanges protruding everywhere.
I stared for a moment at a camera lying on the floor with a piece of segmented Nano tentacle attached to it. An old model and battered, I tried to remember where last I’d seen such a thing as I picked it up. Then I noticed another piece of tentacle on the floor, about three feet long with the multiple tiny sub-tentacles of a fine manipulating limb.
Why would Marvin leave these things lying around? Although the rest of the ship seemed crazy, there was no actual junk. Everything was attached to something and had a function except for these two pieces.
I turned the camera over and rubbed at the few inches of tentacle attached to the back, noticing how smooth the end of the flexible limb was.
Ungodly smooth. Polished like a metal mirror.
Severed.
My gut cramped as adrenaline and worry shot through me. “Kwon!” I roared. “Get in here. Carefully!” I added as he lumbered over and started to clamber into the room with his armor on.
Seeing the functioning receptacle, Kwon backed his suit into it and popped the armor open. “Good, I needed a charge. How come the other niche isn’t ready?”
I held u
p the camera and showed him the severed tentacle. “This is from Marvin.”
“So? He threw away a camera. He does weird stuff like that sometimes.”
“No, Kwon. This one’s been sliced clean off, and so has this.” I showed him the fine-motor tentacle.
“Something attacked him?” Kwon asked, turning around toward his suit.
“I don’t think so. Not like you mean.”
“What, then?”
“I think the Slab took off with Marvin.”
-14-
“So you think the Slab just reached in and popped Marvin out while he was doing work?” Kwon asked as he tried out the food dispenser in our cabin. A moment later hot soup filled the cup he was holding.
“That’s exactly what I think. Some of its actions start to make sense now, at least a little. When it first came through the ring, I thought it took a look at the Square. Maybe it was actually looking at Marvin.”
“Why?”
“Marvin entered a window in the Square to retrieve Sokolov. While he was there he released his cyber-worm into the Ancient’s system. Maybe the Slab got curious—or pissed off.”
“But the square-thing didn’t do much. It flew off to check out the rest of the star system.”
I nodded. “I think it’s a machine. Maybe sentient, maybe not. Now and again, it patrols this area for—I don’t know, anomalies. If my theories about the Ancients are right, they seeded biotic life near their rings. Maybe the Slab is part of the monitoring system. When it came back, Marvin wasn’t at the Square. For some reason it decided to retrieve that piece of the Square, that system. Maybe it’s modular, so the Slab and the Square are just two similar sub-machines that can make one bigger whole. The Slab was active, the Square was dormant.”
“But why Marvin?” Kwon asked.
“Because he’s unique. He’s the most lifelike sentient machine we’ve ever encountered. Even the Macros in their highest-level state, their biggest collective mind, didn’t really think like a biotic being does. They didn’t display emotions, change their goals or otherwise demonstrate a truly free will. Maybe the Slab, or whatever is controlling it, finds Marvin the most interesting thing around.”