by B. V. Larson
Macro marines.
Swarms of them, far more numerous than I’d expected, now leaped from nearby ships all flying in our direction. How had they come up with so many? I had no way to know, but I shouldn’t have been startled by them springing a surprise on us. I should have planned better.
“Kwon, tell the Pigs we’ve got inbound Macros, lots of them: At least a hundred.”
“We’ll do our best, but I’ve only got twenty-six marines, boss,” Kwon said.
“Hang on. I’m getting you some help.” I sealed my suit and extended my gauntlets again. “Valiant, activate all antiboarding defenses, and tell Zhou to slide his frigates back to cover us. Try to pick off some of these close-combat Macros.”
“Lieutenant Zhou is dead. However, I have passed your orders to all remaining Nano command personnel.”
I got Kwon back on the com-link. “Kwon, meet me in cargo hold two.” Telling Hansen to take the conn, I pounded off the bridge and down the passageways. I stopped off at the armory to pick up my Raptor space-axe before arriving at the big door.
“I bet you forgot twenty Raptors came aboard Valiant before Ox got damaged,” I said when Kwon joined me. “They were put into hibernation in here, still in their armor.”
“Oh. Right, boss, I did forget!”
“Well, I didn’t.” I slapped the door plate and the portal opened, revealing twenty Raptors standing in two neat lines, weapons slung. I’d had the foresight to secretly order Valiant get them out of hibernation during the battle.
They saluted me as one, and I returned the salute with my axe.
“Valiant, integrate the Raptor suits into our com-link system and translator. Make sure the internal defense systems recognize Raptors as friendly.”
“Raptor suits integrated. Protocols updated.”
“Listen up, Raptor warriors,” I said to them. “I’m Admiral Riggs. You’ve been in hibernation aboard my ship Valiant for many days. Even now, Commodore Kreel commands the battleship Stalker in a fight against a race of biotic-hating machines we call Macros. Those Macros are about to board Valiant and try to seize or destroy her, and we’re woefully short of troops to stop them. This is Kwon, my marine commander. You will take orders from him or any other human marine just as if they came from me.”
The translated Raptor voices spoke as one. “We hear and obey.”
“Okay, Kwon, tell us where to go. You’re in charge of the defense. Use your best judgment.”
Kwon looked sourly at me asking him for orders, but he was far more familiar with the details of the antiboarding systems and the tactics of ship defense than I was. Of course, he was also torn between his promise to protect me and the fact that keeping us together was a waste of leadership ability. Tough shit, I thought. Kwon needed to step up his game sometime. He’d always been too comfortable in his sidekick role.
“Okay, boss. We each get ten Raptors. You take the portside wing, I’ll take the starboard. Marines are already divided into two squads and stationed at the inner passageway junctions. Deploy your squad as a fire brigade, and call if you need help.” He gave me a questioning look and I nodded.
“Good plan,” I said loudly, and then pointed at the first row of Raptors. “You ten, follow me.”
Using my HUD, I navigated through the half-familiar corridors. The new Valiant was laid out generally the same as the old one, but we hadn’t merely added on to her. We’d stripped her down to her bones and rebuilt her from the ground up during those three months we were parked on Orn Six.
Internal lasers tracked us as we walked, sub-brains comparing our profiles against recognition protocols. The whole thing made me a bit nervous, but after a fair amount of argument the staff and I had agreed that with so few marines and crew, installing AI-controlled internal defenses was a risk we had to take.
I found Gunny Taksin and a dozen marines waiting for us at the main intersection on our side, with passageways in all four directions plus ladders up and down allowing us our choice of response routes. “Good to see you, sir,” he said, and then gripped his rifle tighter when he saw who I was leading.
“Same here, Gunny. These Raptor warriors are our reinforcements. They’re on our side. Everyone with blood in their bodies has to fight together to stop the machines. Their suits have been integrated into our systems and the translations will run automatically.” I then launched into a review of how to fight Macros because most of the marines were too young to have battled them before. The Raptors, of course, had never even seen one, but I forwarded a couple of short vids to their helmets to give them the idea.
I checked my HUD and saw the first of the Macros were about to touch down. They’d been reduced to about eighty in all, apparently by our point defense fire. The Nano frigates and a pair of Daggers Bradley had managed to scrape up somewhere were all shooting at them as well.
The enemy marines were shaped like crabs, spiders, scorpions—plus maybe a few other things for which I had no terrestrial match. All of them involved an armored central body with turrets and crude, heavy limbs. Some had cutting tools or pincers while others had beam capabilities or projectile weapons at the end of their arms. The smallest was at least twenty feet long with the biggest ranging up to fifty. The larger ones often had their own shields though I hoped inside my metal ship those would be useless.
The Macro count dropped to seventy and then sixty right away as our surface-mounted APs, installed with Litho snowflakes in mind, turned out to work great against the big machines. The beams sliced sideways skimming our own hull and chopping the Macros to pieces. In response, the enemy fired back with coordinated bursts or charged and ripped the beam emplacements to shreds. Unlike snowflakes, Macros were well versed in technological warfare.
Unsurprisingly, the first Macro incursion near me came though the Dagger tubes on the top rear of the ship. Those tubes had always been a weak spot, but if we wanted drones we had to have a way to launch and retrieve them. We’d closed their doors, but the Macros chewed their way inside anyway.
“Gunny, take five Raptors and six marines and wipe out those Macros. If you can’t, fall back, and I’ll reinforce you.” I didn’t want to commit all of our limited force to one fight only to have them break in at another spot.
Taksin led his troops at a run down the passageways. I followed them on my tactical HUD view until they hit the first of the four Macros that were rampaging around the port drone deck. They swarmed over their target and its icon soon changed to “destroyed” status. The other three Macros continued to rip and tear at everything in sight. The only silver lining to the damage being done was that we didn’t have many drones in inventory anyway.
“Gunny, keep up the pressure. It looks like the Macros are less interested in fighting you than in doing as much damage as possible to Valiant before they die.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” His mixed squad raced toward the next Macro.
“Captain Riggs,” Hansen broke into the com-link. “About thirty of the Macros are staying on the hull instead of trying to get inside. They’ve knocked out all the hull-skimming lasers and have started to attack our weapon mounts directly. We’ve already lost a third of the secondaries and a bunch of our point defense. The Nano frigates are trying to pick the Macros off our hull, but that leaves them vulnerable to getting jacked from behind by the remaining enemy ships.”
“Valiant, cancel command override and return fire direction to the bridge,” I said. “Hansen, you gotta play rock-paper-scissors. Concentrate our weapons on Macro ships while the Nano frigates move in close to pick off the Macro boarders. Force them inside where we have automated defense lasers. And tell Ox to move in to support us. Even her limited firepower will help.” I knew I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it was do-or-die now.
I switched channels to reach Kreel. “Commodore, you need to finish off that Macro battleship and come help out. Valiant’s in trouble.”
“I hear and obey, Admiral.”
Admiral. Pretty soon I’d be ba
ck to a commodore with just a handful of ships.
Checking my internal tactical display, I saw Kwon had done as I had. Splitting his forces between Moranian and himself he’d led the first section and left his sergeant to get the next one. That was Kwon, always in the front. That was fine leadership, but it tended to get those in charge very dead, very fast. It still amazed me he’d survived as long as he had.
I didn’t have that luxury. Fighting alongside our understrength marine contingent made sense for me, but getting killed might doom Valiant and her crew entirely. None of my senior people could fill my shoes though Bradley continued to impress me as a leader—actually more than Hansen did.
Thoughts of my staff issues disappeared when Macros broke through the hull into cargo hold number one. Taksin was mopping up the last of his opponents, and I saw he had two wounded marines and two dead Raptors. We were still an effective fighting force, but it was our turn to take the lead.
“Gunny,” I transmitted as we jogged down the passageway, “we’re headed for the breakthrough at Cargo Hold One. Once you’ve kicked that group back into space, fall back to the reserve position to be ready for the next incursion.”
At the door to the cargo hold, I deployed my squad. I put human marines in front and Raptors in back. This wasn’t out of some perverse guilt: I’d had an idea. I briefed my people on the expected tactics and waited.
The Macros weren’t long in coming. One ripped open the smart metal of the door with a grasping claw while firing through the opening with its beam turret. Corporal Fuller took the brunt of the laser before he reflexively leaped sideways. With beams, it was critical not to let them focus on you too long or you were cooked by heat even if there was no penetration.
“Fuller, you’re everybody’s favorite target. Maybe we should give you extra-heavy armor,” I said as all the other humans coordinated fire on the turret as I’d taught them. Macro optical clusters were more vulnerable, but also smaller, harder to hit and, for troops new to fighting Macros, firing at the dangerous turrets was far more intuitive.
“Shit, sir, I’m blind,” Fuller replied.
“Tell your suit to take you to a medbay. Come back when you can,” I said, and he lumbered off clumsily.
Following my orders, the Raptors used their powerful back legs to leap over the marines the way they had when I’d first encountered them. They aimed their jumps at the central body of the Macro, grabbing on with their clawed gauntlets and aiming for the optical clusters with their monomolecular-bladed suit-tails.
“Shift fire!” I ordered as the jumping Raptors landed close to our beam targets. “Aim at the joints!”
The Macro arm with the claw reached up to deftly pluck a Raptor off its body like a man grabbing a rat. It strained to slowly crush the warrior, and then it repeatedly dashed him against a wall when that didn’t work so well. The Raptor’s sacrifice gave us long enough to slag the heavy ball joint that connected the arm to the Macro body, ending that threat.
The Raptors quickly blinded the enemy machine and jumped away. “Coordinated fire on the body!” I snapped, and everyone aimed their lasers to match mine. Unable to see, the Macro tried to dodge, but we quickly burned through its heavy armor and fried its insides leaving it a smoking wreck on the deck. My warriors and marines cheered.
“Good job, but we have more work to do,” I roared, aiming at the nearest live Macro, which was busily tearing our cargo to shreds. “Take them down one at a time. You know the drill.”
I deduced the Macros had been instructed to do as much damage as possible and only defend themselves if attacked, which was why I ordered my gang-up tactics. If the machines had fought us all together with the objective of killing us off, we’d have taken a lot more casualties. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like they realized how short of defenders we were.
The automated defenses helped a lot as well. They didn’t take down any Macros by themselves, but their fire distracted the machines, giving us that much more opportunity to hit them how and when we wanted. It took several minutes, but we mopped up the last of the invading Macros.
Checking my HUD, I noticed the hull still hadn’t been cleared. We were down to three Nano frigates and there were only four Macro ships left. My hopes of preserving a few of Nanos had been optimistic. Maybe we could at least find a few escape pods with Raptor command personnel alive after the battle.
I made a decision, then. Some would say later it wasn’t a good one. But it was what it was.
“Come on, Pigs,” I said. “That means you Raptors, too. Follow me. We’re going outside.”
-30-
Leaping for the breach in the cargo bay, I turned on my magnetic boots, activating repellers and thrusters. Now, even if I flew off the hull, the suit should read my movements and use its automated flight systems to get me where I needed to go.
Poking my head out of the jagged hole and into space, I saw the smart metal hull writhe, slowly filling in the gaps around me. Troops followed me then went through the breach shooting out into the open to land deftly on the outer hull and look around. Still in the breach and partly protected by the hull, I made a three-sixty scan. I soon faced the nearest Macro: a big bastard with eight legs and four turrets on the bottom. I watched it ripping up a secondary battery with one claw yanking on the AP barrel while its lasers cut at the base like a man carving a turkey drumstick.
“All troops get out here onto the hull and spread out. We have company on the aft hull. Marines, use your anti-armor rockets first then switch to lasers. Coordinate fire hitting the robot’s turrets. As soon as we’ve knocked those out, I want the Raptors to jump for the central body like you did before. Marines will keep up fire on the joints. Ready? Go!”
Although their coordination was a bit ragged, my troops moved aggressively, hopping and clanking over the hull in null-G. Valiant’s surface was relatively smooth from afar, but there were plenty of things to block direct shots for creatures our size—the bulges of laser emplacements, sensor pods and AP turrets poked out. Airlocks and various external hatches formed recessed foxholes. There were even antenna arrays and heat exchangers to hide behind like brush.
“Rockets, fire!” I barked when I confirmed my marines had taken what cover they could. A half-dozen explosive projectiles slammed into the Macro’s turrets, knocking out two of the four. “Lasers!”
Lasers converged on the other two turrets in turn, and my troops followed my beam like a spotlight. It was a simple but effective fire control method.
The Macro swung its two surviving turrets toward us before we could take it down converging on the nearest marine. He didn’t drop back behind cover fast enough. I saw the high-powered beams wash across his faceplate. His helmet deformed with the intense heat and he went limp. On my HUD, his icon changed to dead, but I’d known it even before I checked. The polarizing smart glass couldn’t resist a direct blast from a single laser much less two.
The enemy beams shifted to the next marine, but he was already moving to duck behind a set of heat-exchange flanges. Those resisted the lasers long enough to allow our combined fire to knock out one more turret.
“Raptors, go!” I roared, sending them in early. While my marines and I kept up our distracting fire splattering the Macro’s hull with hot-spots, the small Raptor team leaped across the intervening space. Their powerful back legs propelled them like kangaroos in the null-G vacuum. Their armor, while not as tough as ours, had superb flight control systems as one might expect for a bird-related race, so they landed atop the Macro with ease.
Unfortunately, this machine had a top turret, an anti-air unit, and it sliced one of the Raptors in half before he could scuttle around to the side of the central body out of its arc of fire. The two pieces of the body spun away into the void, highlighted by flashes of ship-to-ship fire in the background. It might have been beautiful were it not so deadly and final.
The other Raptors slid down to slap their armored tails under the Macro body, striking by instinct at the machin
e’s optical clusters that gave it fire control.
“Marines, shift fire to a knee,” I ordered, aiming my beam at the nearest leg joint in order to avoid shooting our own troops. That left the one turret still functioning, but fratricide was the greater risk right now.
The Raptors made short work of the optical clusters, and after that we had no trouble finishing the blinded machine off.
I thought again about how damned lucky we were that the Macros had apparently programmed their assault troops to prioritize attacking ship systems rather than us. I was now certain they’d taken a look at Valiant’s size and calculated she must contain a lot more marines, not realizing we were operating with a skeleton crew.
Our hard won victory was immediately punished. The machine must have called for help in its death throes, because just as we burned our way into the armored central body and killed it, three others hit us from all sides. I lost another marine to the surprise attack.
“Back inside!” I roared. “Draw them into the ship!”
In the tighter, confined spaces and with the automated defenses, we regained the advantage. While covering my troops as they fell back I felt something slam into my right elbow, and my arm went numb. When I looked down, I saw mangled suit metal trying to seal itself up again. One of the Macros must have had a railgun or rocket launcher. Fortunately, my rifle still operated, so I pushed through the spreading pain and switched to my left hand.
Our reduced squad of eight retreated in good order and waited for the first Macro to follow us into the hole where we would ambush it. After thirty seconds I wondered why that hadn’t happened, and I consulted my HUD in tactical mode as my arm itched and burned from the healing nanites rushing for the wound.
“Dammit, they’ve gone back to tearing up the ship!” I snarled. “Get back up to the hole and engage from there. We can’t give them free rein to take Valiant apart.”