by B. V. Larson
We fought from the hull breach then, shooting in all directions as if we occupied a foxhole on a ground battlefield. I tried to coordinate our fire, but without the ability to move and to concentrate all our beams I wasn’t too optimistic. The problem was if we advanced they might turn and swarm us again, so we stayed pinned, ineffectual.
An expanse of metal abruptly loomed over us. It was a ship I didn’t immediately recognize. Expecting Stalker, I realized I was looking at Ox, the Raptor military transport. Point defense lasers—small for a ship but large in ground-troop terms—stabbed down to blast Macros. Now I remembered my order to bring Ox in and mentally patted myself on the back.
A cargo door on Ox swung open and a squad of a dozen Raptors leaped across intervening space to converge onto one Macro. They must be part of the crew of the transport, all that could be spared.
“Up and at ’em, Pigs,” I yelled, leading the charge toward the reinforcing Raptors. They’d already lost two of their number and I could see they weren’t as adept at fighting the big machines as the troops with me were, so I was going to coordinate my attack with them. I’d made the snap decision to risk going out on the hull again and join up with them in order to combine forces under the cover of the point-defense lasers above us rather than letting them expend themselves while we stayed relatively safe.
A small Macro had turned to fire on the Ox Raptors, trying to get them off its buddy, but that put it between us and the fight. Without receiving an order from me, all my troops raised their lasers and fired at the enemy’s single turret even as we continued a rapid advance across Valiant’s jumbled, damaged hull. Once the ranged weapon was knocked out, we swarmed over it and drilled point-blank into its main body like welders. With Macros, once through their heavy armor their insides were easy meat—rather delicate really.
After that, we combined with the Ox Raptors and finished off the machine they fought. “Take cover and hold in place,” I told my team as I crouched down and consulted my HUD. I’d been focusing on the ground fight for so long I’d become concerned about the wider battle.
I was just in time to see the last Macro ship icon wink out, blasted by Stalker.
“Valiant, pass the word for all surviving ships to converge and clear our hull!”
“We’re getting you some help, Cody,” Adrienne’s welcome voice broke in. “Just hang on and don’t do anything heroic.”
“Too late, Adie. I’ll have to give myself a few more medals after this one’s all done. Riggs out.”
I took her advice despite my bravado. It made no sense to take further risks with our ground troops when Stalker, Ox and the two surviving Nano ships could exterminate the few Macros remaining on the hull. We retreated to our cargo bay while watching the ships come swooping in, skimming Valiant’s armor with oblique shots to burn the enemy with overpowering capital weapons.
Poor Valiant. Once the threat was eliminated, I jetted out to take a quick look at her from space. Every beam turret, every missile launch tube and every sensor antenna had been gouged, torn, ripped to shreds. Even the heavy mains had been dismounted. From its original smooth, elegant state, the hull had been turned into an ugly wasteland, and I knew some of the interior had been badly chewed up too.
Taunting the Macros personally might not have been such a good idea.
Still, we’d survived, though with some painful casualties. I saw eighteen remaining marine icons showing various states of life. Thirty percent losses: a terrible price to pay for such a small contingent. I checked to make sure Kwon was okay and then ran down the list of the dead. Cranston, Nojima, Boggs, Nadal…
Fuller.
Damn. The cheerful corporal whose life I’d saved back on Orn Six had bought the farm. He’d come back from the med-bay to rejoin the fight on Kwon’s side of the ship. A good kid—like all of them really. I hoped the high price we’d paid would prove worth it.
The crew had been battered as well, but not as badly as the marines. I knew then that I’d have to integrate some Raptors into Riggs’ Pigs and keep them aboard if I wanted to have enough close-combat forces.
“Skipper, if you’re done spacewalking I think we’d be happy to see you on the bridge,” Hansen said on a private com-link channel.
“On my way,” I replied, painfully flexing my healing arm. I decided to skip the med-bay for now. It didn’t seem too bad.
When I clattered onto the bridge in my battered suit, spontaneous applause broke out among the crew there. I waved it down, opening my faceplate and leaning down carefully to kiss my girl.
“See? No heroics.”
Adrienne slapped my breastplate and turned back to her console with a blush.
I examined the holotank. “Back to work, everyone,” I called over my shoulder. “We’re not done. We have a lot of damage to repair and a Macro factory to take down. Valiant, did we ever get ahold of Marvin?”
“Neither Marvin nor Greyhound has responded to hails.”
“What’s your status?”
“Combat ineffective. Only three point-defense lasers are operable. All other weapons and combat systems are inoperable. Sensor efficiency stands at eleven percent. Life support is seventy-eight percent. Power systems are forty-five percent.”
I cut the brain off at that point. “Understood. We’re in bad shape. Hansen, do we have an operating engine?”
“No, Captain. Repellers and thrusters only. We’re wallowing.”
I reached up to scratch my face and almost put my eye out with my armored thumb. “Too damn tired,” I muttered. Close combat always left me drained of energy once it was over. I retracted my gauntlets and tended to the itch through my faceplate.
“Put me through to Stalker,” I said. “Kreel, how’s your ship?”
“We’re battered but still above fifty percent operational, Admiral.”
“I think you’d better call me Commodore again. Four ships isn’t much of a fleet.”
“As you wish.”
“Kreel, I need you to start bombarding the Macro factory with your big gun from long range. Don’t bother hitting its shield directly; you won’t penetrate it. Aim at the asteroid surface right next to the dome. Maybe we can cause it subsurface problems, even cut it free of its base.”
“I hear and obey, Commodore.”
“This is just a stopgap measure, Captain Kreel. Once we get Valiant repaired, we’ll get Stalker back to full effectiveness and then take the enemy down together. I already have a couple ideas to run past you once we have a chance to breathe.”
“Our air supply is sufficient, Commodore, thank you. Do you have further orders?”
While it was hard to tell through the translator software, I thought Kreel sounded tired as well. I decided not to make one of my usual wisecracks about idioms, reserving those for Marvin. “No further orders. Riggs out.”
I saw Stalker begin to move slowly into firing position. Valiant stayed out of any conceivable effective range of surviving Macro ground-based weaponry. If they fired missiles at us we might be in trouble, but the two Nano ships could always help out.
“Chief Bradley,” I said to my CAG, “take charge of damage control since you and your controllers don’t have any drones. Work with Sakura and Turnbull to prioritize repairs. I want our least damaged engine fixed fast, and then start replacing point defense lasers as you can.”
Bradley acknowledged and led his controllers off the bridge to get started.
“Adrienne, I suggest you get down to the factory and get it cranking out spare parts using whatever you have. Hansen will chase down raw materials—there are enough broken ships out here to supply whatever we need. I’m sure Kwon is already clearing wreckage and dropping it off for you.”
“Yes, Captain,” Adrienne said with a smile. I smiled in return and, as she left, I let slip a contented sigh. I realized that for all its death and horror the battle had helped to put our interpersonal problems behind us by making them seem small in comparison.
Over the next several
hours, we hurriedly cannibalized whatever debris we could find—dead Macros and wrecked Nano ships mostly—and began the long process of repairing Valiant. Stalker continued to bombard the Macro installation with slow, maximum-power shots. I hoped that would keep them from springing one last surprise on us.
The two surviving Nano ships were easy to convince to begin self-repair, and possibly replication, using their small internal factories. They set about imitating us, gathering up debris with their flexible black tentacles and bringing it aboard. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to spawn more Nanos, but we could always use additional firepower.
My suit was running low on fuel and power so I went to replace it in its niche and hurry to my quarters for a quick shower. Stripping out of my skinsuit and tossing it into the cleaner, I stepped naked into the hot spray, reveling in the luxury of a private bathroom while everyone else on the ship had to use the communal heads.
The noise of the water running covered any warning I had, so I almost put an elbow through the shower wall when Adrienne’s slim hand reached around to tickle my abs. I turned and took her in my arms.
Her small, firm breasts pressed against my chest as I lifted her for a kiss.
“Warrant Officer Turnbull, you’re away from your duty station,” I said with mock severity. “I may have to enter a reprimand in your personnel file.”
“I’ll have to log a formal protest, then, Captain Riggs. Is hypocrisy a court-martial offense?”
“What about the factories you were tending to?”
“The scripts are all written. They’ll be busy for hours.”
“We’d better make the most of our time, then,” I said.
Good, clean, athletic lovemaking after a battle was one of the great joys of military service I’d always believed, and we did our best to prove the point. As we dressed afterward, the room’s com-link activated.
“Captain to the bridge,” Valiant said.
I finished donning my working uniform, giving Adrienne a peck on the lips as I hurried out. On the bridge, Hansen, was still in his suit.
“The Macro base just fired something.”
“What?” I asked. “Can we evade?”
“Whatever it is, it’s not aimed at us, Skipper.” He pointed at the holotank, where a thin yellow line projected outward from the location of the Macro asteroid.
“Get all the sensor readings we can for whatever that is,” I told Valiant.
“Sensor efficiency remains at eleven percent as higher-priority repairs are implemented,” the ship replied.
“Can you tell me anything about it at all?” I asked as I fiddled with the holotank controls. Zooming in on the thing did little except expand the moving blob with no improvement in resolution.
“It’s accelerating with the approximate characteristics of a fusion-powered missile. Mass spectrometer analysis confirms fusion exhaust gases as does a comparison of brightness.”
“Why would it fire a missile…out there?” I extrapolated the arrow-straight line of its flight path, pulling back the zoom on the holotank. “What is its target?”
“Unknown.”
A slight hesitation in Valiant’s synthesized voice made me ask, “Do you have a theory?”
The AI chewed on that one for a moment. “All possibilities but one are either impossible to calculate or fall close enough to zero as to be considered impossible.”
“All but one?”
The holotank view shifted as Valiant made inputs. Now, the Macro missile’s course reached far out into space toward the edge of the star system, coming very close to intersecting another green-colored flight path.
“The probable target is Greyhound,” the AI said. “But there’s no confirmation. We can’t even see the ship, it’s so far out.”
Greyhound.
They were going to blow up Marvin.
-31-
“They fired a missile at Marvin?” I said, aghast, my eyes locked on the holotank. “Transmit a warning to him.”
“I already included this information in my repeated hails, but I have received no response,” Valiant said.
“Dammit. So with their parting shot, the Macros decided to kill Marvin? That seems odd.”
“He’s got defenses, right?” Hansen asked.
“Sure.”
“So he might make it.”
“Yeah, but…”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Hansen said, sounding almost cheerful. “We don’t have anything fast enough to catch up.”
Unfortunately, Hansen was right. I had one more trick up my sleeve, however.
“Hold the fort, Hansen,” I called over my shoulder as I hustled off the bridge and down to the armory. I climbed into my suit in its niche but didn’t bother sealing up.
“Suit, activate the quantum ansible and broadcast.”
“Device activated. Broadcasting.”
“Marvin, come in. Talk to me, dammit!”
“There is no need for expletives,” Marvin’s voice replied. Apparently the ansible’s signal really did exceed the speed of light, or perhaps bypassed normal limitations, as there was no delay.
“Why won’t you answer Valiant’s beamcast?”
“Maintaining radio silence is an elementary part of not being detected.”
“So why didn’t you call me on this transmitter?”
“It appeared you were quite busy. I did not want to distract you at a critical moment. Besides, I had nothing to say.”
I growled with exasperation. “When you have nothing to say, Marvin, I worry. A lot. Did you know the Macros fired a missile at you?”
“I know they launched a missile-like vehicle in my direction, but I suspect there is no warhead aboard.”
“Oh? You can tell that from all the way out there?”
“It is an elementary deduction based on logic and my understanding of the situation.”
“Enlighten me then, Marvin. I’m tired and in no mood for your condescending attitude.”
“I seem to be detecting a destabilization in my quantum ansible. I may lose contact at any moment.”
That was bullshit, I was certain. Marvin was setting up for cutting me off because he’d gotten tired of listening to me. I knew how to deal with that, though: by stroking his ego a bit. “I’m sure you can lock that down, Marvin. No one is as good as you are at the tech stuff. Now would you please explain what you think the Macro missile is?”
“My theory is that it contains a compact Von Neumann seed, probably the smallest one the Macro factory was able to produce.”
“A seed? Macros are all Von Neumann machines, able to build more of their kind. Nanos are the same. Even you’re related to them in that sense. What’s different about this one?”
“If I were the Macros, facing the extinction of my race, I would create a dormant seed designed to endure for centuries and send it outward in hopes that it may encounter the conditions needed to awake and grow.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Okay, I can see that. But why send it at you? I bet you can match velocities and blast it. In fact, Marvin, that’s what I want you to do. Destroy that thing. We have to rid the universe of the Macros once and for all.”
“I do not believe that’s wise.”
“What?” I could hardly believe my ears. “Are you insane? The Macros have been the scourge of Earth and its federation. They’ve killed billions of biotics. They’re a pestilence on everything they encounter.”
“On Earth, some pestilences have adapted to form symbiosis with other life by performing valuable functions. Also consider that even the most deadly diseases serve a beneficial purpose.”
“What possible—?”
“They drive evolution. They improve a species by allowing only the fittest to survive. Just imagine where Earth would be without the arrival of the Macros and the Nanos: still divided into a hundred-odd squabbling nation-states with all their nuclear weapons pointed at one another. The human race would also have missed out on
its current rapid technological advancement. Even more important, I would not exist.”
“Those are rationalizations not reasons, Marvin. I’d say Earth would’ve been better off to forge its own destiny naturally rather than having it hijacked by two competing creations of the Blues.” I snapped my fingers. “Admit it. You just want to capture this thing and study it, don’t you? You love to lord it over sentient captives and experiment on them at your leisure—like the Microbe and Litho colonies you undoubtedly still have with you. Now you want to be the sole owner of the last viable Macro anywhere.”
“Such a possibility has occupied my neural circuits ever since I detected the launch and deduced its purpose.”
“Aha! So you do admit it!” For once, I had him.
“Of course. But the point is moot. I will not be able to capture the Macro probe, though there is a chance I may destroy it. It will be traveling far too fast when it hits the ring.”
“Then you have to—” My head snapped back to slap against the back of my suit’s padded helmet as I realized what Marvin had said. “Ring? What ring?” Then I got it. “There’s a ring out there? You found it and took off to check it out, right? Which just happened to take you far away from any dangerous action.”
“I saw no reason to risk my person in combat while more appropriate tasks remained undone, Captain Riggs.”
“Well, you’re going to have to risk your person now. Captain Marvin, as your commanding officer I order you to do your utmost to destroy that Macro probe. If you can’t capture it, you need to eliminate it for the good of biotics everywhere.”
“Might I point out that the machines of the Ancients, the slabs and the golden planet they compose, are far more dangerous than the Macros are? Shall we attempt to destroy them too?”
“The slabs never attacked Earth,” I said through gritted teeth. Time was slipping away while I argued with this robot. “Besides, we can’t fight technology like that yet. We can debate this stuff forever, Marvin, but at the end of the day I’m the commander on the spot and I’m telling you to destroy it.”