by B. V. Larson
I blinked at him. “What? You mean we can take them over?”
“You’ve done just that with many factories of Nano origin. The process is not that dissimilar in the case of the larger production systems.”
“But we can’t talk to them. All they ever did was blow up in our faces.”
Marvin twisted some of his tentacles and adjusted the image displayed on the screen. Stock footage of our original campaign against the Macros in South America loaded and began to play. “It was a simple matter of miscommunication,” he said. “These systems do not speak the same language as the Nano ships-but it is similar. Really, it is a more primitive version of the same binary protocol. An earlier version, if you will.”
I stared at him. “You can talk to them? You can change their programming before they blow themselves up?”
“Yes.”
“But we’d have to get you down there, into one of those domes, right?”
“Yes. The domes prevent all transmission from external sources.”
I nodded, remembering. When we’d faced these Macro factories, hiding under clam-shell-like force fields, we’d only been able to get inside with footmen. No form of energy was able to penetrate. Only direct hits from nuclear weapons could break down the force domes themselves. Once that was done, of course, the factory inside was invariably destroyed. But if we could sneak Marvin inside, he thought he could reprogram the machines and make them ours.
The thought was magical and soon consumed my mind. Whole new possibilities opened up. With even one such super-factory, I’d be able to produce huge amounts of whatever source materials I wanted-the more I thought about it, the bigger my eyes and my ideas became.
“We’re going to do it, Marvin,” I said, turning to him. I wondered if my eyes shone with yellow greed. “We’ll do it-or we’ll die trying.”
“That is a logical assumption,” he said.
— 7
Within a few days, we’d moved my force of destroyers to hover over the target, a mountainous world dotted by snow-capped peaks and winding emerald valleys. There was a Centaur satellite here-a big one. I wasn’t surprised about that, after all, this was their home planet. It made sense there would be a large population stationed nearby.
I confirmed through a number of overly-long conversations with the Centaurs that their factories were churning out heavy-weapons kits. Their lighter lasers weren’t sufficient for the task of taking out the big machines. Following our designs for the basic infantry kit, I had them producing as many as possible with their factories. I’d cut the design down from the equipment our men usually carried, but the energy output was comparable. They had a heavy pack, which I’d elongated and based on a harness system that was designed for their four-legged bodies. Each kit was equipped with a nanite-cloth helmet that was completely opaque except for the specialized goggles built to fit over wide-set eyes. The helmet only protected their vision, not much else. It was equipped with a radio system however, so they could receive remote commands. The only other part of the system that mattered in combat was the projector itself, which they cradled in their stubby forearms. Connected by a thick, black nanite cable to the pack on their backs, the troopers were ready to go.
Only, they weren’t. We tested them in person, and immediately found a critical problem. The individual Centaur soldiers weren’t strong enough to carry the newer, heavier packs and projectors. The systems weighed in around eight hundred pounds, and even their sturdiest rams had trouble walking with them. Smaller individuals buckled and staggered, toppling over.
Frowning, I got out the com box and had Marvin translate my speech to the Centaurs in the staging area we’d set up inside their satellite. “Honorable people of the wind,” I began. It was always good to start things off by praising them. “We have a problem. Your warriors are not strong enough to carry the heavy weapons systems they need to destroy the machines.”
“Our hearts are prideful and true. The rivers of our world may not lift a stone, but they will wear it down to nothing given enough years.”
“That’s great,” I said, not having much of a clue what they were talking about. “But we need to kill Macros, and as-designed these systems will not work. Fortunately, I have a solution. It will require that we alter the people of your herds. They will have to undergo nanite injections to improve their strength.”
The Centaurs made many oddly-worded inquiries as to the nature of these alterations and injections. As I explained them further, they became incensed.
“Our people may subject themselves to allowing machines to squat upon our backs. We may even allow machines to transport us to our battles. But we will never conjoin with them! There is no greater dishonor imaginable! To become one with the machine is to join the enemy!”
I grimaced. I thought about telling them that we’d done it, and that was how we were able to carry this equipment ourselves. I decided against mentioning these facts as I felt sharing that information might very well backfire. Who knew how they might react? They might rethink our entire tenuous alliance.
“Sir,” Miklos said, standing nearby.
I turned to him irritably.
“I might have a solution. They say they are willing to be harnessed to carry the weapons. Perhaps we can build even larger projectors and have them drag the units on carts.”
I considered the idea, but I didn’t really like it. They wouldn’t be able to move as fast that way. One of the big advantages of these Centaur troops was their natural agility on mountainous terrain. If they were dragging a cart behind them in teams, bumping along over the rocks, we’d be greatly slowed down.
“I’ve got another idea,” I said. “We’ll put a repeller dish on every pack, countering that single crushing weight.”
Miklos nodded. “That should work.”
“It will work,” I said, “but it will cost us production materials and time. We’ll end up being able to field less troops per hour. But it can’t be helped, I suppose.”
I relayed the plans to the Centaurs and after a few suspicious questions, they agreed with the plan. After all, it only involved altering the kit slightly, not the soldiers themselves.
My next difficulty turned out to be more serious. The Centaurs were claustrophobic. This was something I’d known from the start, but I’d hoped that if they were willing to close their eyes and take a five minute drop-ship ride down to the planetary surface, we shouldn’t have much trouble. I was quite wrong on that point.
Experimentally, we loaded up a squad of veterans into one of my deployable drop-ship containers. These were not all that different in design from their original configuration. Back on Earth, we’d filled oblong structures that looked rather like freight train cars with about a hundred marines each and carried them on long arms dangling from the bottom of our Nano ships. Now, the systems were slightly different. I’d shaped them like teardrops for improved aerodynamics, and hopefully a faster drop-time from space.
Our ships were able to get into and out of orbit much faster than traditional spaceships. This was essentially because our engines had a lot more powered lift than rocket-propelled systems. A ship like the old NASA shuttlecrafts had to come down in a slow, gentle glide. They had to slow down the entire time, starting the drop at a very high velocity. They largely used friction to provide this braking action, rather than engine power. The shuttle engine burn that started this process only lasted three or four minutes. After that, it was a long gliding process that took about an hour to get the ship all the way down to a dead stop, sitting on a long runway.
Our engines weren’t limited to short duration burns, and therefore we didn’t have to rely on friction to slow ourselves down. We were able to come down out of orbit much faster by utilizing a much shorter path-essentially straight down. The main limit on our approach speed was atmospheric friction. It was all a matter of how fast we were moving versus how close we were to the planet’s surface, and thus how thick the atmosphere was. The closer we got to the s
urface at high speed, the hotter things would become inside the landing vessel.
That was what I originally wanted to test. Going down at about five thousand miles per hour to an altitude of about twenty miles from the surface, then throttling back hard to prevent vaporizing the vessel-that was the problem I intended to solve.
So, I loaded about twenty Centaurs into an egg-shaped landing pod and attached it to a destroyer. I’d ordered them to calmly stand in the module, and think happy thoughts of open skies, rivers, wind and honorable matings. They were to turn their goggles to full black and wait a few minutes-the supposed duration of the drop.
We decided to come down in a remote part of the planet about a thousand miles from the southern pole, far from any of the enemy domes or any other Macro units. We’d long ago knocked out all enemy satellites and other remote observation equipment, so I was pretty sure they wouldn’t detect the landing at all. Even so, I was tense in the command chair next to Captain Miklos. We had Kwon there, and Marvin. We watched the screens intently as we dropped straight down like a rock toward the ice-capped polar region.
Things were going well, until we hit the friction layer, about two miles from the surface. The ride got bumpy at that point, and I worried about the Centaur troops we were carrying down.
“Ease off on the throttle, Miklos,” I ordered.
“Yes sir, but I must point out, we need to do the drop as quickly as possible. Enemy anti-air can’t be allowed a long period to lock onto us and bring us down. We don’t have enough ships to take losses-”
“I’m well aware of all that, but this is a test, not a combat drop. Slow down.”
We decelerated harder, and the lurching of the ship continued. We bounced and almost flipped over as a high altitude wind shear struck us.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Kwon, how are the Centaurs doing? Ask their Captain.”
Kwon spoke into the com-box. “No answer, sir.”
“What do you mean, no answer?”
Kwon shrugged in his suit. “The Centaur Captain isn’t responding.”
I gritted my teeth and turned to Miklos. “Can we abort this thing now?”
“Not really, sir,” Miklos said. “We’re almost down. But I’ll slow down to a crawl and crank up the stabilizers so we don’t hit anymore spots like the last one.”
When we finally reached the ground we set the egg-shaped landing module on the ice and the big arm slid away from it. I ordered the ship to dissolve a circular section of the floor and jumped out.
A new planetary surface met my eyes for the first time. It wasn’t anything to write home about. There was a flat, gray-white expanse of ice that seemed infinite, only to be broken up by looming black crags on the western horizon. The surface of the ice blew with a fine mist about two feet deep. I looked down, and realized I couldn’t see my legs. My heavy armor had broken through the crust and I was left wading in snow that came up to my waist.
“Sir,” Miklos said in my helmet. I could hear his breath blowing over the microphone. He was stressing.
“What’s wrong, Captain?”
“Incoming barrage, sir. The Macros must have spotted us.”
“How much time do we have?”
“About forty minutes.”
I cursed and moved to the landing pod. So much for sneaking down out of orbit. The Macros knew we were here, and they’d fired their equivalent of a flock of ICBMs to keep us company. This training exercise wasn’t going exactly as I’d planned.
I reached out and touched the surface of the landing pod, causing it to open. That’s when I found out just how far from “planned” this mission had gone.
A Centaur bolted out into the open. He charged past me, his horn blades clacking against my chest plate as he passed. One of his short arms was broken and bleeding, dangling and flopping against his forelegs as he run.
“What the-” I began, leaning into the opening.
Smoke poured out of it. Black, rolling fumes swirled up into the clear blue sky behind me. I couldn’t smell them, but they looked thick and unpleasant-like an oil fire. I had to dip my helmet down below the smoke to see anything. I’d been about to demand my team tell me what the hell was going on, but I didn’t bother. The scene inside the pod explained it all. I flipped on my suit’s floods and examined the details.
About half the Centaur troops were dead. A number of their corpses were charred black and smoldering. A few live ones stood against the walls, shivering. A few more flopped and twisted on the floor, grotesquely injured. One kicked his hooves at his own discarded generator pack, goring it with his horn blades as if it were a mortal enemy. Perhaps, from his point of view, it was. His eyes rolled in his head and one of his horns had been torn loose. Blood welled and ran down his face and into his foaming mouth, where it outlined his teeth in red. I thought I recognized him: he was large with darker fur than most. Then I had it. He was the Captain.
“Disaster,” said Kwon, leaning his big head into the landing pod beside me. “Total freaking disaster.”
“Thanks for the newsflash, Sergeant. Any more pearls of wisdom for me?”
“Well sir,” he said, taking the question seriously. “I don’t think this is going to work out. I don’t think the Centaurs can be used as drop-ship troops. We have to come up with something else.”
I sucked in a breath, cursed and slammed my gauntleted fist into the wall of the landing pod. The blow crushed in the metal. When I removed my hand, it slowly popped itself back into its previous shape.
When we’d gotten the Centaurs under some kind of control, I let the ship’s big hand lift me back to the bridge. I investigated what had happened, using the vid systems that I’d left recording on their suits.
We watched as they stayed calm for the first minute or so. After that, they become uneasy. A few opened their eyes and turned off the black-out mode on their goggles. These individuals were the first to go nuts. They scrabbled at the walls, trying to get out of what seemed to them to be a deathtrap.
Things had gone from bad to worse when we’d hit a sudden patch of turbulence. At that point, the ones that had remained calm were outnumbered by the panicked Centaurs. Some shed their systems and gored one another, or the smooth walls. A few lasered down the lunatics. Many were blinded by these emissions, released in close quarters without the protection of goggles. After that, they’d pretty much all gone berserk.
We spent a few desperate minutes cleaning up the mess. Seven of the Centaurs out of the twenty we’d brought down survived. There were arguably eight survivors, if you counted the one that had run off onto the ice. But we never found him again.
We buried the dead in the ice and had to lift off with the rest of them in an anesthetized state. According to sat-com, we only had a few minutes left before the missiles reached us, and we didn’t have enough covering fire to assure we could shoot them all down. I ordered the lift-off with a heavy heart.
I told myself as we retreated into space that every training death saved ten lives in combat. I knew as well that the dead troops had at least ended their lives on their own homeworld. These thoughts helped a little, but not much.
— 8
I spent a full day dreaming up solutions to the Centaur transportation problem. My staff brought me their own ideas, which I listened to politely. For the most part, they were terrible.
“Drug all the Centaurs and land them in a base camp a hundred miles from their objective,” Sloan suggested.
I nodded and said something like “uh-huh”. That’s just what I wanted, a million or so semi-conscious mountain goats to care for. What would happen when a Macro missile barrage landed in their midst unexpectedly? Were my marines supposed to run away carrying a drugged goat tucked under each arm?
Miklos came up with a Fleet-centered idea: “Just bombard the domes from space with nuclear weapons, Colonel.”
I had to admit, that idea had more merit than the first. But we would have to manufacture thousands of missiles, and the enemy was we
ll-defended against any space-borne assault. That’s why I had equipped these troops. I had planned to drop dirtside fast and deploy a beachhead, then press in against a dome before they could mass and stop us.
“It’s occurred to me, but I don’t think we have enough firepower. Even if we did, I don’t think I would want to unload it all on the Centaur planets. We are supposed to be freeing these worlds, not destroying them.”
Marvin had the most interesting idea of all. He suggested we go in with a small force, secretly operating as commandos. If we could get Marvin himself under one of those domes, he felt he could reprogram the machine to operate under our control.
I rejected everyone’s plan, but thanked them for their valuable input. I then headed back to my own ship to think. After about twenty hours of mulling it over, I became tired and frustrated. I did what I usually did under such circumstances: I drank a six-pack of beer. This move improved my mood dramatically.
Soon, I found myself in Socorro’s observatory. I hummed and admired the view. I spilled a few golden droplets on the ballistic glass surface. The chamber had always been icy cold, and the beer froze into hard amber beads on the glass.
I studied the planet below, so near yet so inaccessible. The chilly ice-cap on every crag was so white, and so bright it almost hurt to look at it. I tapped at the glass with my foot, and it clacked back at me. I frowned. What if…?
Bursting with a new idea, I rushed out of the observatory and called in my staff. It took them long minutes to assemble. They yawned and squinted at me, as it was the middle of a sleeping shift for most of them.
“How much ballistic glass do we have in the system?” I demanded. “I want a full accounting. I want to know about all of it.”
“I don’t know, sir,” Miklos admitted. “Not much. We don’t generally put windows into our ships, except to cover cameras. Most of it is probably in use as visors for our helmets. What do we need it for?”