by B. V. Larson
“They are in there? How many of them?”
“It’s difficult to achieve a precise population count. That’s one of the reasons I’m sharing my achievement with you. I need more equipment to work with them.”
“Hmm,” I said, frowning at the pool. “How many, in round numbers?”
“Between two and three trillion.”
“ Trillion? ” I asked incredulously.
“Admittedly, the culture is small, but I’ve only just started.”
My mouth sagged open, and I took a step back from the pool. I didn’t want the earthen sides to slip down into the water-it would be like an avalanche to them.
“I’m not accustomed to thinking a trillion of anything,” I said.
Marvin only had one camera on me now. Almost all of the rest studied his pool.
“The average human adult supports approximately two hundred trillion microflora. These beings are larger in size, however. They are closer to the size of a human cell. Still, for this volume of medium, three trillion is a very thin population. The environment here is too cold for them, you see. That’s one of the things I need, a proper warming system. It must be built to create a diffused heat. No single area of the pool should be hot or cold, and the circulatory action must be very gentle to create a minimum of accidental deaths. I think the best system would be an under-carpet of bubble-producing polymers. That way-”
“Marvin,” I said, interrupting. This gained me two extra cameras of attention. “I don’t understand what you are doing with these creatures. You found them here, on the planet surface?”
“Yes,” he said. “They are not quite the same variety we discovered on the Macro cruiser in their experimentation tanks. But they are quite similar. I believe they are a wild strain. They’ve adjusted somewhat to the colder climate, but not entirely. They don’t thrive on an icy world like this one.”
I nodded slowly, trying to absorb everything he was inferring. “You are saying they aren’t native to this world? They are from somewhere else?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The sixth planet from the local star.”
“The tropical world, eh? I see. What are they doing here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I believed they were used to exterminate the original indigenous population of Centaurs.”
— 24
After I got over my shock, I turned to Marvin incredulously. “Are you telling me these intelligent microbes were used as a biological weapon against the Centaurs?”
Marvin flicked a few extra cameras toward me, then panned them back to his soupy pool of mud. He snaked out a tentacle, probed the surface of the liquid gingerly, then retracted the appendage.
“Yes,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing growing a pool of them, if they are so dangerous?”
“They are no longer dangerous.”
I shook my head. “Okay,” I said. “This is a big deal, Marvin, if you are right. Let’s go over it, and I don’t want to hear any of your usual evasiveness.”
“I’m always forthright and compliant with your wishes, Colonel Riggs.”
“No,” I said. “No, you are not. But I’m not going to argue with you about that. What makes you think they were used as weapons?”
“They informed me of this. It is part of their historical record. Not all tribes of their people remember-it was thousands of generations ago. But some do. They corroborate the story.”
“What possible motivation would they have for coming to a Centaur world and killing the populace?”
“The same motivation humans had to invade Helios and exterminate the Worms.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding. “The Microbes made a deal with the Macros? They were used to kill other biotics-just like we were?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the pool, dumbfounded. “Why do you think they are harmless now?”
“They are the leftover remnants of an aerial bombardment. Since their duty was long ago completed, they are free of their obligation to kill other biotics on this world. Now, they are simply trying to survive.”
“What is your interest in them, Marvin?”
“Don’t you find them entrancing?” he asked seriously. “Didn’t the nanites fill you with curiosity-at least at first?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Yes, they did.”
“Tiny creatures with an alien nature,” he said. “I’m drawn to them, I admit. I was fascinated with them from the first. A form of intelligence so different from my own-and yet not that dissimilar. My mind is a mass of tiny machines working in tandem. Yours is a cluster of structurally adhered cells. Theirs is a colony of independent cells, floating in a liquid medium.”
I thought about it, and realized the Microbes were more like me than Marvin was-even if there was a huge difference in scale. I walked around the pool at a safe distance, looking at it from all angles. It still looked like muddy pond water to me.
“What’s this?” I said, gesturing to a stream of water that led to the force dome. The pool itself was very close to the shimmering wall. I could feel a hint of static from it at this close range. It hummed and sizzled at times.
“Careful,” Marvin said. “Do not allow the water to make contact with the force field.”
I frowned and squatted. It was a line of water, about three inches wide, that led from the dome to the main pool. But as I examined it more closely, I could see a dam of earth had been built up at the far end, insulating the water from the wall of the dome.
“What the hell did you use this for, Marvin?”
“A safe way to add fluid to the pool,” he said. “I did not want to stir up the liquid too much.”
“Hmm. I don’t believe you.”
At least seven cameras were on me now. Marvin didn’t say anything.
“You use this canal to shock the pool, don’t you?”
Marvin stared.
“Why have you been mistreating these tiny creatures, Marvin?”
“Training of any kind requires two essential elements: reward and punishment.”
I made a growling sound. “Marvin, I don’t want you playing god with these poor beings.”
“I’ve made critical advancements,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“They can repair human flesh-or Centaur flesh. Do you recall the injuries sustained by Sandra?”
“Yes, I do, but I fail to see how-”
“Let me finish, Colonel. I know that you feel an emotional bond with these beings, but really, they are no different than the nanites you’ve enslaved to do your bidding in a thousand ways.”
“They are intelligent, Marvin.”
“After a fashion, yes. But so are the nanites, if you configure them that way.”
I had to concede his point. I knew we were on the edge of human morality. What were the rules, here? Marvin had pointed out in the past my prejudice in favor of biotics. He had a point. Thinking machines could die-billions of them-and I had no trouble with that. But as soon as the species was closer to my own chemical configuration, I became squeamish.
Were these aliens special, just because they were intelligent as a collective whole? Or were they just bacteria, to be used or abused as we might treat a fish caught in a net? Was their sentience enough to put them in an entirely new category? I felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of these questions.
“I’ve always preferred stand-up fights to moral dilemmas,” I told Marvin. “I’ve always been willing to choose humanity over any other species, when it comes down to a fight. If it is them or us, I’ll kill anyone, or anything.”
“Your path is clear then. Let me expand my cultures. I need a much larger facility. We can set up baths for healing, and experimental improvements.”
“Hold on a minute!” I said, cutting him off. “I said I would run through an enemy to survive, but this is different. We were enslaving these creatures, abusing them for our own purposes. If I
use them to make better troops, how am I better than the Macros? They used them to sicken the Centaur herds, furthering their aims. They were not allies, they were forced to comply. If they improve my soldiers, they will die in the process. In both cases, the Microbes have been unfairly coerced.”
There were a lot of cameras on me now. I couldn’t even count them all. I think he’d added a few since the last time I’d met up with him.
“Colonel Riggs,” he said. “Perhaps you’d allow me to demonstrate what they can do for-us.”
“No,” I said, raising a hand. “I’m sure I would be impressed, Marvin. And I thank you for your work here. I’m sure when we have a chance to bring some eggheads out from Earth, they will be more than happy to go over the discoveries you’ve made. But I don’t even want to know what they can do. I don’t want to be tempted.”
Marvin was quiet for a moment. His tentacles seemed to move more slowly. This meant he was either unhappy, contemplative, or both. I waited for his next statement.
He didn’t say anything, but instead headed toward the dome. It took me a second to realize what he was doing. When his longest whip-like arm reached toward the canal he’d dug to the dome’s edge, I protested.
“Hold on!” I said. “You don’t have to kill them all.”
“They’ve been altered. They can’t survive in the wild on this world now. I’ve got a moral obligation to shut down this experiment.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t. They’ve suffered enough. Can’t we just leave them here in peace?”
“Not really,” Marvin said. “They need care. I’ve kept them warmed artificially, and fed nutrients into the pond. Without care, most will die. They will consume one another due to lack of input within-forty minutes.”
I blew out a puff of air. How did I get myself into these situations? “All right,” I said, knowing very well what Marvin wanted. “You can keep this pond, but not for cruel experimentation. We’ll build a small shelter around this spot. You can use the steel planks from the bunker to keep people from walking into the middle of the pond. Later, I’ll figure out what we should do with them. If nothing else, we can communicate and attempt to establish a dialog, if all of us live that long.”
Marvin seemed very pleased. “A wall,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. I would have put up a barrier long ago, but felt constrained.”
“Constrained? Meaning, you realized that if I saw you building a wall out here around a mud puddle, I would have known something strange was going on?”
“Perhaps.”
“Right. Well, you can keep pets for now. After we finish assembling this ship and test it, I might need you to help me talk to the big factory about programming improvements.”
“Of course, Colonel.”
I left him then, and he scuttled off to gather spare planks of steel. I shook my head as I walked away.
Within a few hours, we had our first complete gunship. I climbed inside to pilot it. When I did so, I immediately found the internal design was less than perfect. The essential problem was the size of the components. We had a huge railgun turret, a massive generator, and a solid steel hull that could not be reshaped wrapped around it. I decided to put the gun in the belly of the ship, just as it was placed on Macro cruisers. It poked out of the lower section and rotated smoothly enough. The generator was on top of the turret and used up space behind it until it ran into the single, large engine. The ship would not be anything like a Nano ship, nor like our destroyers. With multiple smaller engines and laser projectors, those ships were more balanced and maneuverable.
“This thing is going to steer like a shopping cart,” Commander Welter said, pronouncing a verdict that didn’t really surprise me.
I’d called him down from his destroyer for the express purpose of providing design refinements for the gunship prototype. I’d taken a look, and felt they were serviceable. But I wanted an expert opinion from a pilot’s point of view. As Major Welter, he’d distinguished himself while flying enemy craft in the Helios Campaign-and afterward against the Macros. He’d become a master pilot, and I’d reluctantly moved him into the Fleet category and changed his rank to that of Commander.
“It looks that way,” I admitted, walking him through the ship. “But give it a chance. Most of the mass is centralized or underneath the ship. We have an unusual number of stabilizers positioned all around the hull.”
Commander Welter followed me from the forward compartment where the crew would sit to the back of the ship. This required a little squeezing. The central turret and generator were so big, they took up all but three feet of space on either side. The three feet came in the form of a metal tube with unevenly contoured walls.
“Seriously?” he asked. “We have to use a crawlspace to get back to the engine room?”
“There’s one of these-ah-passages on each side of the ship. They are only about thirty feet long, and in space these zones will maintain a zero-G environment for rapid movement.”
“I wouldn’t want to be caught in here when the ship takes a hit,” he muttered.
I ignored him until we got to the engine room. Partly, this was because I couldn’t even see him behind me without contorting my heavy battle suit.
“I’d put one-way signs on these tubes,” he said. “If everyone takes the starboard tube to exit either chamber, they should never run into each other.”
I thought about that for a second, then nodded in my helmet. “Excellent idea, Commander. That’s why I brought you along. You’ve made your first design improvement.”
He muttered something about redesigning a turd, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to get mad at him. I had a big favor to ask.
The engine room made the forward compartment look roomy by comparison. Instead of seating for four, sensory equipment and the ship’s only bathroom, the rear space was squashed between the generator, the top of the turret and the single, massive engine. It was hot back here and stuffy. The air was thick with ozone.
“Will there be a crewman back here?” he asked.
I gestured toward two jump seats. They were folded up against the bulkhead between the two tubes that led in and out of the compartment. Nanite arms held them against the steel wall tightly. When touched, the arms lowered the seats and grabbed the occupant.
“See?” I said, flopping down in one. I grunted as the arms clamped onto me. “These seats are only for emergency flight safety, of course.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s great.”
He walked around the big engine, almost bumping his armored butt into my face as he scooted between me and the metal housing.
“Looks like you haven’t spared anything in the power department.”
“You’ve grasped the essential beauty of this design,” I said. “These ships provide the most bang for the buck of any design I could come up with. Raw power in a compact form.”
Welter nodded, but kept sneering and squinting as he ran his hands over the systems. He jerked his hand away from a hot spot and cursed.
“What I want to know is who’s going to pilot them?” he asked. “All your best pilots are commanding destroyers, including me.”
I cleared my throat. He shot me an alarmed glance. Seeing my expression, his face fell.
“Uh-oh, come on, sir!” he said. “You can’t-”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I very much can. I have to. Every destroyer commander will man one of these new ships. Every destroyer pilot will man another, if we build enough before they hit us.”
“What? Then who will run the destroyers?”
“The gunners,” I said firmly. “And the marine sergeants after that. The Centaurs can’t do it, so we have to. Everyone is going on a crash pilot-training course.”
Welter eyed me in shock. “You mean I have to trade in my destroyer for one of these things? It looks like a flying bathtub.”
“Exactly.”
“But why have your best pilots fly your worst ships?”
“Because th
ey aren’t my worst ships. They have triple the firepower of your destroyer. More importantly, the destroyers practically fly themselves. They have experienced nanite brainboxes to do most of the work. I don’t expect these ships will be so smooth to operate in battle.”
Welter let out a long sigh. “No,” he said glumly. “I don’t suppose they will. All right, I understand your reasoning. I take it you want me to fly this tub-the worst one of all, the prototype?”
“You’re finally catching on, Commander.”
— 25
Before we headed off into orbit on a shakedown cruise, I responded to an odd buzzing in my helmet. I noticed a set of words displayed in warning yellow, and pulled them up onto the center region of my HUD. On the visor before me, the words displayed read: ‘mailbox full. Message returned.’ I frowned at this for a moment, not recalling having sent any texts lately. I almost activated the warning and opened the report.
Then I realized what it was. The system was warning me that my mailbox was full. It wasn’t just any mailbox, either. It was the one that came from Star Force. Cursing, I decided I had to take a look. Possibly, Crow was crying for help. Who knew, maybe a hundred fresh enemy cruisers had come through the Venus gate and now approached Earth. I didn’t want to open those emails, but it would be criminal not to. Still, I somehow managed to put it off one more time. I justified this by telling myself I was in the middle of a critical combat test operation. Admiral Crow would have to wait a few more minutes.
“Take us up, Commander Welter,” I ordered.
As the ship lifted with an uncertain trembling, I felt for the armrests. Nanite arms snaked out and clamped my limbs into place. We rose out of the domed region very slowly.
Once free-floating in the open air, Welter applied thrust. At first he did so gently, then he gave it a surge of power. I was pressed back into my seat, despite the stabilizers, which were humming dutifully.