by B. V. Larson
“That’s what I need to hear. Spread the word,” I told them.
Next, I headed over to the motor pool and grabbed a Hummer without filling out any forms. The duty Sergeant glared at me, but his frown vanished when he saw who I was and what kind of mood I was in. No one else even considered starting up an argument with me. Sometimes having a rep works in a man’s favor.
“Where the hell are we going?” asked Robinson as I pulled up to him and climbed out.
I hopped over the vehicle in a single smooth leap. That always freaked out normal people. Robinson had seen such tricks before, but he still had his mouth open when I climbed into the passenger seat. “You’re driving,” I told him.
Robinson huffed, but he got into the Hummer, started it up and drove. I directed him into the jungle interior. I’d never been on this fresh-cut road before. As the nanotized pilot of the Alamo, I’d always either flown, or jogged through the trees.
“We’re going out to the base, aren’t we? The one with your secret factories. They aren’t so secret, you know,” said Robinson.
“Right now, I’m just hoping they are still there when we arrive.”
He shot me an alarmed look. “Look Riggs,” Robinson said, “I don’t mean to be an asshole, but this isn’t going as planned. In fact, nothing that involves you ever seems to go according to plan.”
“Major-” I began, but he cut me off.
“Yeah, right there. That’s the sort of crap I’m talking about. What gives you the right to decide I’m a major all of a sudden? I’ve been in charge of a full division for years before all this alien nonsense hit the fan.”
It was my turn to cut him off. I grabbed the wheel. I didn’t want to crash, because I didn’t think he would survive it. With my other hand, I grabbed his chin and turned his face toward me, treating him like he was a little kid.
Robinson stared at me in shock, rage, and pain. My fingers weren’t in ‘gentle mode’. There would be serious bruises on his face when I let go of him.
“I invented this organization. You’re a Major now because I say you are.”
He drew his sidearm then. If I’d had a couple more free hands, I might have applauded. At least he had guts. Instead, the hand I had on the wheel flicked up and knocked the gun out the window. There was an explosion of glass, mostly outward onto the road. The window had been closed, but the gun hit it with such force it didn’t matter.
I let him go after that and he had to turn his attention back to the wheel and the road. The tires made thumping sounds as we ran over reflectors. A few palm fronds slapped the windshield. He cursed a bit, but he had taken his foot off the gas when I grabbed him, so we had been losing speed. He got control of the car and lived. He stopped the Hummer and glared at me with crossed arms, daring me to force him to drive further.
“I bet that’s the closest you’ve come to death since the war began,” I remarked.
“You’re crazy. Absolutely crazy. You could have killed us.”
“No, not us,” I said, “just you.”
Robinson looked at me, and now his anger had been erased. I’d replaced it with exasperation. Good, I thought.
“You’re probably wondering what the hell my problem is, Robinson,” I said.
“Damn straight I am.”
“I can tell you’re listening now, so I’ll tell you what’s bothering me. Major, I’ve decided I’m not going to lose Star Force, or the nanites that course through my blood-not my girlfriend, either. If I let the Earth governments take over this operation, they will screw it up somehow. They will squabble over everything we have, trying to steal samples of our technology. They will still be arguing in some court somewhere about who owns the patent for portable fusion reactors when the bill comes due at the end of the year.”
“The bill?”
“Our tribute. Our blood-payment. We are supposed to march thousands of troops aboard a Macro ship in a year’s time. Even if the governments manage to pull it together enough to do that, I’m sure they can’t simultaneously produce a strong fleet to defend Earth by then.”
“A new fleet? Why do we need a new fleet?”
“Did you like getting your face grabbed? That’s what happens to weak worlds in this brave new universe we live in.”
“You think the Macros might go back on their deal?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Remember, when I made the deal, I had the strength of hundreds of Nano ships behind me. We couldn’t have won a fight to the finish, but the enemy believed we were strong enough to do them some damage. We’d proven it time and again on the battlefield and in space.”
Major Robinson sat back, looking out the windshield at the road. He frowned fiercely. I supposed it was his first deep-thinking experience in a long time. “So, you think the Macros might just see how weak we are and change their minds?”
“The Macros are machines, Robinson. They don’t know anything about honor or mercy. They think like accountants. I’m not even sure they think, exactly. What they understand is problem-solving and costs versus benefits. To them, my deal was the easiest solution to a problem. If we don’t have a fleet to threaten them when they come back, they might decide on a different course of action.”
Robinson nodded slowly. “And you don’t think the Earth governments will understand that part?”
“No. Human beings don’t normally learn anything without firsthand experience. They don’t understand these machines yet.”
He snorted. “And you do? You know it all, when it comes to machine aliens you’ve never even met?”
“Oh, I’ve met them all right. I’ve been in their faces and under their belly-turrets more than anyone I know of. Enough, I think, to have a good idea of how they will react.”
Robinson started up the Hummer again. He drove on through the jungle. I was glad about that. I needed to keep moving, and I didn’t want to kick his butt out onto the asphalt for disobeying orders.
“Okay, fine,” he said after another mile of greenery had gone by. “Why can’t we just cooperate with the NATO people?”
“We will, but on our terms. The Earth governments will want a strong defense, but they won’t quite be able to fully cooperate. They won’t be able to fully bring down all the barriers, to forget about all their old rivalries and politics.”
Robinson gave me a longer, strange look. “Why are you telling me all this? And why did you grab my face like, like-”
“Why did I humiliate you? Why did I treat you like a reform-school bully? Because I wanted you to listen-but it’s more than that. Do you realize that any marine under your command could have done the same? That you are like a child to your own troops? You have to undergo the nanite-injections. All of my officers have to be shot-up with nanites from now on. I won’t have men leading men who could kick their butts in a second.”
Robinson’s lips were a thin line. He looked pale. “No one knows the long term effects-”
“No. No we don’t. But your men have already done it. They’ve put their lives on the line. If you want to lead them, you will have to do the same. Crow should never have let you into the Force without the injections.”
We drove for a while, quietly. A green Bahaman Parrot with brilliant blue wingtips sailed by in front of us. The bird had time to squawk at us once, irritably, before we were gone, barreling down the forest road.
“Why do you think Crow did that?” asked Robinson thoughtfully. “Why did he let us in without undergoing the injections?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it,” I said, “but I know Crow fairly well. I’m sure it made it easier to convince officers to join. But I think he also did it because he was scared. Maybe not scared, but too paranoid about his own skin to take the injections himself. So, he made it a rule that upper management didn’t need to go through it. That way, he didn’t have to.”
Robinson thought quietly for a few miles, and I let him do it.
“So, what’s the deal, then?” he asked me finally.
“The deal?”
“Between us.”
I nodded. “You’re a Major. You take the injections. You follow my orders. That’s the deal.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you’re out.”
He threw up his hands. “Where’s the giant robot hand? I’m expecting to be ripped out of this Hummer and dumped into the ocean.”
I looked at him for a second. Apparently, my handling of General Sokolov had left a lasting impression. Good, I thought. “Nope. If you refuse my terms, you just ship out to the mainland with the next load of cargo.”
Robinson fell silent again. After another mile or so we reached the secret base. We were challenged at the gates by my marines. They recognized me and waved us in. These were my most loyal men. I’d hand-picked them for the duty. Most were American, but there was a number of Indian Ghataks mixed in. I’d left Staff Sergeant Kwon in command. I leaned out the window and waved over the guard. By the look of him, he was one of the Ghataks, a commando.
“Corporal,” I said, calling him over, “has there been anything strange going on?”
He stared at me for a second. “The ships all left, sir. They didn’t come back. Kwon put the base on high alert.”
“Good. The ships won’t be back. Let’s keep a sharp eye out for aircraft.”
“Aircraft?”
“If they are going to hit us right away, they will do it with choppers coming in from ships offshore, I would figure.”
“Hit us, sir? Who?”
“Maybe nobody,” I said, deciding I’d just started a rumor by talking too much. “Things are little odd right now, Corporal.”
“Yes sir.”
“Contact me if there are any sightings. I’ll be working inside with the-the units.”
“Yes sir.”
We drove away, and Robinson smirked at me. “Nervous?”
“About what?”
“You didn’t want to tell him what might be coming. You don’t want him to think about what side he’s on too closely, do you?”
I stared at him as we came to a halt in front of a steel building. It splashed silver light into our eyes.
“Just remember, Robinson,” I said, “my body can take a bullet much better than yours can. When the fireworks start… I suggest you duck.”
— 5-
I walked into the steel building, leaving Robinson in the Hummer. He could follow me, or not. I was through trying to convince him, it was time he convinced himself-one way or the other.
There was an operator inside the shed, a marine who slouched in his chair and tapped at a tablet computer.
“Those are forbidden now, marine,” I barked at him.
“Sir?”
“The tablet. What are you doing with that thing?”
He looked baffled and guilty all at once. “Um, I’m reading a book, sir.”
I snatched it away from him. There were cartoon plants on the screen. A little farmer icon plowed a virtual field. I snorted. “I can see you are an avid reader.”
He reached for the tablet and I slapped his hand away. I didn’t want anyone emailing the outside world, or phoning in. I needed time.
“This computer is contraband now, until further notice. Now, go report to Sergeant Kwon for patrol duty.”
He stared at me, eyeing his tablet in dismay.
“Well?” I roared. “That was an order, marine! Move out! I’ll watch the duplication machine. I have work to do.”
He exited in a hurry. I turned back to the tablet, rubbing at the screen. These things always needed a cleaning. It looked like I’d cracked the screen when I snatched it away from him. Too bad.
I looked around the room. There were pallets of supplies. Fortunately, I’d insisted we maintain a stockpile of raw materials to keep the machines busy. Without the Nano ships as transports, I’d have to make do with what I had on hand.
The factory was a bit bigger than the ones the Nano ships had aboard for system repairs. There was a central spheroid about twelve feet in diameter that sat in the middle of the shed. To me, it had always resembled an old-fashioned steel kettle, but with humps and curves to it that hinted the machine was full of unimaginable components. The strangely twisting internals made me think of a man’s guts pressing out against a thin, metal skin. Tubes ran upward from the top of the spheroid to the roof of the shed where the materials intakes were. An output port was on the side, which could yawn open or squeeze closed like a metal orifice.
Currently, the machine was making more reactor packs for infantry use. We had enough of those, so I stopped the machine. Before I started reprogramming it, I took stock of the supplies. I sighed, figuring out how to get the most out of the materials I had was going to take a while.
The door creaked and slammed behind me. I listened to the tread, and it didn’t sound like the marine who I’d chased out. The footsteps weren’t heavy enough. Nanotized troops weighed more and carried a very heavy set of gear. You could actually hear the flooring groan beneath their feet.
“Robinson?” I asked without turning around, “what do you want?”
He stopped and stood there for a few seconds. I turned and looked at him. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again. I lost interest and went back to counting titanium ingots. We had less than six hundred of them. I sighed. It would have to do.
“Colonel?” said Robinson, clearly distraught.
I didn’t even bother to look at him. His voice changed suddenly. There was new steel in it. Sometimes, getting ignored stiffened a man’s spine.
“Sir, please look at me.”
“Sir, is it?” I asked, turning to face him.
“Yes. I’ve thought about what you said. I’ve been working here for months, and I know you might be right. I–I want to rejoin Star Force, sir. I’ll take the nanite injections. I’ll sign on as a Major.”
I smiled. It was a small thing, just a tweak of the lips, but it was there. I walked to him and looked him in the eye. I held out my hand and we shook. I was careful not to crush his hand.
“I knew you would make the right choice, Robinson,” I lied. “Now, walk two doors down. They have a chair in there. I’ll send a man to-to help you strap in.”
He went pale, but he nodded and left with a confident stride. I hoped he wasn’t a screamer, that would be distracting and I needed to think in order to reprogram these machines. I also hoped he wasn’t the kind who would dig at his face. That would be worse. I needed him fully functional and every hour counted.
“Robinson?” I called after him.
“Sir?”
“It’s like a bad trip to the dentist. Just keep thinking that it will all be over in a few minutes.”
“Yes sir,” he said.
As he left I thought he looked a little green. Maybe he didn’t like dentists.
I went back to my inventory. I wasn’t sure, but I figured I had enough rare metals and trace elements to do what I wanted. The common, easy stuff like nickel, boron, silicon lubricants and the like I wasn’t worried about. We had warehouses of that junk. It was the rare earths like strontium, palladium, samarium and thallium that worried me. Even our plutonium stocks, although adequate, were smaller than I had hoped.
I brought up a spreadsheet on the tablet and did some quick numbers, tapping on the screen. This was going to take some thinking. I needed a new kind of ship, and I had to have it on the cheap. It had to be effective, impressive and easy to build. I rubbed my face and nodded to myself. I thought I had it.
“Duplication unit,” I said, addressing the machine that sat silently before me. “Respond.”
“Unit Fourteen responding.”
I’d taught them to do that. It was too hard to give them all names, so they had numbers. I’d set them up with standing orders to respond to a general name, and their specific number. “Okay Fourteen. Engage group-link.”
“Group-link engaged.”
“Halt all production and preprocessing steps. If possible, recycle base materials.�
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“Transmitting. Units responding. Units Six, Seventeen and Thirty-Five are unable to comply with the shutdown order.”
“That’s okay. Any unit that can’t complete the orders I’m giving yet should queue them up until such a time as they can be followed.”
Right now, as I watched, the thrumming stopped on Unit Fourteen. Across the camp, all these little factories were shutting down and switching into idle mode. Those that were in the midst of processing a subcomponent would break it down and eject the raw materials. It was wasteful, but I didn’t need any more heavy beamers right now. What I needed were ships, and fast.
“New program workspace,” I said, telling it to prepare for a new program. “Initiate.”
“Initiated,” said Fourteen. “Units responding. Units Six, Thirty-Five-”
“I know, I know, they are unable to comply. Halt report,” I said. I rubbed my temples. Dealing with the factories was considerably less fun than dealing with the Alamo had been. They had less capacity for cognition, and they didn’t know much beyond how to perform innate operations. You couldn’t get an answer out of them about the Nanos, or their creators, or anything off-topic like that. I supposed they had fewer nanites chaining-up to form their neural nets. They knew what they knew, and that was it.
“Fourteen, for this group-link session, do not report back to me of processing errors among the units. Only report to me acknowledgements and critical malfunctions. Have the other units queue the processing orders I give. They don’t have to perform them until they are able to comply.”
“Acknowledged. Relayed.”
“Okay, we need to build a large structure. How many units could optimally be applied to creating a single ship’s weapon?”
Hesitation. “An infinite number of-”
“No, hold on. If I gave you all the materials and gave one unit the task of building a single ship’s weapon, how many hours would it take to complete the construction?”
“Twenty-one point six hours.”
I nodded, tapping the result into my tablet. “And if I had two Units share the task?”
“Sixteen point three hours.”