by B. V. Larson
I didn’t buy any of the rumors, the theories. I waited and watched the skies as tensely as the greenest recruit. Maybe that was because I had some inkling of what might lie ahead.
— 35-
They arrived before dawn at the end of a black, moonless night. The Macros were eleven days late, and I’d wager by then half my men had managed to convince themselves the huge ship would never come for them.
Sandra shook me awake gently. She kissed me over and over while I sighed and stretched in our bed. We had an entire brick to ourselves, but only a small part of it was our sleeping quarters. Most of the module was designed to be my command headquarters.
“What is it?” I asked her in a whisper.
“They’re here,” she said.
My eyes snapped open. I lurched up, and if she hadn’t had nanite-enhanced reflexes, we might have bumped heads.
“We’ve got contacts on the boards?” I asked, slapping the walls lightly to make the ceiling brighten.
“Yes,” she said. “And we’ve got video coming in over the net, too.”
Our ‘bricks’ were more than modular living quarters, they had more in common with a Nano ship than a traditional Earth trailer. The walls teemed with nanites and were programmed to be touch-sensitive. The interface quickly became second-nature to everyone who worked with it. A single tap turned up the lights. A double-tap turned them off. If you applied a steady pressure to a small area for about a second, a radial menu of additional options came up in full relief. Even if a trooper was blinded, he could feel his way over the relief surface of the menu and make his selection. To make the menu hotpoints easier to find through a thick glove, I had scripted them to shiver slightly when active. They felt like hard, quivering beads under one’s fingertips.
I sprang out of bed and reached my ‘locker’ in a single stride. To open the locker I put my hand on an indented area of the wall and made a spreading motion with my thumb and forefinger. The metal surface melted away, revealing a storage area jammed with clothing and equipment. I was dressed in less than a minute. The seals were all automatic, every seam in the suit seemed to melt together and form a single mass as the nanite clusters found one another and made friends.
I spread my hand over the exit portal and stepped down a short hall. Along the hallway was a conference room, a restroom and medical/weapons locker. At one end of the hall was the portal into the command center. At the other far end, the end of the entire brick, was an airlock that led to the outside world. Right now, we didn’t need an airlock, but I suspected we would in time.
I melted the door of the command center and stepped inside. Sandra stayed behind and retreated down the hall. We’d decided that she couldn’t be in the command center with me. Not only would that smack of nepotism and be bad for morale, it would likely be bad for our relationship. Sometimes a commander had to be a real asshole in public, and it was best not to have your sweetie-bunkmate in the room with you at the time. She would work in my private office, handling high-level communications and correspondence. In effect, she was to be a combination of secretary and personal security operative. She liked pistols, and was a naturally suspicious person. I figured as long as I didn’t try to cheat on her, my back was covered.
I wore a full combat suit of Kevlar. The hood hung down my back, but otherwise I was fully prepared for battle. We’d made many improvements to our suits over the last year. I’d renamed them battlesuits, and they were now as full of nanites as I was. Our battlesuits were redesigned to keep us alive in vacuum, as well as a hundred other hostile environments.
The command staff looked up as I walked onto what was to effectively be my command post for this expedition. Detecting worry on their faces, I put up my own calm front. It was an act, of course. How can one be completely unruffled when one knows a ship full of huge, killer robots has just arrived to take you away to points unknown? Everyone knew this could turn into the worst blind date in history.
“Where’s Robinson?” I snapped, stepping up to the blue-glowing table that sat at the center of the room.
“He’ll be here any minute, sir,” said Captain Sarin, a staffer. She was pretty and moved like a nervous bird. I’d worked hard not to notice her too much.
It was easy to ignore Captain Sarin today. I didn’t even look at her. I was too busy studying the screen that was laid out at hip-level. I could see the Macros on the screen immediately. There were six large, red contacts coming our way. They were already in Earth orbit over Japan. I reached out, touching the screen and dragging it toward me. I spread my fingers over the lead ship, the biggest one. The image zoomed in. A red vector graphic of the ship filled the area at my fingertips. We weren’t close enough for a camera view, but we had enough radar pinging off the Macros to get a good idea of their configuration. It had a familiar, cylindrical shape.
“Looks like this one is the transport,” I said.
“Yes sir, that’s been confirmed by reports from telescopic intel.”
I nodded. I wondered why I hadn’t been automatically given that feed, but I didn’t complain about it. Earth was still far from a homogenous entity. We still barely cooperated, even in the face of our extinction. Given time, I believed that would change, but old habits such as mutually distrustful national militaries would die hard.
“What has me curious are the five escorts. They look heavily armed,” I said, zooming in and twiddling my fingers to spin around one of the escorts, drawn in wire-frame. The AI identified no less than four missile ports on each of the Macro killers. I shook my head, the Macros really believed in missiles. They never seemed to use beam-cannons for anything other than anti-personnel weapons. I suppose it was a matter of power usage. Nuclear missiles were a form of stored energy, and did not use power when they fired that could better be directed to shields or propulsion. Our design was quite the opposite. We were all about small beam ships, rather than large missile ships.
“We have designated them as cruiser-class vessels, sir,” said Robinson, finally melting open the entrance that led to the hallway and stepping into the command post.
“Sensible,” I said, spinning the Macro with my fingers. “Looks like they will still outgun our destroyers-when we have destroyers. What’s this here?”
Robinson took his post at the far side of the computer table. He isolated a part of the big screen for himself with quick, deft hand-motions and linked his image to mine so he could examine what I was looking at.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said.
“Robinson,” I said, “they are over Wake Island now, we don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know sir, but we haven’t been able to examine their ships this closely before. The ones they sent to China, they didn’t have a system like that.”
“It looks like a cannon of some kind.”
“Yes sir,” he said.
“Are they copying us? Are they building beam weapons to counter our longer-ranged ships?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said Robinson, sounding stressed. “It could be some kind of long-range sensor.”
Analyzing enemy ship designs was a function of Fleet, not the Marines, but at this point Crow had yet to get his act together. Fleet barely existed. Recently, we’d spent all our time building up the ground forces we’d promised the Macros and whatever material we had left had gone into building up our own defenses on Earth. None of us trusted NATO farther than we could throw them. In the absence of Fleet intel, I’d given Robinson the task of classifying and analyzing what we knew of all Macro capabilities. I’d figured he would be a useful resource, seeing as he was coming with me on this little jaunt into the blue.
I outlined the protuberance in question on my screen with a circling finger. It did indeed resemble a cannon. As I watched, it shifted and tracked something.
“It has a barrel, a turret. That is definitely a weapon,” I said, “and we have no idea what it does?”
“Correct, sir. We have no record of that type of weapon on a cruiser. T
hey might have been on the vessels you met when the initial Macro fleet came to Earth. But they were so far out we don’t have any close-up recordings of ship configuration.”
“Well,” I said, “I suppose we’ll have to wait until they fire on something, then we’ll have some intel on these big turrets.”
“I suppose, sir.”
I turned toward Captain Sarin, who hovered nearby. “Get an ETA clock up on the board.”
She jumped and went to work on her section of the big screen. I was annoyed, but I tried to hide it. She should have put up an ETA clock automatically. My entire command crew was very green. Here we were, facing an implacable enemy with unknown intentions, and we still had few procedures in place concerning the operation of our own equipment. I tried to cut them some mental slack, but I couldn’t.
“Staff, I want to say something right here, right now,” I barked, sweeping my eyes over the group. I noted that everyone looked ashamed. I supposed they all knew they were in for a spanking, for one thing or another.
“We’ve got to pull it together,” I said loudly. I would have hammered the tabletop with my fist, but I didn’t want to accidentally crack the ballistic glass that covered it. “This is it, this is the real deal. Drink some coffee or something, but wake up! Now, who has made sure that our defense turrets are off, so the Macros can come down without getting blasted?”
“Isn’t that Fleet traffic-control’s responsibility, sir?” asked Major Robinson.
“Yes, it is. But do you trust them so completely that you don’t want to confirm it has been done?”
A hand went up timidly to half-mast. It was Captain Sarin, the same staffer I’d set on building my ETA clock. She was still working the menus with the other hand. “I confirmed it, sir,” she said.
I nodded to her in appreciation. “You see? Captain Sarin has done some forward-thinking.”
The ETA clock, when it was finally operating, counted down from twenty-two minutes. I tried to give them all something to do while we waited. Waiting was always hard on troops. I’d learned that during my one active-duty tour in the Gulf as a Lieutenant. When stressed, it was much better for the mind to be doing something-even if it was pointless.
There came a moment however, during the final three minutes, that we had nothing to do but watch the Macro ships. The five escorting cruisers sat up in orbit over the Bahamas. The biggest ship, the transport, lowered itself gracefully down toward us. Dawn was breaking over the ocean. The sky turned pink in the east behind the transport, turning the monstrous ship into a hulking, black silhouette.
We’d planned this out long ago. We’d scripted traffic-control instructions and now transmitted them to the Macros using their own binary language. We landed the transport out in the Caribbean itself, as there wasn’t an area large enough on land. The huge cylinder was the size of a skyscraper. It was like watching three supertankers, all bundled into one mass, lowering out of the sky. The Macro transport had huge feet, but I doubted it would use them for much. Instead, gravity-repellers like the ones that moved our hovertanks kept the monstrous ship floating just above the cobalt-blue waves.
Nothing happened for a minute or so after the big ship sank down. I addressed the brainbox that ran the command brick. It had an interface like any Nano ship. I’d found it easiest and fastest just to copy the personality and knowledge of the Socorro.
“Command module: respond,” I said aloud.
“Responding.”
“Are there any incoming transmissions from the Macro vessel?”
“Negative,” said the module.
“Transmit the following: We are ready to embark.”
“Incoming Message: Fulfill the terms of our agreement immediately.”
I felt a tickle of sweat under my arms. What did the Macros want? Everyone had their eyes on me. I was the architect of this entire thing, and if I had monumentally screwed up by misunderstanding the terms of our agreement, the existence of my race was in question. I swallowed, and tried to look confident and tough. I thought about exiting the room and working from my office. It would be easier to think if I wasn’t being stared at by a half-dozen scared people.
I drew in a breath. I decided to brazen things through. The Macros seemed to respond well to that sort of thing.
“We are ready. We have prepared the promised cargo. Now, open your cargo bay doors so we can load your transport.”
“Incoming Message: We measure insufficient mass. Agreed-upon terms have been violated.”
Insufficient mass? I blinked, wondering if we had screwed up somehow. Had they measured tons in an entirely different fashion? Did they have scales from some tiny world where a single ton metal was the size of a mountain? Had we promised them troops in tonnage equal to the size of the Earth itself?
My head swam as I groped for a next move. I rejected the mistaken scaling concept. That didn’t make sense, as their holds couldn’t support much more mass than what we’d promised them. Something else was wrong….
“Maybe they think we meant tons of nothing but troops,” Robinson said in a stage whisper, as if the Macros might somehow overhear. “Maybe they’ve counted heads, and know that our troops weigh far less than a single kiloton in bodies alone.”
I stared at him. If he was right, we would have to renegotiate, or we were doomed. I thought about this delicate situation. I knew I didn’t have too long to respond.
“Sir,” said Captain Sarin, “the cruisers are reorienting themselves.”
“Give me the visual.”
The image, transmitted down from space, snapped up on the tabletop in front of me. The Macro ships formed a classic diamond pattern over our heads, one ship at the center and one at each point. I nodded, noting that they had formed a similar formation over China. Apparently, during planetary assaults, they tended to form diamonds or triangles.
“Those unknown turrets on the bottom of the ships, they are activating sir,” said another staffer. “They are tracking.”
“Tracking what?”
“They appear to be tracking this command module, sir. All of them.”
I nodded. “Well, at least we know now what those turrets are. They’re ground-assault weapons of some kind.”
— 36-
“Maybe we should just go for it, sir,” said Major Robinson.
I looked at him. “What have we got?”
“Crow took the precaution of massing up the Fleet over the production base. They are drifting very close to ground-level, but could head up into orbit at a word from us. All we need to do is report that the agreement is breaking down.”
I blinked. “I’m not ready to do that yet.”
“Sir,” he said, leaning forward. “That is your call. It is my duty to inform you of our status for any contingency. I believe we could take out this fleet fairly quickly.”
“You have thirty seconds to convince me,” I said.
Robinson put both his palms on the table between us. A rippling effect on the screen outlined each hand. It was the screen’s way of idly acknowledging the contact and showing it was awaiting an intelligible gesture.
“We have more ships than we did when they hit China,” he said with intensity. “That’s nearly forty ships.”
“Closer to thirty,” I said.
“Yes sir, but the fleet only represents a fraction of our firepower. The big advantage we have right now is our ground-based weaponry. Every Macro ship is in range of our land-based beam turrets. We have two hundred and seven guns we could target them with. We also have hovertanks, with a combined firepower greater than the fleet itself.”
I thought about it. Essentially, we could hit each of their vessels in turn with around three hundred cannons. This was because they were right on top of us now. We could blast each ship in turn with overwhelming firepower and destroy them all, probably within a few minutes, and definitely before they could retreat.
I grimaced. This was not how I had envisioned my day unfolding. I had brought peace to Earth
. Was I about to plunge her back into war? I felt like Admiral Yamamoto, eyeing the charts and plotting the locations of US ships around Pearl Harbor. I imagined he’d felt similar misgivings.
“The problem is, Major,” I said, “they will be back in a month or two with a hundred ships, and next time they might not be so kind as to park themselves in low-orbit above the single heavily-fortified spot on our planet. No matter how many guns you place on it, the Rock of Gibraltar can’t defend the entire world.”
“It might be our best option, sir,” Robinson said.
I looked into his eyes. He wanted to do it. Even if it meant this command module would be splattered into oblivion seconds after the order was given. Was that bravery, or simple desperation, I asked myself. Probably, it showed an impressive hate for the Macros.
“Tell Crow to position his ships in orbit behind the Macro formation,” I ordered Robinson. “Tell him not to fire unless he sees things go badly.”
Robinson nodded and stepped away to pick up a com-link and make a private connection with Fleet. I turned to Captain Sarin and gave her similar orders to relay to Lieutenant Colonel Barrera. He was in command of the laser turrets and the hovertanks. If he group-linked them, they could all fire in unison at designated targets.
“Tell Barrera to disperse our hovertanks-just in case.”
“Yes, sir,” said Captain Sarin. She seemed far less excited about her orders than Robinson had been. I didn’t blame her.
“Command module,” I said, “transmit this to the Macros: we have not violated the terms of our agreement. We have all the promised mass here to load aboard your transport.”
“Incoming Message: Insufficient mass detected. Our terms have been violated.”
“Crow is lifting off, sir,” said Robinson in my ear. “He’ll form up behind them so our own ground-based beams won’t cause any friendly-fire problems.”
“Barrera is group-linking the ground forces,” said Captain Sarin into my other ear. “He suggests you evacuate the command module. He’s relocating to the new underground bunkers now.”