Battle Station

— 11

A day later, I was crouched over a battle computer on Barbarossa. I was in a bad mood. We’d failed to take the first Macro factory we’d assaulted, and we’d blown our element of surprise in the bargain. On the plus side, I told myself repeatedly, we’d learned a lot and dealt the Macros a hard blow.

It wasn’t enough, however. The enemy knew we were coming now, and every Macro production system on all six of these planets had to be churning out combat systems at this point. I wanted to attack again immediately, but it wasn’t that simple. Getting Centaur troops back onto landing pods had proven very difficult. They simply didn’t want to be trapped again after experiencing the freedom of running wild on their own planet. I couldn’t blame them for that, but they represented a critical resource that I didn’t want to lose.

When I reconvened the morning debate squad-my command staff-no one looked any happier than I did. Kwon rested his cheek on one massive fist. Miklos hunched over a tablet computer and tapped at it. Marvin looked positively dejected. He barely turned a camera in my direction when I spoke to him.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s review our options. When can we hit them again, and where?”

“Sir,” Miklos said, “shouldn’t we wait for Captain Sloan?”

I grunted, and drummed my fingers on the table for a full minute. I’d never been good at waiting on people. I finally keyed open my com-link and called him.

“Where are you, Sloan?”

“In transit sir-sorry about the delay. There’s something odd showing up on our sensors.”

I frowned. “Where? I don’t see anything on our planetary surveillance app.”

“No, not here, sir. Something is going on with the ring-and in the next system. The one with the lobsters, sir.”

We hadn’t even named that system yet. I figured I should get around to that, but hadn’t been overly interested in the place since I’d discovered it. Now, however, Sloan had my full attention. He was excellent at spotting danger early-and avoiding it.

“Brief me when you get here.”

Sloan arrived a few minutes later and took his seat. He had a worried look on his face. I tossed my scribbled agenda aside and turned to him. “All right, let’s hear it.”

“It might be nothing, sir.”

I made an urgent gesture.

He nodded. “There was some kind of vibration-a signal maybe-which went through the ring. We detected it only because we have ships sitting at both sides. It was recorded on the logs, and when I compared data hours later, I noticed both ships had detected the same thing at about the same moment.”

I squinted at Sloan. How could something vibrate these huge rings? Marvin’s reaction was much more dramatic. At least six cameras on extending stalks rose up and stared at him from every possible angle.

“I don’t get what you are trying to say,” I said. “Something vibrated the rings? The entire thing vibrated? As in making a small motion?”

“Exactly, sir. Both ends did it, at the same time.”

I shook my head. We really didn’t know much about the rings. We didn’t know much about the factories, either. In truth, we were primates playing with technology developed by our mysterious betters. I’d often wondered if one of these days we’d look down the barrel of one of these devices and pull the trigger with our tails. There would be monkey brains on the walls that day.

I began to speak, but I saw Marvin wanted to say something, so I turned to him. “Ask your questions, Marvin. I can see you are dying to.”

“Captain Sloan, was there any form of emission detected?”

“No, none that we could pick up. No light, no radio, no magnetic impulse-nothing.”

“How very odd,” Marvin said.

I smiled. When Marvin called something “odd”, it meant “exciting” to him.

“Is there any information from the Crustaceans?” I said. “Any mention of what it might mean?”

“Nothing. We have detected a large number of their ships, however, forming up in orbit over their primary water-moon.”

“Any hostile intent detected?”

He shook his head.

“All right then, I want Marvin to study the data. Sloan, you are to tell the pilots on station out there to watch for any further anomalies and report them immediately.”

“Right sir.”

“Let’s get back to current combat ops,” I said, bringing up a map of the Centaur homeworld on the screen that all of us sat around. “Our secondary target is here, in the middle of an open slag-heap. It was once a forest, but their harvesters took care of that.”

The screen depicted a black wound in the middle of a vividly green plain.

“I’d originally liked the mountain location better, as it provided us natural cover for our approach. But this one will have to do. At least there is no lake in the area for the dome to hide under. As far as we can tell, it is in the bottom of what looks like a giant sinkhole.”

“I believe it’s a strip-mine,” Marvin said.

“Whatever. They are inside this deep, dark hole. We’ll run down there and take it out.”

“Excuse me, Colonel Riggs.”

“What is it, Marvin?”

“When would you launch this attack-ideally?”

“Right now, but I can’t. The first load of Centaurs we took down there isn’t coming back, and they are about five thousand miles from this target. We have retrieved their weapons kits-about half of them anyway-and we have to put together a new invasion force.”

“What if I told you we could invade today-within the hour?”

I looked at him. I knew he was baiting me. I knew that at the end of this rainbow, I’d find something Marvin wanted. I also knew that the bait smelled pretty good. I took a bite.

“Okay,” I sighed. “Talk me into it.”

“We can’t mount a full-scale invasion force immediately,” Marvin said. “But we could drop a small commando team. All they would have to do it run to the pit, find the factory and once under the dome-”

Kwon was laughing now, his heavy, whuffing sounds filled the room. “Run to the pit and slip under the dome? There is no cover, robot. You are a dumb toaster.”

“My IQ exceeds yours by approximately-”

I cleared my throat. “Kwon has a good point. There is no cover. Macros don’t care about night and day for visibility. They don’t fall asleep on guard, either. How do you propose we sneak in there?”

“I never said we would sneak in. We will run in openly.”

“Under fire?”

“Suicide!” proclaimed Kwon.

“Let me explain,” Marvin continued. “Macros designate targets on the basis of their importance. This is an entirely predictable process. Therefore, if we present them with higher value targets, they will ignore any small party of individuals in the area.”

I mulled this over. I knew what Marvin was talking about. Macros did work that way. Many times I’d sat with a squad near them, and while they had something else to shoot at, an individual was perfectly safe. “What do you suggest we use for a diversion?”

“The only asset we have. Our ships.”

I nodded. I figured he was getting around to that. I turned to Captain Sloan. I could see the worry in his face. Captain Miklos was frowning down at his computer. I knew what they were all thinking. Would Riggs be crazy enough to go along with this robot’s plan? Everyone there knew I just might. I found the thought almost as disturbing as they did.

But there was a certain beauty to it, the longer I considered it. We didn’t have to have a knock-down battle with their newly built defensive units. We could bypass them and possibly many deaths and end the fight in one fell swoop. The more I thought about it, the more I started liking it.

I looked at Captain Sloan. He looked alarmed.

“Are you thinking of taking me with you, Colonel?” he asked.

I almost laughed. Sloan’s death-avoidance radar must have been going off at full tilt.

“No, I want you in the ships-with Miklos here. You two will run ops and fly our destroyers around, shooting every harvester they have. In the meantime, Marvin, Kwon and I will be dropped on the battlefield. We’ll take a squad into that hole.”

“What if the Macros realize who you are?”

“Then I’m dead. I’ll go under a code name. Call me Condor. I’ve always liked big buzzards.”

Sloan nodded, looking relieved. Kwon was in the opposite mood, he pulled down the corners of his mouth into an appreciative grimace. “Will we get to fight, sir?”

“Hopefully not much. The mission is to get in there and take out the production system.”

Miklos finally spoke up then. He asked his first question of the meeting, and it was a good one. “Sir, what about after you take over the dome? You will have every Macro in the hole reevaluating their targets. I doubt we can hold their attention at that point. You will be swamped in enemies.”

I nodded, considering. “That is a major flaw,” I admitted.

Marvin’s cameras swung to every face in turn, and quickly judged his plan was in jeopardy. He’d stayed cagily quiet until now, letting us convince ourselves it could work. Now, he sensed the need for more input and jumped back into the conversation.

“Sirs,” he said. “I have good news on that front. I will immediately put the dome back up, protecting the commandos inside.”

“What if you can’t do that, Marvin?” Miklos asked. “We are betting on you twice now, not just once.”

Marvin began to answer, but I put up a hand. “We can’t know if he can do it or not. But if he can take over the entire facility, it stands to reason he can maintain the dome. At that point, if Star Force can destroy the machines outside, we can clean out this entire nest and make it our own. The possible gains are enormous, gentlemen. We could churn out undreamed of levels of production with one of those systems. Instead of a hundred huge robots, we could build a fleet of destroyers, or a thousand laser turrets. We could even build the battle station I’ve been working on for weeks.”

I massaged the stubble on my jaw, and the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I found myself feeling a powerful emotion that I rarely experienced. Greed, that’s what it was. All those raw materials, just sitting around the dome. Millions of tons of matter ready to be turned into whatever I wanted.

Most importantly, it would double the production capacity of Star Force. That was worth some risk, wasn’t it?