Battle Station

— 13

After their first missile attack, we expected more, but they didn’t come. For another day or two, we did nothing but scramble to build up our anti-missile defenses and patch holes in the damaged satellite. About a hundred thousand civvies had died there from asphyxiation and freezing-but it could have been worse. Much worse.

After I had every satellite bristling with small turrets, I placed unmanned platforms in low orbit. Each bore eight more small guns. They hung just above the atmosphere, about ten miles under every one of the big Centaur habitats. If another attack was launched, these tiny forts would have to be passed by the missiles. They could either expend a missile to destroy them, or ignore them and endure fire from their guns all the way up to the bigger targets.

I had quite a production operation going by this time. We’d learned our way around the star system and found the easiest matter was still the chunks of junk that formed rings around the gas giant. I had sent more collectors to orbit the massive world, dipping their scoops into the dirty rings and sucking up matter that was perfect for our purposes: small, pulverized minerals. I was glad for the supply, as we didn’t have much left we could strip from the Centaur habitats. There were now noticeable holes in the gas giants rings-but I didn’t care. The locals would just have to get used to the new look.

I kept fortifying the satellites until they were ready to stop a hundred missiles or more each. When I finally halted the effort, I wondered what I was doing. I called another meeting, this time with just Miklos, Marvin and myself.

“I think I’m playing into their hands,” I told them.

“How so, sir?” asked Miklos.

“Think about it. They fire up less than a hundred missiles, all told. I then proceeded to turn away from my invasion mission and spend most of this week building defenses. In the meantime, they quietly build their own forces, digging in on every one of these planets. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have stopped building surface-to-space missiles entirely.”

Miklos frowned. “That is not the usual Macro operational profile. They almost succeeded in removing one Centaur habitat. They should press on, repeating the same strategy until it fails utterly.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That is the norm. But I’m sensing more intellect here. I feel like I’m being played. They threw up a feint, and while I’m up here working hard to cover my ass, they are setting up their next move. I’m reacting at this point-and we’ve lost the initiative.”

Miklos nodded thoughtfully.

I turned to Marvin next. “What do you think, Marvin?”

He swung three cameras to cover me. Normally, three would have represented rapt interest. I would have taken it as compliment. But now that he had about a dozen cameras, three wasn’t saying much.

“Judging from their actions, I calculate a high probability you are correct. There is a greater intellect at work. They have had the time to build deeper cognitive structures on these worlds.”

“Some kind of super-brain? Like the thing that ran that big dreadnaught back on Earth?”

“Precisely.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s just grand. I have a hard enough time beating their numbers, without them getting all smart and unpredictable on me.”

“Could we locate and target this super-brain?” Miklos asked.

I thought about it, and shook my head. “No. The primary targets are their factories. We’re going to have to go down there and execute Marvin’s original plan. In fact, I’m going for it now. Mass up the ships and make the approach. When can we do it?”

Miklos looked startled. “I–I can’t answer that without looking over all our positions, sir.”

“There you go. They’ve got us scattered. We’ve got ships patching up holes in Centaur balloons and building anti-missile defenses. In the meantime, I bet they are down there building up ground forces to repel our next assault. They panicked us, and are now one step ahead.”

I smashed my armored fists together. Miklos winced. Marvin was watching me with five cameras now.

“We don’t really know-” began Miklos.

“I know enough,” I said, cutting him off. “I know I’ve been sitting up here in space, cowering and worrying about where they might strike next. We had the advantage when we hit them hard-but we didn’t keep up the pressure. They managed to make a counterpunch and put us on the defensive. Well, I’m done defending. We’re going down there. Make it happen, Miklos.”

“May I suggest something, Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked.

“Talk to me. You’ve been way too quiet lately.”

“The actions you are suggesting will make our plans transparent. The mission might be jeopardized by-”

“No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head and chuckling. It wasn’t the kind of chuckle I used when I thought something was actually funny. “You wanted this attack, but now that I’m committing to it you are growing apprehensive? You can’t have this both ways.”

“They will know we are coming.”

“Fine,” I said. “I think they’ve known all along. We made a move on one factory and we blew it up when we realized we couldn’t capture it. If they are brighter than usual, they should realize what we are after.”

I had to count cameras. I thought it was about nine now. I must have freaked him out.

“You believe they’ve analyzed our intentions?” he asked. “If so, my plan is not going to function as designed.”

I thought about that. “I’m saying I think they know we are going for their production facilities. But that doesn’t mean they will know about you and your hijacking attempt. We’ll just have to be tricky, that’s all. It’s still worth a try.”

Marvin looked worried, and for some reason this pleased me. I turned to Miklos.

“Gather the fleet here. We’ll take down the landing pods, but only load one of them-the one we’ll be in. And I want Sloan in there with me. I want his luck aboard my ship. That way, I know we’ll at least make it down to the surface alive. Besides, it’s about time that unkillable bastard got into this war.”

Miklos spread the word and the response was impressive. Marines and Fleet pilots were rushing around everywhere. The ships gathered by the hour and I sensed that the Macros were down there, watching us closely with their artificial eyes.

When I was about to board Barbarossa for the trip down, Captain Miklos stopped me.

“Oh, by the way Colonel…”

“What is it?”

“There have been more vibrations detected-out at the ring that connects us to the binary star system.”

“Why wasn’t I informed earlier?”

“We’ve been busy avoiding missiles and mounting a ground invasion, sir.”

“Priorities, Captain. My orders were clear: I want to know what those Crustaceans are up to.”

“Sorry sir. The ship we had posted on the remote side has returned to our side to transmit a report-this was many hours ago, due to the distance. He says a swarm of Nano ships are approaching the ring and refusing to communicate.”

I swore. “The lobsters are getting ideas, eh? Why now? Maybe they know we are tied up with the Macros and want to make their move while we are distracted. Do you think that’s it?”

“I’m not really sure, sir.”

I paced, my heavy boots ringing on the deck. “Have them lay down some more mines on our side. Then have our sentry ship relay a politely-worded informational communique about the weapons. If they still come through-well, they can’t say we didn’t warn them.”

I left it at that and boarded the landing pod. We were finally going back to the Centaur homeworld. It felt good, in a way. I hadn’t liked being driven back from this planet the first time. After all, I’d promised the original owners their world would be liberated.

The trip down was relatively uneventful. I’d half-expected a fresh barrage of missiles, either aimed at our ships or the habitat above. Neither came. The enemy sat quietly, waiting.

Looking down through a rigged-up video system, I eyed the LZ intently when we broke through the cloud layer. It was going to be a gray, drizzling day down there when we landed. Through silvery sheets of falling rain, I made out a charcoal-black surface. The region around the great pit was graded and channeled by the passage of countless machines as they destroyed the region, leaching every ounce of minerals out of the land.

The ship fell like a rock at the end, and I soon saw why. A missile had finally come at us, but it was a small one, of a familiar AA design. I glimpsed it as the cameras tracked it. A sliver of dull, unfinished metal with a flaring red exhaust. A contrail ran behind it, pluming out as billowing white vapors.

“Evasive action,” Sloan ordered.

I would have answered with a few curses, but I could barely breathe. Sloan was piloting this ship, and he clearly didn’t intend to get hit by that missile. He swung and whipped the ship from side to side. I felt the guns stuttering as they tracked and tried to shoot down the incoming weapon.

I looked at the screens, but it must have been too close for the cameras to track it now. I flicked my gaze to the front wall, which showed a rust-red finger moving very rapidly to intersect with our ship, which was represented by the nanites in the wall as a golden bead of metal. I gritted my teeth and tightened my shoulders, bracing for impact. With luck, even if the ship was knocked out, some of us would survive to continue the mission.

Then a second later, it was over. The missile was gone.

“We must have shot it down,” Sloan said. He asked the ship what had occurred, and Barbarossa confirmed the missile had been taken out.

“Ha!” I shouted. “That’s just the sort of flying I expected to see out of you, Sloan. That’s why I brought you along. The Macros don’t have a chance of shooting us down with you aboard.”

Sloan tossed me a grin, then went back to studying his boards intently. When off-duty, he was quick to slam down a beer and seemed half-asleep at meetings. But when he was under fire, the man was all business.

“That was an AA shot,” I said. “The kind the big Macros put on their backs. I bet there’s at least one of those machines down there.”

“We have not seen any of that type of unit in the vicinity,” Marvin said.

I glanced at him. “Believe me, they’ve been building like mad down there.”

“Trouble, sir,” Sloan said.

I snapped my helmeted head around and examined the big screen again. “Seven more incoming? Is someone transmitting my name from this ship? I briefed you about that.”

“No sir, not to my knowledge,” Sloan said. He was making the ship buck and weave again. If I’d been a person who got seasick, I’d have filled my helmet by now.

“We can’t get away from three-what the hell are you doing, Marvin?” I broke off and stood up, but was tossed back into my crash seat.

Marvin was sprawled on the floor, using his numerous tentacles to cling to anything solid. He had a hand-held laser out, a short-ranged type we used for welding. He was intent on what he was doing, and only a single camera swung my way when I spoke to him.

“I’ve calculated a ninety-seven percent probability this ship will sustain a hit.”

“So, you’re cutting your way out?” I asked. “I give you an ‘A’ for effort. Sloan, we are in the atmosphere now. Order everyone to abandon ship.”

Sloan did so, and as part of the ship’s programming, the floor of the bridge vanished.

We all fell, not out of the ship entirely, but down into another subchamber under the one we’d been in. This was the empty landing pod. I looked up and saw Kwon and the rest of our team were coming down into the pod with us. A few were already there. We bumped heads and helmets. Fortunately, all of us were too armored to get injured.

“Can we pilot this down?” I asked.

“No time,” Sloan said. “Barbarossa, release landing pod!”

There was a sickening lurch. I looked over at the situational diagram on the wall. Three missiles, still incoming. Our ships were around, firing at it. None of them had any missiles targeting them. Dammit. As I watched one of the AA shots vanished, but there were two more, and that was going to be more than enough.

Macro AA missiles weren’t like Earth equivalents, especially now that they’d become accustomed to our defensive fire. These missiles were painted with textured, reflective matter. They also spun on their central axis. It was like shooting at a disco ball, and our lasers tended to bounce off. Worse, they pumped out mists and chaff to put a diffusive shield around the tiny vehicle. It wasn’t hard to lock onto one of them, but it was extremely hard to beat their countermeasures and bring it down.

“Barbarossa, open the floor of this pod!” I roared. “Dissolve it now, all of it!”

I think it was the last command the ship ever executed. We dropped out into open space, the wind whistling over our armor in a buffeting, screaming rush. We were in free-fall when the streaking missiles plowed into the ship and the pod above us-one hit each. It was more than enough firepower. Both the ship and the pod fireballed and fell apart in burning scraps.

We fell faster than the debris overhead, being lower and denser than the rain of burning, squirming smart metal.

“No one apply any thrust!” I ordered over our short-range, tactical com system. “Just fall with the rest of the debris. Wait until they engage someone else.”

My men obeyed me. We fell the last three or so miles to the surface in a relative peace and quiet. The wind whistled, and raindrops formed a slipstream over my armor.

While we fell, the world swam up to us with sickening, spiraling speed. It looked ugly down there-all charcoal and dirty, grinding machines.

I had time enough to wonder about the Macros and their targeting. Had someone told them it was me in that ship? Had I blown my own cover somehow? I wasn’t sure, but if I lived for another few hours, I was determined to find out.